Coding Blocks - When to Log Out

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Well, this is awkward. Coding Blocks is signing out for now, in this episode we’ll talk about what’s happening and why. We have had an amazing run, far better than we ever expected. Also, Joe recommends 50 games, Allen goes for the gold, and Outlaw is totally normal. (And we’re not crying you’re crying!) Thank […]

All right. You ready, Outlaw? All right. You're listening to Coding Blocks, episode 242. Everything's the same. Subscribe to us. Listen, you'll catch a bunch of new episodes coming up. Leave us a review if you haven't already.

Visit us at codingblocks.net. Show notes, examples, discussion more. Join in the conversation. Very lively crowd. All right. I'm Joe Zach. I'm Alan Underwood. You're not going to say this in your feedback questions and rants to

comments at Coding Blocks or hang out on the Slack. I don't know if you've heard we have Slack. You can go to codingblocks.net comments at Coding Blocks, or hang out on the Slack. I don't know if you've heard we have Slack. Oh, man, you're making it weird. You're making it weird. You can go to codingblocks.net slash Slack and join there. And with that, and I'm Michael Outlaw.

All right. Well, we've got some special news today, which we're going to get to in a little bit. But first, I want to say a big thank you to the reviews. Outlaw, you want to give them a read? All right. here we go from itunes spiral jacobs ivan kuchen abu cross seven oh maybe okay and ste Stefano Colinelli. Not bad.

Did I? Okay. You know, from American. That's pretty good, right? It was bad. Pretty good. And then Column Fairy. Hey, so question.

Where did you get the iTunes ones? Because Chartable is shutting down. Right. Yeah. But I did get them from Chartable. Like, fortunately, they're still around long enough to get that but yeah this is awkward um but yeah you'll notice it like there were there were a couple of names in there you've heard more than once so thank you very much we we do appreciate it and we appreciate these reviews and also every review we've ever gotten really fantastic yep what's this thing down here oh so i just just a real quick aside so okay so there's all the different ai things out there right like tools

that you can like integrate in with your your various ids and whatnot yeah yeah co-pilot's another example that's the microsoft one have you noticed though that so uh google has gemini but the way it's spelled i'm like oh is that just coincidence that it's spelled like g mini oh wow i never noticed that that makes a lot more sense it's kind of like a little pocket-sized google it's pretty cool interesting yeah i can't like once i saw it i'm like well i can'tsee it now. That's a really good name for it. On that line of the chat or the AI things, I mentioned Cloud. And I do like it, but man, it doesn't give you much that you can actually interact. So you remember back in the day when chat GPT would give you like very few tokens or whatever to actually do

claude like cut you off after not much interaction and it's like okay well i guess i'm either gonna pay or i'm gonna go to one of the other 50 that are available right now so that kind of made me sad before somebody writes down writes in i do realize there's a gemini astrological sign that spelled the same way but i mean kind of made me wonder, is that why they picked that? How did they come up with that? Because it definitely does work. I assume so. So Gemini, the symbol is twins.

I think the constellation has something to do with twins. So the star and even the Gemini capsule, the spacecraft, was a two-man person. So yeah mean that's really cool that's a good all-around this might be the best name come out of google since well it's getting better by the way it wasn't so great in the beginning it's getting better so they'll kill it next year that's right don't get too attached gmail is the only thing that has survived so far maybe Maybe that and calendar. And that's how I sell all this NVIDIA stock, please.

Right. Cool. Yeah, right. All right. So what are we talking about tonight? I got my show notes ready. Let's do this. Networking and GKE.

Sorry. We missed a couple episodes. Sorry about that. we just had a lot of stuff going on but uh alan oh you oh you're gonna throw me all right that's great yeah so so the three of us got talking about it and really really kind of what what we're talking about is i think this is going to be our last episode for a little while and a little while being undefined. Don't really know what that means exactly. Wait a minute. I prepared all these notes for nothing. Yeah, you did. You did. So I guess the big question people are going to be like, well, why, why, why are you stopping? And, and I think, I mean, I can speak for myself, just life. Like there's, there's so much going on between, between work. I've got three

young kids, you know, there there's constantly stuff going on. And again, like work, work takes up a lot of our time, more than, more than what we'd probably like to admit. And I don't know, it's just, we've almost felt like we've been doing a bit of a disservice lately, especially because we've had more of the water cooler talks because we just hadn't had time to prepare, like, you know, going through a book and reading and taking the notes and, and, you know, getting that kind of stuff down. And so, you know, rather than stressing about trying to get together on, you know, whatever night and then it getting pushed back because all three of us have

things going on, you know, we figured we'd take a break and, you know, whatever night and then it getting pushed back because all three of us have things going on, you know, we figured we'd take a break and, you know, just, uh, let life take over for a little bit. At least that was my perspective. Yeah. I got, uh, I got one too. So, you know, roughly like when, when kind of COVID set in, like a bunch of things changed and like all our lives. And so, uh, around that time, like I started getting more into kind of DevOps stuff, which makes it kind of hard to talk about like code oriented stuff that the podcast started with. And so, you know, I can talk your ear off about YAML, but, you know, it's not not super, super simple, super exciting subject to talk about with programmers. You know, it's just I feel like I'm kind of missing some of that there. And also we started working for a large company, which just kind of changes things. You know, the things that you spend time on can sometimes get more narrow.

