When to automate a repetitive task:
NO-BRAINER: "This is obviously going to be faster to automate than to do it by hand _even once_. Let's automate it right now, and not do it by hand at all."
FORESIGHTED: "Doing it once by hand is faster than automating it, but I'm going to have to do it a lot of times, so it still saves time to automate it first."
NEED A RUN-UP: "I don't yet understand this task well enough to automate it, so I'll do it a few times by hand first to get the idea."
RAN OFF THE RUNWAY: "Great, now I've done this by hand a few times, I think I can automate it reliably! Oh, oops, turned out I only had one more case of it left to do."
TERRIFIED OF RUNNING OFF THE RUNWAY: "This is a one-off, so it would be a waste of time to automate it, I'll just do it manually."
[next day] "Oh, oops, I made a mistake and have to do it again. But it should be fine this time."
[a month later] "Even though I've had to redo it 25 times already, surely _this_ is the last time? So it would still be a waste of time to automate it."
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Crystal explains what your favourite social media says about you: youtu.be/GspQt10qrgs?is=_NCo16… . Unfortunately she only does commercial social media. And even though she helpfully mentions that people should just start their own blog if that's a certain itch they should scratch, it is then tied to the sponsor of the video, Squarespace.
Me: I used to hate Tumblr for years, but then I stopped using it. I felt seen in that segment...
Fragments of Eindhoven
Canon EOS R10, with the Laowa 65mm 2.8 manual focus macro lens.
#Eindhoven #CanonEOSR10 #Laowa #Photography
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Photographed the full Moon tonight, this time actually using a tripod. Cropped, Canon EOS R10, Canon EF 400mm f/5.6 with 1.4x extender. F11, 1/200s, iso 200.
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Post production sound in wildlife documentaries, by Roxy Furman, taking her own beautiful film of a pangolin to be released as an example.
youtu.be/bOdxK4WfSEM?si=eeWasg…
youtube.com/shorts/pORBzhLuui4…
Here's Celina Bhandari explaining her creative workflow for her cinematic travel documentaries: youtu.be/4Ub365sf13g?si=qji-pQ…
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Humans domesticated dogs before they invented written language... and now they never will.
(via tumblr)
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Episode 1 of season 4 of Bridgerton introduces us to great new characters. I love Yerin Ha as Sophie Baek, Katie Leung as Lady Araminta Gun and Michelle Mao as Rosamund Li. I suspect the tension this season is going to be in that household...
I follow Korean foodie Doobydobap on YouTube and noticed that despite having visited many Asian countries, she had never done a video about food in India before. That is fixed now and resulted in over two hours of video.
Part 1 is Delhi:
youtu.be/PjNLVgwLOJs?si=cjB6_1…
Part 2 is Mumbai:
youtu.be/7tataOP0ME8?si=ppG2Gp…
She's planning to go back to visit more cities.
#Doobydobap #FoodBlog #India
Went to Eindhoven today to photograph some of the famous statues as a very small photography project. The intent was to make the photos somewhat different from the norm, using just one lens. Canon RF 35 F1.8 on Canon EOS R10.
First Anton Philips in front of the train station.
#Photography #Eindhoven #CanonEOSR10 #CanonR10 #Statue #AntonPhilips
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Next Frits Philips on the Market Square.
#Photography #Eindhoven #CanonEOSR10 #CanonR10 #FritsPhilips
Finally the statue by Rodin in front of the Van Abbe Museum (not in the frame).
To me the statue always seems to be twisted, distorted, against the norm, and I tried to do that justice in the photo.
#Photography #Eindhoven #CanonEOSR10 #CanonR10 #statue #Rodin
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So Greenland was named that way really as propaganda...
Here's an episode of a history podcast, from a year ago, about the history of Greenland and its current status.
Fun quiz by Crystal to check whether your job is right for you. (Just keep the results to yourself...)
I'm home this New Year's Eve, so these are my homemade, mutant, 'oliebollen'.
Happy New Year!
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10 years ago: Apps are going to revolutionize health care and research. Apps are going to collect all your data. Get used to apps because they're the future of everything and you can't fight it
5 years ago: Blockchain is going to revolutionize health care and research. Blockchain will contain all your data. Get used to blockchain because it's the future of everything and you can't fight it
Now: Generative AI is going to revolutionize health care and research. Generative AI will—
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Aparupa Dey catching bird catching fish.
I love how she's immersed in the water herself with her camera.
#Photography #wildlife #India #AparupaDey
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I felt bad about not using redundancy features in what I'm running online. Well, only a little bit bad, I'm only a single person doing unimportant stuff. But apparently major corporations are also not running redundancy either, so I feel a bit better.
What is worrying about the AWS outage in New York however, is that it seems to have affected critical things in EU and UK as well. And wordle.
#AWSOutage
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youtu.be/M1QvVnjiegE?si=_WvT8r…
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youtu.be/yl7CqKggMYo?si=vEPjLZ…
#Photography
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#EindhovenMarathon
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I love the photos from this shoot. The styling is out of this world.
A portrait of Lian from our 2021 shoot.
#portrait #photography #portretfotografie #fotograaf #fotograafgezocht #portretfotograaf #baarn #utrecht #fotografie #captureone
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#JoséphineJobert #SaintPierre
She brings such a strong physicality to her roles that goes beyond the beauty actresses are often selected for.
