Plurrrr

week 51, 2025

Some improvements to tumblelog

Today I continued with making some small improvements to tumblelog. Yesterday, inspired by "The Story of Python", I added the walrus operator to the Python version where it made sense. And today I did some other changes. The complete change log for tumblelog 5.7.0 is as follows:

  • Use the walrus operator in tumblelog.py
  • Use tuple unpacking in create_year_pages in tumblelog.py
  • Use sorted() without keys in tumblelog.py
  • Precompute years list in create_year_pages in tumblelog.py
  • Make create_blog cleaner in both tumblelog.pl and tumblelog.py

As usual the latest version is available on GitHub.

The Hustle (2019)

Two con women - one low rent and the other high class - team up to take down the men who have wronged them.

In the evening Esme and I watched The Hustle. The movie was less funny than expected and I rate it a 6 out of 10.

A Matter of Style

In the afternoon I replaced the deprecated @import with @use in all styles of tumblelog. I had planned to do so for quite some time and today I finally could find the time. I also generated a new screenshot for each style.

The change log for tumblelog 5.6.0 is as follows:

  • Switch to @use instead of deprecated @import in all styles
  • Generate new screenshots
  • Update README
  • Bump version to 5.6.0

Nothing spectacular but a most needed update. As usual the latest version is available on GitHub.

Video Trouble

In the afternoon, when I wanted to watch "The Story of Python" I discovered that LibreELEC, at least the version I have on my Raspberry Pi, didn't support the file format. It crashed each time when I opened the file. So I decided to download the file as an MP4 as follows:

youtube-dl \
  -f "bv*+ba/b" \
  --merge-output-format mp4 \
  https://youtu.be/GfH4QL4VqJ0
  • bv*: best available video-only stream
  • ba: best available audio
  • bv*+ba/b: combine video+audio, fall back to best single file
  • --merge-output-format mp4: final file is MP4

Note that youtube-dl is an alias for yt-dlp in the above command.

The download video and the merging took 17 minutes and 32 seconds.

But, alas, this video also didn't work with LibreELEC. So I ended up watching the video on the Apple TV using the YouTube app. I liked the documentary, it was nice to see the people I knew only by name. And the commercials? Only once somewhat in the middle.

Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

The Bride continues her quest of vengeance against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Budd, and the treacherous, one-eyed Elle.

In the evening Alice, Esme, and I watched Kill Bill: Volume 2. I liked the movie more than the first one and rate it a solid 8 out of 10.

Some small changes to tumblelog

In the evening I pushed a new version of tumblelog to GitHub. Most of the changes I had done in the evening but the Docker related ones I had done earlier. The complete change log for tumbelog 5.5.0 is as follows:

  • Pin Alpine version to avoid gcc 15 issue in perl.Dockerfile
  • Pin versions and optimize sass.Dockerfile
  • Make sass.Dockerfile distroless resulting in a smaller image
  • Use say instead of print "...\n"; in tumblelog.pl
  • Obtain current year using year method in tumblelog.pl
  • Optimize create_tag_pages by using a defaultdict in tumblelog.py
  • Use meta.get('id'); more Pythonic, in tumblelog.py
  • Use f-string in get_tag_path in tumblelog.py
  • Use generator expression instead of list comprehension tumblelog.py
  • Use groupby from itertools in create_tag_pages in tumblelog.py

I also posted an announcement to the Usenet group comp.lang.python. Yes, I am back on Usenet after like 15 years or so. It's still not dead but not much traffic. Some of the groups I was subscribed to in the past hardly get any messages if any.

Downloading "The Story of Python" from YouTube

Yesterday I installed yt-dlp from MacPorts as follows:

sudo port install -v yt-dlp

After a very long wait the installation of yt-dlp was ready.

The program can be used to download videos from a large number of sites, including YouTube. It is a fork of youtube-dl. Since I can recall that command easier, I added the following to my .zshrc:

alias youtube-dl='yt-dlp'

And today I used the following command to download The Story of Python:

youtube-dl \
  https://youtu.be/GfH4QL4VqJ0

Note that youtube-dl is an alias for yt-dlp in the above command.

I downloaded the movie so I can watch it without commercials on our TV via a Raspberry PI running an older version of LibreELEC. The download of the video and merging took 33 minutes and 31 seconds. The resulting video has extension webm so I hope LibreELEC can play it.

Downloading and Installing Pixelmator Classic for macOS

Today I installed Pixelmator Classic on my refurbished Mac mini late 2014 as follows:

  1. Open the App Store program and sign in.
  2. In the bottom left corner click on your name to get an overview.
  3. Click on the download icon for Pixelmator Classic to download and install it.

The refurbished Mac mini replaces the my Mac mini of which the fusion drive died one week and a half ago.

Regarding the installation; at first I thought I had to drag Pixelmator Classic from a Time Machine backup back into the Applications folder but the App Store method was more convenient and guaranteed to work.

I have also a license for the Pro version of Pixelmator, which I also can install the same way, but never used it... 😮 Maybe next year is the time to dive into it.

I use the classic version to crop, resize, and sharpen images for this blog.

Pixelmator has been bought by Apple over a year ago, so I wonder what they are going to do with it.

Fixing Preventing Sleep

If your monitor doesn't go to sleep on macOS, start the "Activity Monitor", select the "Energy" tab and look for "Yes" in the column "Preventing Sleep". This way you can find the culprit(s).

Today, in my case, it was both the "App Store" and a single tab in "Firefox". Closing both removed the "Yes" from the "Preventing Sleep" column.

The Story of Python and how it took over the world

This is the story of the world's most beloved programming language: Python. What began as a side project in Amsterdam during the 1990s became the software powering artificial intelligence, data science and some of the world’s biggest companies. But Python's future wasn't certain; at one point it almost disappeared.

This 90-minute documentary features Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more, and they tell the story of Python’s rise, its community-driven evolution, the conflicts that almost tore it apart, and the language’s impact on... well… everything.

In the evening I found on Usenet (still not dead) a link to a YouTube documentary about the programming language Python: The Story of Python and how it took over the world. I plan to watch this documentary later this week. The program that generates this blog, tumblelog, is also available as a Python version on GitHub.