You know, you're not covering as much ground, like you're kind of in an area and you kind of specialize. And so, you know, it's been hard to really kind of keep like a good wide vision on what's going on in the programming world and then in the meantime kind of part of partly to do with covid and partly just all sorts of other reasons but i've really taken a huge step back on social media in general so if you remember like if you've been with us for a while uh i used to be kind of like the social butterfly you know like i was on twitter i was on reddit i was on hacker news like all the time. I've taken a huge step back on all of those. I've deleted accounts. I've kind of marked others as inactive.

And I've kept a couple around just, you know, basically to be kind of contactable. But, you know, between kind of personal reasons, like I don't think it's very good for me. And I think the way I can interact with or have interacted with social media before has been kind of unhealthy. Nothing extreme, but just, you know, I'm not very good at it, I think. And I don't like what a lot of the social media companies are doing and the way they kind of, well, basically what feeds those companies is not something I want to be a part of, really. So, you know, that's been hard to have.

It was kind of like a social media company, you know. We put out podcasts. We have a website. We've got a Slack. We've got Twitter. we've got twitter we've got linkedin we've got all this stuff and i'm trying to avoid most of those things you know it's uh that's tough and also just you know with kind of life changes and you know moving stuff like that i moved back to georgia and it's been just hard for me to kind of keep up with things that things that i love too like the game jam i missed the game jam earlier this year that's like one of my favorite things like in the world in life

i've been even really bad about keeping up with slack which is a shame you know i hate that i really enjoy the time i do spend there but it just it's been hard for me to kind of to get into that uh the headspace and kind of keep up with it, which is, you know, a big shame. So like Alan kind of mentioned, like, I do feel like I've been doing a big disservice to the community. Like I'm not able to really bring the kind of content that I want to bring to bear,

uh, on the show. And I haven't been keeping up on the social society, social society either. So it just feels bad. And, uh, so yeah,

I, uh, I think, uh, you know, an indefinite break is a good thing. Hello. Well, this is awkward.

Let's see. So I put together all those show notes. Sorry. I didn't know we were doing this tonight. Oh, surprise. Oops. Yeah. I mean,

what is there left to say that hasn't already been said, right? Like, you know, yeah. I mean, I will say it like this. So September of this year marked our 11th year of doing this. So just over 11 years. And I don't know that we ever intended that it would go on this long. Like, you know, it, uh, yeah, I, I mean, I, I don't know. I'm at a loss for words. I, I, I, I'm humbled that it did. It did last that long. All the positive feedback that we got from people around the world over the years. You know, it was, it was a lot of encouragement, but there is like a huge time factor

that, you know, there were parts, parts of that production process that definitely got sped up over the years where, you know, like, you you know you get better at doing something or like you know i had a billion scripts to like oh just you know run this and all of a sudden i've got you know things laid out uh from my editing perspective kind of thing right so you know some some things got fast and some didn't but the point is like you know even as fastest it's still there was still like a time drain to where, uh, you know, for the longest time, it was like every Sunday of my life, like my family knew like, okay, well, you know, dad's off, you know, editing or something, you know? And yeah, I mean, I, I don't know that we intended for it to go that long.

I don't know. Not that we didn't intend for it to not go that long either. So it's weird to say it like that, but, um, you know, it will be nice to just like, okay,

here's something here. Let me, let me say it like this. This does not, this is a thing that did not exist when we started this show yeah true you ready for it yeah ready for it ready seasons there's now podcast seasons had we known that we could have started season one 11 years ago taking the summer off come back for season two and we would have been well rested every season

but no we just go solid straight through every year for 11 years and we're like man i'm kind of tired can we take a break right so yeah i mean like that's funny you say that it's true though no i mean they recognized something right they some podcast companies out there recognize that it's not sustainable to to keep pushing like that honestly i think it i think it happened i i blame cereal do you remember like season one of cereal which that one made sense because like you know they were telling a very like bookended story you know and at least for that point in time, uh, you know, there was only but so much of that story they could tell. Right. Um, and then like somehow that became like, everybody was like, Oh yeah. From a marketing point of view, this makes all the sense in the

world. Oh, whatever. So now we're on like season 32. Right. Right. I mean, some of the things you said though, outlaw, like I actually want to touch on, I, I, I also am very humbled and seriously, I mean, again, we didn't, I don't think any of us really knew what we were going to, where it was going to wind up or anything, right? Like we just, we were three guys standing around having conversations constantly. And so we were like, Hey, let's create the podcast. And it's been fun. And we've met a lot of awesome people and we've learned a ton. Like I know the outlaw, that was one of his biggest things that he always said was, you know, this is a way to, to make myself force myself to learn things as, as I go through. Right. And we've done that and it's been amazing and we've gotten great feedback and, and we say, we've said it every episode, you know, thank you for the reviews.