#JoséphineJobert
IMDb: Joséphine Jobert
Doobydobap does London and it's an amazing multicultural food experience. She finds all the special places. What I would like to know from people that know London, did she cover some foodie experiences that you didn't know yet?
youtu.be/nXeFDt1_Ud0?si=B9-mn5…
#Doobydobap #London #Food
![FANGORIA [Unofficial]](avatar/db2/bb1b337266b83322b70b1e7d800c-80.webp?ts=1780871269)
Dafne Keen & Sophie Nélisse’s WHISTLE Sets Release Date With New Poster
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Taneb
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Simon Tatham
in reply to Taneb • • •Rotan
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Orjan
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Hugo Mills
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •I'm a fan of the variant of "need a run-up", where you don't know what you're doing, but want to make sure that when you have to redo it, you redo the working steps the same way.
The best way of doing this is to write down the steps. In a script. So when you do get it working, you have most of your automation already written.
Krahabors
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Soul
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Paul Moore
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •bit101
in reply to Paul Moore • • •Simon Tatham
in reply to bit101 • • •bit101
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Andrew Jeffery
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •I've ended up putting together a shell script that maintains markdown checklists and records executions and artefacts in a git repo. It allows me to hone messy processes over time to the point where they can largely be automated, while still documenting the necessary steps where reliable automation hasn't yet been achieved. It gives me a lot of comfort
github.com/amboar/checklists
GitHub - amboar/checklists
GitHubDarkRat
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •[puts together an automation after having to do it 30 times]
[never have to use it again]
geraldew
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •from the mix of these things is why I have my own tool for handling hundreds (if not thousands) of SQL scripts that I've been tinkering with for over 20 years.
Which means I can add an extra item to the list:
- having built a tool for doing some amount of the automation occurring in my work, gives me a head start each time a new need for automation becomes apparent.
I occasionally shock myself at how early that became true, seeing innovative components dated 2005 or so.
Sophie of Ratsnake Games
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •StoneBear 🎃 :potion_genderqueer:
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •bit101
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •20 GOTO 10
Henryk Plötz
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •(Somewhat after xkcd.com/974/)
Is It Worth the Time?
xkcd🇨🇦
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •christian mock
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Jeff Grigg
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •"ONE-OFF, BUT BOSS"
"This is a one-off, so I do it manually."
…
But somehow The Boss ends up with it.
[Boss] "Somebody said they changed something. Run that report again, to see if anything changed." (And then again, and again, and again, … Always In A Bug Rush, of course.)
😱
😢
Ray McCarthy
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •I've been called in to automate this, but while they produce the stuff, there is no documentation. Each person only knows their own bit.
I'll decline to bid as I might never discover how they do it. Their totally manual system at least works.
Richard Rathe
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •This from Larry Wall (of Perl fame) seems relevant...
The Three Virtues
[Paraphrased]1) #Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure.
2) #Impatience - Because you are impatient, you will build systems and shortcuts for your daily work.
3) #Hubris - You have the confidence that you can do better than the status quo.
#LarryWall #Perl #TheThreeVirtues
Blackoverflow
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •FAILURE WAITING TO HAPPEN: "l write down what (I think) needs to be done beforehand and delegate the liability for the manual execution to some support team."
ACCOUNTABLE: "I do this by hand and write down what steps I had to do.
This way, I won't have to reinvent this if it needs to be done again or if it will be automated.
Furthermore, others can learn from it or point out errors.
I am aware that these steps are not guaranteed to work in two months time, because things change."
TheConstructor (he/him)
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Simon Tatham
in reply to TheConstructor (he/him) • • •@TheConstructor yes, I love GUI programs that show you the underlying CLI commands the GUI actions translate into! I've used a couple as well. When I joined my current employer they used a bug tracker based on a database, whose Windows client was able to show its log of SQL commands in an extra pane. And their current flagship GUI debugger has a command-line mode too and a log window showing the CLI equivalent of each GUI action you take.
They are twice as much work to write, of course. But it's worth it.
Paul
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Lise Andreasen
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Steveg58
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •I've done this new thing once by hand and recorded what I have done. If I need to do it again I won't have to reinvent the wheel and, oh look, there are some step I can streamline there and maybe if I re-order these operations it will be even faster. And should I get run down by a bus, my replacement will be able to hit the ground running. Also if it seems like we will have to do this regularly I can swiftly automate away all the boring bits.
Poligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖
in reply to Simon Tatham • • •Trying to automate a task is actually a good way to verify that you understand it, and are capable of describing it in sufficient detail. If you can teach it to a computer, you can probably teach it to a person (and vice versa). If it can be taught—through instruction—is it not de facto automatable?
OTOH, if a task cannot be taught, then it almost certainly cannot be automated, either. It suggests that the "task" is, in fact, something categorically different, like maintenance or caretaking, which requires understanding the system, its dynamic environment, and their interactions.
Simon Tatham
in reply to Poligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖 • • •@8r3n7 I think that equivalence only works in a restricted domain. There are plenty of things it's easy to teach a human but hard to teach a computer, because you're relying on some skill the human already had which is the hard part. Like a task involving vision, or language.
(At least, that's true as long as you mean traditional computer software which is efficient, predictable, and easy to maintain and modify. LLMs complicate this picture.)
Going the other way, it's probably true that any task you can program a computer to do you can teach a human to _understand_. But doing it is another matter, because computers are immune to boredom and humans aren't!