Ram’s Personal Website | Bitsbipsbricks

Colon Analogy Notation

2024-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

I have been trying to find the name for this very common notation for analogies:

A:B::C:D to represent A is to B as C is to D

I have found it helpful to query LLMs (ChatGPT 4o in my case) with questions in the format A:B::C:??

I have tried to find the name for this notation by asking ChatGPT, using Google Search and Google Scholar, but I have not found anything authoritative.

I think the name Colon Analogy Notation is a good Schelling point. Someone familiar with the syntax would intuitively recognize the connection upon hearing the name. Likewise, if someone knows the syntax, this might be the name they would naturally search for.

I would love to know if there is a preexisting name for this notation and the history of its use. But it is hard to search for something when you don’t know its name.

So I have written the article I would like to have found for the next searcher.

This sub-blog is for posts written at a certain point in time. I don’t usually update them, but I’ll update this if I learn more.

If you know more, please email me (my email is in the footer) or reach out on Twitter.

Maximizing, Satisficing and Perfectionism

2024-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Me experimenting with my daily bagel

I have always had the temperament of a satisficer. I find something that works for me, and I stick to it forever. It’s simple and easy, once I make a commitment to something, I don’t have to think about that category of thing again. I do this for bagels, pens and IDEs. But I am starting to wonder if I am missing out by not maximizing more.

When thinking about new solutions, whether it be software tools, hot sauces, or notetaking apps, I become a perfectionist. I start thinking of my elaborate theoretical use cases and then become overwhelmed and actually do nothing.

If it’s a cheap, reversible decision, the only real mistake is procrastinating on making a decision

TLDR: JUST DO IT!

Twitter Cards Images are Cached

2024-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Recently, I learned in a not-so-enjoyable fashion that Twitter caches summary card images.

While writing Verify Jekyll Minima Sites on Mastodon, I originally had a summary card image which was getting cropped poorly, so I kept the image that was being displayed at the top of the article but changed the summary card image with a wider version which got a better crop. And it showed up correctly in my preferred Twitter Card preview tool: BannerBear Twitter Card Preview Tool.

But when I posted it to Twitter, the old image would show up both when I actually posted it and in the preview when I was composing it.

After some frustrating troubleshooting, I found this support forum thread that said Twitter caches summary images for about a week, and the preview tool could be used to expire the cache.

And while the preview tool, no longer actually shows you a preview of a tweet, it does bust the cache.

Unfortunately, this type of amateurism is typical of Twitter.

I am not really happy with my investigation into this issue. I wonder if there is a way to accurately preview tweets with the cached images.

Verify Jekyll Minima Sites on Mastodon

2024-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

On Mastodon, one way that you can prove that you are who you say you are is by verifying that you own your personal site.

For example, on my Mastodon account, I have verified that I own ramvasuthevan.ca

You prove that you own a page by having a link from that page to your Mastodon account with a rel="me" attribute.

The two simplest ways to verify your site:

Adding an invisible tag inside the tag at the top page to the account that you’d like to be verified for:
```
  rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@RamVasuthevan"> 
```
By adding a hyperlink to your Mastodon profile somewhere on the page, like:
```
  rel="me" href="https://mastodon.social/@RamVasuthevan">Mastodon 
```

Unfortunately, if you add your Mastodon profile to your config file like this:

mastodon:
  - username: RamVasuthevan
    instance: mastodon.social

Minima 2.5 does not automatically add the rel=me attribute to the link in the footer of your site. And there is no plans to add automatic verification until Minima 3.

But you can copy the _includes/social.html file and add it to your _includes file. And then add a rel="me" attribute to the a href tag for Mastodon.

Or you can just copy my version.

After adding the link to your page, go to https://mastodon.social/settings/profile and add the page you want to verify as one of the extra fields.

Your profile must be updated after adding the rel-me link to your web page. If you have added the link to your profile before, try removing the link from your profile, saving, re-adding the link, and then saving again. (See documentation).

Search for All Dependabot Created PRs on Your Repos

2024-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by Nolan Issac from Unsplash

In the spirit of early patio11, I’m going to write more about what I worked on, what I learned, and the problems I solved on any given day.

In that spirit, I have a bunch of repos with Dependabot enabled. It’s a pain in the ass to manually go to all of the repos and see if a Dependabot PR has been created.

Search query: is:pr author:app/dependabot is:open archived:false user:@me

GitHub Search for Dependabot PRs

Create Jekyll Sub Blogs using only Liquid

2024-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by Andrew Neel from Unsplash

I started writing this blog in the spirit of Visa’s do 100’s things. The best way to become a better writer is to write. Writing and writing energy is not scarce. It’s not like you have a finite number of things you can write in your life. The more you write, the more you can write. If you write an article about an idea, it doesn’t need to be perfect. You can always write more about it later.

I started writing on Ghost because it was easy to set up and maintain. At first, I didn’t mention my name anywhere. Eventually, I decided to merge it with my personal site after I became more confident with my writing and so that I could gain more control over how the site looked. As an engineer, I love being able to take advantage of Git for version control, setting up my writing environment using VS Code and knowing that I can easily maintain and migrate it from Jekyll if necessary.