Thank you for the people that have written us emails. Like we seriously have gotten some really heartfelt touching letters and, and reviews some, some letters that we haven't shared over the years, right. Cause they were sent to us privately. And it's amazing to know that, that we've actually had the opportunity. Us three dudes have had the opportunity to touch people's lives and help change people's lives, right? Like we we've heard people say that they were able to switch careers and they were able to get in there with confidence because of the things they've learned and, you know, and, and because of the community and the camaraderie, like I'd say one of my favorite things that we get all the time is people feel like when they're listening to what we've put out there, like they're just sitting around talking to friends. Right. And that's, that's what this is. And, and that's

amazing because that's what we wanted. And so, you know, I too am very humbled and appreciative of all the people who have spent all the time chatting with us, listening to us, emailing us, writing us, whatever it's, it's been, writing us, whatever. It's been amazing. Yeah, for sure. I'm not going to list the individuals. I mean, it's too many, which is a good spot to be in. That's a good problem to have. But I did want to do a couple of special shout outs for the admins in the Slack, which have

been amazing. Everyone in the Slack really has been fantastic. Other content creators, we've been on other podcasts. We've had people on. Everyone that left a review, of course, or comment, email. There's been a lot of ways to participate. We did some streaming at some point and it linked us in. Some mail of us.

We've gotten some cool stuff in the mail. We've met some people in meet space. We had virtual happy hours going on there kind of in the the heart of covid i think they still the link's still up um you know of course the game jams is something that's very near and dear to my heart remember qit uh several people that was super cool there was even time early on when we had a brief dungeons and dragons game going on kind of by email or via, you know, a digital basically. All just super cool.

And yeah, you know, it's hard to even take a step back on, but I just think it's that time. So speaking of the Slack. Yeah. So yeah, what's going to happen to the Slack was one of the questions that we thought that might come up. And I think there's no reason for anything to happen to it. I mean, I think we're going to leave it there. And, you know, the admins have been doing a great job and hopefully we'll bounce in there a little bit more, you know, as time allows and all that.

But I mean, it's been an incredible community that was created. Like, I guess we, we started the fire and, and people have kept it going and it's been, it's been a pretty awesome place. So I think, I think there's no reason for anything to change there. Yeah. And it's a, it's been a really cool spot for some people to kind of get together and meet. And now these, a lot of these people are, are, I've kind are have kind of been uh you know digital friends at least for years and years and years and years and years and so but we definitely want to still kind of have that space there and everything and not change it um so yeah and we're just gonna just gonna leave it open i guess we'd leave the the link to it open too yeah why not yeah yeah so what's going to happen to the podcast as is right like the uh

241 other episodes that are probably going to be more more interesting or more more content uh appropriate than this one how dare you sir you have not heard the tips of the week yet we have it we have not and we actually are going to do those even on the closing episode here so yeah i mean this one might be the most downloaded one ever all right but yeah we're we plan on keeping that up there right we've got a little bit of money in the bank for that and so yeah we're going to keep have paying for the hosting to where that podcast stays alive mean, who knows how long, I don't know. Um, but it'll be up there for, for a long foreseeable future. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, um, yeah, I mean, other than that, I just, it's a lot of thank yous and I feel really bad and really guilty for, for not being more

present, uh, you know, in the, on the social aspects and stuff. And so thank you to everyone who's been patient with me on that and everything else. I require a lot of patience. I've learned. I think we all do. You know, it's one thing I've heard is all you need is patience. Oh,

just a little, just a little patience. I mean, you'll sing it. You really want to hear that? I don't think we want to hear that. You're going to whistle it? Whistle it.

Whistle it. Here's the whistle part. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Like Jay-Z said, it would be impossible to thank everybody. But we're going to start. Starting with the A's.

Starting with the A's. This is going to be like a high school graduation now. Everybody just sit around for three hours. Your butt will be hurting by the end of this. But in all seriousness there there are several of you and you know exactly who you are that we've we've truly appreciated and loved all the interaction all the tips of the weeks that you said you know everything that you know helping us with our audio when when we first started out like there have been so many people along the way that have contributed either with a smile or, or actually doing something or sending a tip of the week or just, you know,

saying hi or whatever, like it's, it's truly been awesome. So just the problems too, like the amount of people who said like, Hey, I think this was wrong or you know it's really helpful because we were able to kind of like retcon that on the show and also just people in the slack who said hey i don't think this is right i think this is a spammer or um you know there's a problem with the website or whatever like we haven't always been uh good at fixing those problems but uh we appreciate it and you know we really appreciate you investing your time in us i mean we have at least two nines of availability on our website.

So we probably really do. It has to be down. 9.9. It's pretty good. Yeah. I didn't say where to put the decimal. Yeah. Right.

Point nine, nine could be actually when it was hosted at my house, it probably was. Oh, it probably was early days. Talk about the early days of it. Yeah. Like that, that was a little bit, have we ever talked about that?

Like there was like literally a server in Alan's office, like sitting next to him, just fans like Blair. That's what he would have to listen to. He had to have a conversation with him in lunch. How you doing? Like, you don't have to yell at me. I got to talk over the server.

It's not totally exaggerated. Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. Internet outages would like take our site down. And it was like, oh, I can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. Internet outages would like take our site down and it was like, Oh, I can't do anything about it. Yeah.

