selja@hepta

part 1

okay, fuck, so you know barcodes, right? you might think that there's just such a thing as barcodes, and that the code you see on the bottom of your nintendo switch and the code that a library book might have are the same type of barcode as the one that they beep at the cash register. but actually there's, like, a whole bunch of different barcode symbologies?

like i trust you to know that qr codes and datamatrix and aztec codes are different things, right? they're all 2d barcodes but they're different, they have different features. but like, you can tell that those are different by looking at them. there's no way in hell that a layperson can tell at a glance what symbology a barcode is. i could probably guess if something's, like, code 128, and as far as i can tell the ean symbology is very rarely used outside retail products, but it takes some work to get there.

anyway, that's just something that i'm thinking about a lot. just earlier i got a barcode reader and mercifully it frees me from having to consider these kinds of issues by simply supporting not only ean and gs1 databar and 2 of 5 codes and code 128 but also, like, qr codes, and datamatrix, and aztec codes, and even pdf417 if you're a pervert. so i can just scan barcodes, now! i've immediately set out to use this newfound power to catalogue objects i have.

primarily... i need to haul some stuff from place a to place b, and some of that stuff is like books or cds, so i can just scan them up and put them in a file and then fill in the data later by searching the ean online.

well, that plan was good except it turns out there's not really an ean search api that doesn't cost money or something, and there's no big free ean database. but it does turn out that a lot of eans are discoverable just by searching them online... so i wrote a little janky python script that takes eans, searches the internet for them, and then asks you to type in the required info fields based on the results of that search. and it works p well it seems! so i've started making a little ean database for myself.

but that's it for barcodes.

part 2

i said that i watched bocchi the rock, right? last time? well, i did, and since then i've been thinking a bunch about bocchi music. i ordered those cds, and got them, and have listened to them. most recently a friend happened to just mention the song "if i could be a constellation" and it's, well, basically been stuck in my head since then. that pre-chorus bit is great, and also i choose to believe that it's a bokita song as people on the internet keep telling me. (i also choose to believe that that bit where kita talks about supporting her means they're going to get married.)

more recently (ignoring the bit where im obsessing over bocchi music even as i write this) i've been getting into... the smiling broadly album that released about the same time i put out that previous blog post. it's, well, god. okay so the reason listening to "mysterious bond" makes me feel kind of vaguely unreal is probably not normal but i love that this is a song that exists? listen to that whole album. it's an experience.

uuh. and uh. other than that it's been much the same as i've mentioned before. my music taste hasn't been changing that much this year but i've gotten into a bunch of artists and/or actually finally bought albums by artists i like a bunch (like poets of the fall) so that i can listen to them.

part 3

it's the end of the year. there's some stuff i've promised in this blog that honestly i'm never gonna get around to, which is fine.

like, i don't remember if i mentioned that i'm thinking of making a second blog that's for a slightly different audience than this one. like, one where i can put techier writeups and then link to those from somewhere normal people are expected to see it. if i end up ever making those python posts that i teased like... at the beginning of the year? then i'm probably gonna put them there. i do have takes on type-annotating python, and i'm still doing it to all the code i rework. but, like, idk if it fits the vibe here to go into detail. i've also been thinking of an extremely basic html tutorial for people who just want to get something visible on screen, maybe with a copypasteable example stylesheet to go with it and instructions on going hog wild after that.

but like, also, i think that i'm just not gonna update this blog regularly. shocker, i know, after failing to update this blog regularly in any month past the one i started it in. i still keep thinking about it - i even keep it open in a tab - but i just... don't get around to writing posts, i guess. i had a great idea for this one, though, and it felt appropriate to cap off the year, sort of.

anyway

we'll see if i have more things to say after the move, i guess!

extra meta

this website has been suffering from certificate expiration issues since forever ago and, just like a couple hours ago, i figured that this is likely because i failed to configure the hook that actually tells the webserver to use the new certificate after certbot fetches it. i caught this expiration fairly quickly and in the future it should just work, at least judging by dryrun logs. let's hope

mwah

see you in 2025?