Jekyll by default puts all blog posts into one feed, but sometimes, I want to write something small, a snippet, a note mostly for myself, that doesn’t really fit in Bits, Bips and Bricks.

By taking advantage of Jekyll categories and tags you can easily have multiple sub blogs each with their own Atom feed using only Liquid.

A category can be defined using the front matter keys category or categories (a space separated list of categories) or putting a directory above the post’s _post directory with the name of the category.

A tag can be defined using can be defined using the front matter keys tag or tags (a space separated list of tags)

This snippet is built to match the style of Minma, but similar logic can be used for other themes.

Copy the following code and paste it in _includes/blog.html:


    {{ page.list_title | default: "Posts" }}
    
      {%- for post in site.posts -%}
      {%- if post.categories contains include.category or post.tags contains include.tag -%}
      
        {%- assign date_format = site.minima.date_format | default: "%b %-d, %Y" -%}
        {{ post.date | date: date_format }}
        
          {{ post.url | relative_url }}">
            {{ post.title | escape }}
          
        
        {%- if site.show_excerpts -%}
          {{ post.excerpt }}
        {%- endif -%}
      
      {%-endif -%}
      {%- endfor -%}

    

    {%- if include.category and site.feed.categories contains include.category -%}
      {% unless include.tag %}
      {% assign feed_location = site.feed.categories[include.category].path | default: '/feed/' | append: include.category | append: '.xml' | relative_url %}
        subscribe {{ '/feed/' | append: include.category | append: '.xml' | relative_url }}">via RSS
        {% endunless %}
    {%- endif -%}

    {%- if include.tag and site.feed.tags contains include.tag -%}
    {% unless include.category %}
      subscribe {{ '/feed/' | append: include.tag | append: '.xml' | relative_url }}">via RSS
    {% endunless %}
    {%- endif -%}

The above code is available under the MIT license and contains code from minima/_layouts/home.html

On the page that you want a sub blog with only posts from a certain category:

{% include blog.html category="category_name" %}

On the page that you want a sub blog with only posts with a certain tag:

{% include blog.html tag="tag_name" %}

If you don’t add a category or tag parameter, then all posts will be in the sub blog.

Minima assumes that if there are no posts, the feed will not be shown. I disagree, you can have a blog without blog posts.

Make sure to update your _config.yml according to the instructions for jekyll-feed to make sure that the feeds for your category or tag are generated.

A Bit of a Sabbatical: Time for More Focus

2023-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by Patrick Tomasso from Unsplash

Editor’s Note: This was written in early November and my views have changed a bit, but I’ve decided to post this now for posterity

The last 12 weeks have been great. It helped me figure out what to do with my life:

I am a software engineer on sabbatical. I am working on applying technology to real estate in Toronto.

But my sabbatical is constrained by money and and thus constrained by time. It’s now time for focus.

Projects which will be focusing on:

Lobbying in Toronto
- Build a great way to search and visualize data published by the City of Toronto’s Lobbyist Registrar
TRREB MLS Search Engine
- Build a Virtual Office Website for TRREB’s MLS to make it easier for Realtor and their clients to search for properties in Toronto
Open Map of Toronto
- Combine open data sources to create a better view of Toronto. Definitely Property Boundaries and Address Points (Municipal) - Toronto One Address Repository , plus some more data from the City of Toronto’s Open Data Portal and other data sources
Bits, Bips and Bricks
- Write more regularly and about more topics
- The vibe that I am going for:
I really like this. It's helpful in getting over the little voice in my head that says "It's not as good as the writers you admire" https://t.co/h0HzKUrQSm
— Ram Vasuthevan (in SF Oct 31 - Nov 7) (@RamVasuthevan) July 26, 2023

I will also work on side projects, especially if they align with my goal of applying technology to real estate but it is now time to impose a discipline on myself.

Felt Feels like Magic

2023-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by Francesca Saraco from Unsplash

Editor’s Note: Here is the link to the map. Embedding maps now requires the “Talk to Sales” Enterprise tier.

I just started using Felt. The best way to describe it is it feels like magic. I have been thinking about side projects involving creating maps or using geospatial data for a while, but I’ve procrastinated on learning Mapbox or QGIS. And I’ve spent way too much time trying to install SpatiaLite on a Windows Laptop.

No coding involved. I just dragged the two Shapefiles (Property Boundaries and Address Points (Municipal) - Toronto One Address Repository) from the Toronto Open Data Portal on, and the map appeared. I then added the Felt’s preexisting building footprint layer. It was then easy to quickly add colouring by category. And even better (unlike some other tools), there is a working search bar so that you can look up parcels at an address.

In general, I like open tools so that I can have more control over the output and be confident that the publisher won’t stop supporting the tool in a couple of years. But I value velocity more than everything else. (If you’re reading this ten years from now, you’ll know how it worked out).

It didn’t take me that long to start seeing interesting things near the water, on Algonquin Island, near my home, etc. However, I need to work on my styling.