That's a, that's rough business class, right? Business class internet. Thanks. Uh, Comcast at the time. Um,

so yeah. And then the question, are we ever going to come back? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. All right. Still, we we still got that we still got all the info we got money so it's

time to keep it going forever so who knows maybe we'll be back for a holiday special you know maybe it'll be uh super good maybe be terrible but i don't know you know keep an eye on the feed if you feel inclined and if you want to you know trash it and come find me and kick me in the shins you know that's fine too okay i'm gonna'm going to call it now. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to do a star Wars special, you know, Christmas special. And just like the star Wars Christmas special back from the eighties,

it'll be a complete flop. And then be like, well, yes, we won't bother with that. And then it'd be like, you know, 20,

30 years later before the, you know, the series gets picked back up. Well, we could always do a season two, right. And just do one or two. We're coming back for season two.

Every season is 11 years. How many more of those we got in us? You're 21. So we're good. Plenty. I'd see you guys. I worry about. Right. That's awesome. So are we gonna do another uh game thing here oh depends on who won last time i assumed that we were going to

now i'll let you guys decide otherwise i've got i i'm at the ready okay so a different request this time i'm not gonna let either outlaw or jay-z yeah just fine okay oh sorry is that not what you're so so in all honesty if if you know if you want to say goodbye to us you know drop us a a buy and thank you for for the time that would be amazing we would love to see that so you know it doesn't have to be a full long review unless you want to do that. You know, you can have chat GPT, write you up a real nice thing for us and then, and then drop it in there. But any which way the, the link for the review is still there. So yeah, if you feel inclined to do so, we would still love to see it. Yeah. So if you want to, if you want to just uh, just say, thank you. That's a three star. If you want to tell us like how we helped you in your career, that's a one star.

If you, if you now, now here's the, here's how you leave the five star. You tell us a story about how we were wrong and, and like, or, or better yet here, better yet you tell us how your, your, your friends and coworkers got tired of hearing you talk about us. Tell that story. That's a five star. Yeah, there you go. That's amazing. I think, you know, it would be really funny if everyone said that the mistakes that they were writing in with, of which there have been many,

it'd be really funny if y'all said that it was Outlaw who made the mistake. I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Don't do that. It would be really mean. Don't do that. Don't do that. It would be really mean. Don't do that. It was anxiety level. Just shot through the roof.

Why, why, why? So, Hey, if we're doing mental blocks here, it would be amazing for me to go out on a win. Like that,

that would just be, that's never going to happen though. Cause I don't think you're so far behind. Oh, it's real bad. It's real bad. And winter takes it all, though. I mean, hey.

That was yesterday. And according to Tseka's trademark rules of engagement, Joe goes first. Yeah, this is rough. So. All right. Choice, your categories are who came first. I'll give you three historical figures, and then you have to tell us which was born first. Okay.

Dr. Seuss and Espanol. And I'm going to warn you ahead of time. My Espanol might not be your Espanol. Okay. So I would have never guessed. I mean, I like to think I'm pretty good at it but reality might say otherwise spelling biz and each clue you'll oh well you're not oh yeah you're not gonna do that one because that's like uh you would have to see like the partial words and fill in the blank that's what

i want i figured i figured this is the one you should pick kurt russell films trees or lol those three letters will appear in each correct response um there's not many of those right uh i i want to know about this came first but also the lol so let's go with came first who came first okay that's a good one i like this one which one what's your uh if you don't know me by now he's five oh is it five is it five okay here are your historical figures tell me who was born first i was born one i said i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna give you three historical figures that was what i said at the start alex alex you're in now alexander the great attila the hun or gangas khan

uh i think it's i oh. I think it's, let me Google real quick. I think it's Alexander the great. That is correct. Okay. How'd he go in that role? Great. Well, I,

the reason why I love this one though is like the first, the 100 example was John Quincy Adams, JFK, John Bon Jovi. Oh, come on. ClearlyK, John Bon Jovi. Oh, come on. Clearly it's John Bon Jovi. Right, yes. All right, Alan, your categories are

The French Horn, Sisterhoods, Words That Make Dogs Go Nuts, The Mount Rushmore of dot, dot, dot. Where art thou? And lastly, yep, it's a porta potty. I like that one. Let's go that for five. Okay.

Man. Right away with the proper. Dogs go nuts too, man. Geez. I know. I thought about that. That's the answer. I have done one. Right away with the proper names. The dogs get nuts too, man. I thought about that. That's the answer. I know it already. Based in someplace in Wisconsin. Euclair?

Does that sound familiar? I can't see it. I don't know. EA. This isn't a real place. Hold on. Hold on on don't start you 11 years we know where i'm at with proper nouns this hasn't gotten any better even though you can be like that's geography whatever i i've seriously never heard of this place but uh yeah something claire wisconsin all. I put it in the chat. You can see for yourself.

Based in there, this porta potty company shares its name with the target where a skydiver lands. So repeat that one more time. Based in that place. Yes. This port. i said no i said i don't know i'm just kidding i didn't is it really you that's what i would imagine what the i would have thought oh looks french to me how would you say oh claire oh claire claire what'd you say i give up what'd you say jizzy oh claire oh claire yeah either oh or you so i said like oh claire the southern georgia way all right yes repeat repeat okay based in this place this port-a-body company shares its name with the target where skydiver lands what is drop zone oh my god i can't believe you got that no way no way get some oh wow

that's really funny for lots of reasons. That's right. What a great name. Jay-Z, your categories are? Gemini has been displaced. Job zone. Greatest name? Greatest name. All right. Your categories are the one and only.

