I’ve been pretty busy lately, and although reading doesn’t stop, my writing sometimes takes a hiatus.

NOTE: The themes are varied, and some links below are affiliate links. Data engineering, adtech, history, apple. Expect a similar wide range in the future as well. You can check all my weekly readings by checking the tag here . You can also get these as a weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Photo by Benjamin Wong on Unsplash

The Launch

And it’s not about a technology product.

How I practice at what I do

Working on improvement is a full time job, that you usually need to take during your free time.

The Good Employee, a story about how you can explain modern companies with graph theory

This was a weird read. But now I wonder if I can use Prim’s algorithm to improve my decision making?

The Washington Post is preparing for post-cookie ad targeting

The cookiepocalypse is coming, and if you work in adtech you should be thinking about it.

Dry Stone Walls – Principles of structurally sound construction

Around my hometown (L’Arboç) there’s an abundance of dry stone wall huts, presumedly from around 18th century. Now I know how to build one.

Book Review: Impro by Keith Johnstone

You may be aware that I read anything that can improve me in any way. So, Impro is now on my currently reading.

Introducing Dagster

Anything that is not Airflow is a win on my book, but I’m not super-thrilled about how Dagster works either.

Here Dragons Abound: Iskloft Mountain Style

I have always loved maps and map-drawing, so how to draw fantasy maps is an interesting enough subject on its own.

Why Category Theory Matters

I’m ramping up my category theory knowledge lately (and spreading through to sheaves and maybe schemes).

Roger Federer as Religious Experience

We’ll miss him (and Rafa Nadal, and Novak Djokovic) when he retires.

Did Functional Programming get it wrong? - Noteworthy

I’ve been thinking about “spreadsheets” as in “data and code mixed” lately, specially in terms of category theory, so this post was... close to mind-reading.

If you’re playing EVE online you basically already have an MBA

I’ve never been drawn to that game, but given the amount of hours some people give it, it makes total sense.

Haskell - An Experience Summary

As part of my categorification, I’m back again at learning Haskell (using Haskell Programming from First Principles). So I’m reading anything reasonably non-technical about Haskell.

'These kids are ticking time bombs' -- The threat of youth basketball

The amount of bone and tissue stress a young basketball player has gone through is astonishing.

‘I don’t see jeans in my future’: the people who wear complete historical dress – every day

I like that 30s look. I even have a similar hat.

Preserving Laptop Stickers on MacBooks - Graham Stevens

Seems too late for my batch of stickers, but I always pick 2 of a kind if possible, now I’m thinking where should I show the duplicates.

For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America’s Favourite Pastimes

Watching things explode has always been fun?

Pearls Before Breakfast

Would you recognize genius if it was in front of you?

📚 Finite and Infinite Games

I’ve seen many people recommend this book... And I didn’t get it. It was interesting, but not so much as I expected.

🎥 Approaching the Yoneda Lemma

Some ways of seeing the Yoneda lemma. I’m still trying to wrap my head categorically, without forgetting anything. I want to be free.

Newsletter?

These weekly posts are also available as a newsletter. These days (since RSS went into limbo) most of my regular information comes from several newsletters I’m subscribed to, instead of me going directly to a blog. If this is also your case, subscribe by clicking here.

NOTE: The themes are varied, and some links below are affiliate links. Functional programming, adtech, history. Expect a similar wide range in the future as well. You can check all my weekly readings by checking the tag here . You can also get these as a weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Photo by Mgg Vitchakorn on Unsplash

Ancient Chinese Buildings Are Held Together With Rice

As everyone who has prepared sticky rice and forgotten to clean the pan quickly knows.

'I'd Have These Extremely Graphic Dreams': What It's Like To Work On Ultra-Violent Games

Fatality burnout.

The Artistry of China’s Ivory Puzzle Balls

I’ve seen one from really close and they are amazing

Bristol academic cracks Voynich code

There was a rebuttal of this approach close to 2 years ago, but it still sounds interesting. Also, I’d expect phys.org to be somewhat trustable.

Technical Debt? Probably not.

Pay it off. Or not.

Scala's Future.successful: Do Not Block Your Future Success

Beware the future!

The Functional Scala Concurrency Challenge

Some of the solutions look neat, and there is something to be learnt in the diversity.

Technical overview of ads viewability measurement methods

I have always been interested into how ad viewability (if an ad is seen by a user or not) works. Now I know.

GraalVM installation and setup on macOS

GraalVM is a new Java runtime and compiler, which is somewhat faster than the normal JDK, and offers some really fancy cross-language options. I had been using RC9 or 10. It was time to update. I usually use Enterprise Edition for anything local, but can switch per-terminal with several aliases I have (j8, j11, jgree and jgrce) in case something breaks or I want to try another.

Caire - a content aware image resize library

Seam carving is so cool. I wrote a cropping system once, using PILs Haar cascade based object detection. It works pretty well for automated creation of ads, but seam carving is way better for almost all other cases.

🎥 Flare - Optimizing Apache Spark for Scale-Up Architectures and Medium-Size Data

I’m scared this will become a closed source, or business-on-top. Code is not available, but results are awesome. Luckily, the papers are (why the code is not as part of the papers is another question).

🎥 helm-edit

I had used multiple-cursors (and expand-region) in emacs many times, although I had a hard time making it work properly in spacemacs for a while. helm-edit works better already in spacemacs, so, big win!

🎥 Understanding Query Plans and Spark UIs

I knew everything in this video already, but it covers lots. Give it a look.

🎥 What the ƒ is a monad

Although focused on Java, it’s very well explained for any language. Of course, if you have do syntax or for comprehensions, better.

📚 The Great Mental Models

The audiobook by Shane Parrish, of FS Blog. It was good, but I expected something longer.

📚 The art of thinking in systems

If you have read Donna Meadows Thinking in Systems, this won’t give you anything new. And I’d rather recommend TiS.

Newsletter?

These weekly posts are also available as a newsletter. These days (since RSS went into limbo) most of my regular information comes from several newsletters I’m subscribed to, instead of me going directly to a blog. If this is also your case, subscribe by clicking here.