A Bit of a Sabbatical

2023-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Photo by Mwangi Gatheca from Unsplash

I was laid off on Aug. 10, 2023. I feel like I was a good employee, but due to the vicissitudes of trade, my services were no longer needed. I wasn’t disappointed, I was honestly pretty excited.

During my sabbatical from employment, I want to produce work that I will be proud of 10 years from now. Reading, browsing Twitter or getting nerd-sniped are okay, and they feel like work. They definitely are intellectual work. But they are not legible. They do not let me signal what type of person I am and what I can do.

I have benefited for a long time from being perceived as a young, ambitious person. I lost that sheen for a bit when I was at Accenture. I regained it at Searchspring. Greatness comes from slack. The slack I had at Searchspring gave me time to become a better engineer and the confidence that I could be a great engineer. I want to build on that over the next couple of months.

I invested for a future decades away. But I worked for my stand-up hours away. That is no longer true. I am now constrained by money. But I can work on projects that can take years to pay off.

But I can’t waste time. I can invest time for a far future, but my limited money buys me limited freedom from the social contract of employment. I don’t want to impose a totalitarian discipline on myself, but failure is not acceptable. I have run away from the prison, which employment is. But the guards are out searching for me. I must find a new home or build a new one. I will not die in the wilderness. I will not go back. I will not spend years plotting another escape.

I have lived a charmed life. I have had one or more part-time jobs or a full-time job since the month after my 18th birthday. I have had less money in the past, but I have not really been constrained by money. Ever since I started working full-time, I have readily traded money for more time, reduced hassle or psychic benefits. But now that money directly buys freedom, I need to be more conservative with my spending.

I am a little afraid, very excited, but also overwhelmed. In the past, when I am overwhelmed, I have delayed or taken no action. Sometimes, no action is the right move, but often, it allows me to procrastinate on make hard decisions. I need to rapidly develop a bias for action.

For the last several years, my life has gotten better almost automatically. I passed my courses and went to the next grade. I matured as I gained more life experience just by waking up every day. But after I graduated, that is no longer true. I need to take action to improve my life. In 2020, I graduated and joined Accenture. In 2021, I took action, and I left my consulting job at Accenture and got a better job as a software engineer at Searchspring. I was concerned this year would break the trend. Whether or not it does, it certainly won’t be boring.

Goals:

Base:
- I want to stop selling commodity engineering services to generic tech companies
High
- Exit the social contract of employment
Low
- Get another software engineering job

Fail:

Lose control of my sleep cycle. Allowing it to invert and me to be nocturnal
Become unemployable before reaching sustainability
Not being able to get another job
Taking a sabbatical, working on side projects, “Building in public”, etc., is a luxury belief
I become overwhelmed and procrastinating on everything
I have implicit and explicit responsibilities to others that I don’t want to abandon

The World Has Changed:Image Generation Engines

2023-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Editor’s Note: This was written in September 2022. At the time, I wanted to add more about what I thought image generators would be used for, and then I procrastinated … a lot. But I’ve decided to publish this version for posterity. The world has changed, and still almost nobody knows it yet.

Today is September 6th, 2022. The three main image generation engines are DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney. (The date is important. The leading engines could be different a week from now.) Two months ago, the creation of digital artwork cost $100’s dollars or $1000’s dollars an image and photography costs $10’s and $1000’s per image. Today, the creation of digital images costs cents. Images can now be generated in seconds, by giving an image generation engine a text prompt and by fiddling with two or three simple parameters.

DALL-E 2 was released on July 20th, 2022. OpenAI, one of the world’s leading research laboratories, created it. OpenAI has XX¹ employees. It was closed-sourced and available initially only to beta testers on the waitlist. OpenAI distorted any faces in images making it hard to be used for deep fakes. Stability AI released Stable Diffusion on August 22nd, 2022, 33 days later. Stable Diffusion is open source, can be run on a consumer GPU, and doesn’t blur faces like DALL-E 2. Stability AI, as of August 12th, 2022, has 75 employees.

Created by Stable Diffusion using Replicate

The images aren’t prefect. They still gave off a weird vibe. And giving the right words to get the image you want (prompt engineering²) is still a bit finicky. But an hour after I started playing with Stable Diffusion, I was able to create this image of an Canadian Flag and an Astronaut on the moon. (So can you with Stable Diffusion on commit a9758cbfbd5f with width 512 height 512 prompt Neil Armstrong on the Moon Canadian Flag num_outputs 4 guidance_scale 7 prompt_strength 0.8 num_inference_steps 129 and seed 47692).

Soon for videos, etc
Fundamentally, a different medium
Deepfakes
Creative labour
New art created (Comic book etc)
Programmatic creation (See what clothes would look like on you?, What products look like your home?)
Meaning of non-human-created artwork?
Creative work of curation??
Can’t be put back in the box. This felt different. We were/aren’t ready.
We won’t be ready for the next one

Edit: 2023-11-11 A link was added to footnote 2 and the title was changed to from The World Has Changed to The World Has Changed:Image Generation Engines

I didn’t find the number at the time and couldn’t find the exact number now ↩
I’ve changed my mind about what prompt engineering is. See: Prompt Engineering vs. Blind Prompting — Mitchell Hashimoto ↩