Name that 90s hit. Important dates in U S history, three word summaries of three word films, 50% off in quotes, the word office in quotes or train stations, train stations. Well, it's the only person who hasn't a saying today. Let's go with a nineties hits. There we go. Name that nineties hits.

Okay. And for how much five, I, man, I'm not, I'm not going to assume. All right. Biggie smalls.

It was all a dream. I used to read Word Up Magazine, Salt-N-Pepa, and Heavy D up in the limousine. What's the question? What's the name of the song? What's the name of the song? Oh, geez. Name that 90s hit. That was literally the name of the category.

Can't You see hypnotize? No. That is incorrect. Dang it. It's Big Papa. That is also incorrect. What was it? The correct answer we were looking for is juicy.

If you just looked at the back of my pants, you would have known the answer is juicy. I didn't know. It's written right there. I totally forgot that. Like, there's this whole world of 90s. Like, if it's country or hip hop, I just don't know. Although, I will say, side note, if you've ever seen, like, videos of Biggie Smalls, like, freestyling, like, he used to do battles and stuff. Is he good?

Yeah, man. stuff is he good yeah man i can't i like you couldn't hand me the piece of paper that had it and get me to like say it as quick and as like you know easy to understand and he was just spins off the top of his head it's crazy it's almost like he should have like been a big deal right he should be famous that dude should be yeah for real right yeah yeah like old old school eminem freestyle i used to listen to that too yeah there are there are a lot of like rappers like that that were just really good ludicrous like you know when they were first making their name and you would hear them like just randomly on the radio freestyle all right so alan you get your choice of 15 topics right here they are again.

Let's do the dog. No, you already know. You already know. Let's do the dog one. Well, that's not fun. And we're going to go for three on that one. Which one was the dog one? Uh, where does it make the dogs go nuts? Oh yeah. Only three. This is why I get in trouble. If I, if I ask, you're like five no i'm always all over the place he's always five he's always all in i never win so i have to try and get an advantage somewhere all right it's the p in the automotive acronym prndl huh what say it again it's the p in the automotive acronym park indl park park is the correct answer prndl wow okay PR and DL. Wow. Okay. All right. Just doing some math here. All right. So

final round, final, final round. Then we're done. Done. We're about to be done. Hold on. Let me send my, let me send my thing. Okay. I, the category is iconic designers.

You guys remember you will, you will, right? Yep. Okay. I want to take mine back too late. Zero, zero. Actually, you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to wager until you hear the, I know it's too late. You guys, both of you already wagered.

We're into this now. I like where this is going. So that's what we're doing. Oh man. Don't tell me what we're supposed to do. I like where this is going. So that's what we're doing. Oh man. Don't tell me what we're supposed to do. I make up these rules as we go. That's right. All right.

This one's for all the peanuts too. Once married. Oh, now he knows what you're okay. Once married to a publishing heir who owned citrus groves, her brightly printed dresses were originally designed to hide juice stains you know this makes me mad why this makes me mad is joe somehow going to get this answer and that's really gonna bug me could you repeat the question one more time because it didn't make

any sense i don't know that's gonna help I know. Once married to a publishing heir who owned citrus groves, her brightly printed dresses were originally designed to hide juice stains. Oh, do you want the name of the person or the company? This is the iconic designer. So you're going to. I don't know their middle name.

Joe. Do I need their date of birth too? I'm kidding. I don't know anything. Maybe. I've seen some project runaway in my day. They make some silly outfits. I'll tell you that much.

Okay. I'm going to be so bad. You get this thing is, is I know both of your answers and I'm like, man, who do I go with first? So, so let's do it this way. Um, alphabetically alan you wagered eight points because you were at eight points and you said johnny apple seed and i don't know if you heard

the her it was her she could she could have had a name johnny and that was named johnny that's but you know in fairness yeah sure whatever okay i'll allow it um it is wrong though all so just missed it um all right so then jayZ, you said, he wagered five. Yes, of course. Very key there. Both of you went all in. Jay-Z wagered, or said, Coco Chanel. You ready for this? You ready for this?

I don't even know if they make clothes, honestly. That is also wrong oh sweet uh the correct answer is lily pulitzer yeah that was it that was my that was my take on it too um the pulitzer prize iconic quotes, maybe like it's a household. How can it be iconic if no one's heard of it? Well, no, no one,

at least in this context, I'd be like, I, my immediate response was like, is it pronounced like the price? Wow. Okay. I'm looking at the dresses online and they do look like they have juice spilled on them.

Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I think, uh, for the final, final, um, Jay-Z wins. What? The final, final. Yeah. How did I, I bet everything I lost. No, we tied. I'll take it. We tied at zero. Yeah. I i was trying to i was trying to help you out here man oh dang it dang it all right so uh yeah so you know whatever unrelated to the pulitzer prize by the way what's that unrelated unrelated to the prize oh yeah because the prize is related to the nuclear or like is it not the nuclear bomb

like the atom bomb oh i shouldn't say unrelated because she is related to the person after which the pulitzer prize is deemed really okay so it is like the it is pronounced like the prize but wasn't no i'm thinking the nobel peace prize was related to the bomb right right? Yes. Yeah, okay. I had the wrong prize in mind. Yeah. So Lily Pulitzer eloped in 1950 with Herbert Pulitzer, who was the grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, who was behind the Pulitzer Prize. Or it was after the Pulitzer Prize was named after him anyway.

I knew that. But see, I didn't. I wasn't part of it. I can't answer the questions, you know, and I can't compete with it because that wouldn't be fair. Yeah, I got to be impartial. Wow. Oh, she actually changed her name, but kept the label.

So later she changed it into Lillian McKim Russo. That was my second guess. Right, yeah. Yeah yeah it was right there yeah all right well so uh with that you know there's gonna be a bunch of links in the resources we like section of this episode and uh with that we head into alan's favorite portion of the show it's the tip of the week or tip of season one it's the tip of season one should we say it should we rebrand it the final tip of season one that's right it's definitely the tip of the week uh yeah all right well i've got a weird one that's uh somewhat somewhat inappropriate

and unrelated to programming so business as usual all. And my description of this thing is going to sound kind of weird, but I think you should check it out anyway. There is a game that just came out, a video game on consoles and PC called UFO 50. And what it is, is a collection of 50 games in one package and the idea behind it is that uh it's kind of a it's a collection of games for a system that never existed so you can imagine like there is a a nintendo or commodore 64 or a sega genesis or a you know some kind of older, like 80s, maybe early 90s video game console that never got released. And it had a bunch of games for it. And somebody kind of found it one day and dropped it on the Internet. And so literally you log in to the game and you've got a screen with like 50 cartridges there and you can click one and start playing.

And these kind of like retro games that kind of feel and kind of look a little bit like kind of what you might see in a game jam game. Like, I mean, straight up like 1980, 1985. In fact, the games even have published dates, fake published dates on them like 1985. And they have little histories. You can click it and be like, this game was written by Sarah Smith on her coffee breaks. And the games are a super wide variety some are like really arcadey like almost like uh like frogger you know jumping across the street and some are kind of more uh modern takes or at least almost like d makes or uh like a kind of retro version of a game that might be out now like a roguelite or something like a card collecting game, whatever.

But it's just such a weird thing to put out. And what it reminds me of is the experience that, you know, if you've never had this experience, I feel terrible for you. But you in the 80s or 90s, it's very limiting already. You go to a friend's house or a cousin's house or a relative's house or something and spend the night and they've got some console that you've never heard of or that you've only seen the magazines you know they've got that atari whatever the heck or that amiga something or just something that is not you're not familiar with and they've got this box of games

that they know and you don't and you get to just kind of explore and try it and say hey this one sounds cool or i like the picture on this one like pop it in see what happens and uh that's not an experience that's easy to replicate so it's it's such a weird package it really shouldn't work but it kind of does it is neat to just kind of say like i want to try something you know what here's another example. It runs these shareware disks. You get like a shareware disk from a friend or something. And this is again,

you know, going back. So this is for the old folks and for the people that never got to experience this. Now's your chance. You get to pop in a disk in your computer, have like 20 games on it that you've never heard of from people you'd never heard of. And then you have no clue really what the,

how to play whatever. And you just got to kind of toss it on and give it a shot and the surprising depth there like every every one of the games i've played like you could easily spend hours on to like truly kind of get it get to the end unlock the little thingies and uh just super cool so just for the people that are out there playing my favorites so far been kick club which is a game where you play as kind of representing soccer or football. And you are fighting against the other sports. So like the first world is like racket sports. There's like badminton balls and tennis balls and they're your enemies.

And the next world is like track and field. So there's like shoes flying around. And it's just like this weird kind of arcade-y game that you might have seen in an arcade in the 80s another one is avianos which is like a strategy game where you've got dinosaurs but you kind of like take an action feels like a board game and then you get to that action you get to kind of level up with that dinosaur and another one is mortel which is another super cool game you start the first level with 30 people and every person it's kind of like lemmings if you ever played that game but uh like each person has a different ability like you can use them in a different way and you're trying to get the end level so like maybe the first guy you sacrifice him to make a bridge that the second guy can

jump on and then you have the second guy turn into a bomb and blow up the barricade that the third guy can go through and so you're kind of working your way from left to right by sacrificing the people of your uh civilization it's just bizarre but every one of them is like cool and creative and weird so are are the is it 50 individually disconnected unrelated games or like are they related like they are masked as 50 games but like one is one level that is connected to another one some way like you need to complete all 50 of these to beat the overall game you know i'm saying i don't know uh there's no there's no real explanation you literally hit power and like it starts with this like picture of a guy open up like a storage you know kind of area and like almost like presumably like kind of

finding this console that has been lost to time that never got never kind of made it out of the garage whatever and there are some sequels and stuff so there's like a more tall two and there's some other things like um they're all supposedly made by this company called ufo soft this kind of fictional company and so sometimes there's reused assets or like mechanics or like characters but as far as i can tell there's not like a big overarching like secret conspiracy like it's just like finding a box of 50 shareware games but but i think what outlaw was asking is you can just go in and choose to play the first game or you can choose to play 50th game it doesn't there well i wasn't making the

distinction of like the order but no but they're separate games right they're connected though yeah just separate games right there are a kind of like 50 levels of one larger game but you're allowed to play the 50 in any order you want because it's wildly different as these like cartridges you know by default it sorts them by chronicle chronological chronological uh release date so it starts out in like i think 1981 or something and then by the time that it ends it's like 1995 i bet you they're hearing my idea and they're like dang it it's well it's it's kind of weird that they didn't have those kind of like meta you know like this kind of day and age you kind of expect to see some sort of subversion of expectations but i haven't found that yet now i will say there's

things like they'll give you like little challenges like get to level four and you'll unlock an item but the item that you get it goes to this little screen you can go look at where it's got like a little character walking around like a house and Oh, you unlocked a bird. So now there's a bird in the picture. So it's a very old school, like kind of thing you might've seen on a, you know,

an Amiga or a Commodore 64 game. I unlocked a jump rope. So sometimes they jump rope. I mean, that's it. That's it. As far as I can tell, like there might be some secret hidden depth that people will find after it's

been out for a while. But I think right now the internet, internet's just kind of like slowly exploring these games and it's interesting one thing i've found from other people that have played it is like you can ask them like what are your three favorites and they could be completely different from yours i don't think there's like any like super standouts like oh these are the best games of the 50 it seems like there's like different kinds of games for different kinds of people and it's interesting to just kind of see what you like and what clicks with you this this was made with game maker have you looked at that one yeah that's uh i looked at it a while back yeah yeah popular engine uh yeah uh so that's a popular kind of older engine and i think that

the guy who did it uh who kind of put this together derrick you who did uh spelunky uh one and two used to make flash games before that uh that's just the engine i believe that he's used before and likes it's not it's not the most hardcore i don't even know if you can do 3d with it you know compared to like a unity or unreal or anything i think it's uh its capabilities are basic uh it's got scripting and stuff so you know you presumably gotta go nuts with and do whatever you want but um yeah we talked about it in one episode in episode 173 sorry i didn't mean to cut you off but no no problem just because i think this guy's more of a kind of a game designer than a like a hardcore programmer although um splunky 2 in particular had some really cool like tech blogs about like how they figured out how to generate

procedural levels and then test them, kind of using artificial agents that would run to the level to make sure that it was even beatable because the levels were really kind of interesting and hard and they wanted to make sure that players could actually play them before they presented you with it and

give you something that you couldn't beat. Very cool. That is cool. I have a link. All right. So mine came out of something that I was messing with the other day. I was writing a little JavaScript application, I think, to munch data up and do all that kind of stuff that I've talked about in the

past that drives me crazy. And one thing that annoyed me is I had created these JavaScript objects and some of them had collections in them. Some had objects, some of them had, you know, string properties. And I was like, man, it'd be really nice if I had some IntelliSense inside visual studio code so that it would actually know what was in these things. And I know that you can do that with things like a TypeScript, right? Like it's built into the language. You build the thing and Visual Studio Code knows that, Hey, you have this type up here. And if you do a dot, it's going to tell you, Hey, this is an object. This is an

array, whatever. Well, I'd hoped that it would just infer those things from what I created, but it didn't. And so I was curious and I started looking around and actually you can make visual studio code, understand your stuff. You can actually use JS doc on the objects and things that you create and further down in your application, it will actually know what the types are of whatever you have in your object or your thing. So I thought that was pretty cool. So I have, I have a link to jsalk.app in, in the show notes here that will lead you to learning how to do JS talks. If you want, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily hyper valuable, but it was when, when you get a little bit more complex in your app, it is nice to have some of that stuff. So maybe it's worth the time. And then the other thing, man, this was driving

me crazy. The other day I had, I was running some, some image or, or a container or something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but you came in as root with no root password, but you needed the root password to be able to do things, which drove me absolutely insane because I couldn't get it right. Like you're not going to be able to dig into the system and get it. Well, I found there was no root password. Correct. Like when you got onto the password, you could have just pressed enter because there was no vm setup where they had set up root on it and so you ssh'd into the vm so you didn't actually have you weren't logging in as anybody right you used ssh to get in correct and so when you got in you were in under the root but you

didn't know what the root password was so if if you needed it for anything, you were kind of hosed. So after some Googling, I found that you can actually change the root password if you want or anybody's password if you're logged in as them. You do sudo passwd and then space and then whatever the username. In this case, it was root. Hit enter. It'll ask you what you want the password to be. You just change the password. It was so easy and unexpected that I was like, really, you could do that.

That doesn't. So that doesn't necessarily work. Like, I think it might've worked in your case. Cause you were rude because you said like, you could do it for anybody as long as you're logged into them. And I'm like, that that doesn't work like it'll prompt you like sudo sudo will prompt you for the password so i tried it i'm on a linux machine and i'm not root and i tried to do sudo pass wd my user id and the first thing it did was prompt me for my password for your password not the root password

whatever you logged in as right so if you were right because even if I did even if I did like sudo ls right let's take the password right command out of it that prompts me for my password your password right because sudo because I have to authenticate to use sudo so that's what i'm saying like you might have got away with root you don't need sudo right so that's why i'm that's why i'm like this is that's why i'm struggling here that's why it might be weird because you did a sudo password passwd of root because you didn't know root's password well maybe i didn't do sudo on that one maybe i just did pa Maybe I just did the password thing and then that, and it let me do it because I was in his route, but you can change the password of any user. So basically it's the username. You just put in the username there. So in your case,

like what you were saying though, you you're in as you, and you want to change the password of me. You could do sudo password, Alan, and it's not going to prompt you for my username it prompts you or for my password it'll prompt you for your password and it'll let you change my password and as long as and as long as i'm in the sudoers file correct then i can do that correct yeah so if you ever need this it can come in super handy sudoers permission however i get to it you know be a group or whatever yep but it ended up working out beautifully for me because i needed it i don't even remember what for but i needed the root password to do something and i was like i don't have it so that worked out great

yeah like one of my tricks these days that i do in the in the realm of ain't nobody got time for that when i do a docker run these days like my standard operating procedure is like i i will along with uh i will do a dash it or yeah dash it and dash dash rm but so those are you know in addition to those two i will also do dash dash user equal root dash dash uh entry point equals and i a lot of times i'll try for bash and then if that fails then i'll like fall back to sh but then that way i can come in as the user that i want to come in as and i don't get caught up in whatever your default entry point was. Like if it was like a Maven, you know,

Docker container, right. That's going to have Maven as its entry point. You know, I'm not going to be stuck in that. I can get into the, the main operating system and explore around, you know?

Yep. I do the same dash you root almost every time I do a docker run. Every time. Yeah, I like pain, so I spell it out, though. So, dash dash user dash dash entry point. So,

I couldn't I thought for sure that we talked about this, and I looked, and I couldn't find reference to it before but um there's so the short story of it is if you want to use visual studio code for the interactive rebasing right instead of using everything in a, um, like I, I typically just do everything in like a VI shell or, you know, uh, editor when I do my commits and rebasing or whatever. But in this one particular case, I, I needed to do, or I wanted to do a rebase operation to squash a bunch of commits, but there was like, I don't know, 50, 75 of them. I mean,

there was a lot, right? There was dozens of commits because I was working with a coworker and together that we had a bunch of commits where we were going back and forth as we were iterating on a feature. And, but you know, for the final commit, we didn't want to like put all of that hot garbage into the main thing. So I wanted to squash it, but going through those like one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one to do the edits of all of those was just going to be tedious. So I could have, I could have done like a, you know, the equivalent of a finer place on it if I wanted to. That was an option. But I decided instead, like, hey, let me let me set VS code as the interactive editor,

because then it's all just in a dropdown. Like, you know, so you just point and click. So that's what this tip is. I will say your mileage may vary, but the one thing that is super annoying to me about this, like for long-term use, this would drive me insane, is that in my opinion, it's default ordering is backwards. Because if you're in a vi editor and you're doing the rebase operation then the oldest commit is going to be at the top and everything below it is going to get uh you know successively newer right this one does it backwards where the newest commit is at the top and what's what's frustrating is that if you change the sort order um to be normal then uh it doesn't always like recognize the options that should now what the options should

now be so i i say all that because what i found was it's best to just leave its messed up sorting alone and even though you know it it's it doesn't make sense why they decided to change that for reasons i can't explain just run with it you know in this in you know if you have a case like mine or if you just would prefer to be able to point and click your way through it um the other but this is why another reason why like long term like it would bother me too is that once you're done you're like okay this i've made all my options click start rebase it's you stay in visual studio code it doesn't like automatically roll you back to the command line that you started from if you if you if that's

where you initiated the command right which i mean come on that's where you initiated the command but but so like uh yeah the first time i was like oh wait what happened is it done and no it it had to you had to go i had a alt tab back in because I was like each, I was on a Mac. And so each app was full screened and I didn't realize, you know, at first, like, well, that's weird. It just, it's done. And it wasn't by the way, I should mention too, this is a feature of get lens, which has been a fan favorite of ours, um, for years now. Like like i think this might have been one of the early early early tips or even not even not even tips uh oh man we haven't done one of those episodes in a long time but we used to do the episodes where it was like we would each pick like our five favorite things

or whatnot and i think this was like early on it um you know made a name for itself early on on this show at least so so speaking of git lens and it's it's weird that you brought this up their reviews have started going down and i found out because i was curious i was like man i've been using it forever and a lot of people have apparently they've been putting a lot of features behind paywalls now. Uh, so if, if you are not experiencing the same level of love and joy that we have, we get lens over the years. It's probably because of that, which is unfortunate. I mean, that stinks because it really has been a go-to tool for a long, long time. Yeah. Uh, I mean, our our our first mention of it was episode 79 in 2018 so i kind of swore it was older than that but obviously i'm wrong but it was the

favorite developer tools was the episode that i was talking about or the the category of episodes that i was thinking of and that was episode 149 we haven't done those in a while when we go through and pick the tools yeah favorite developer tools of 2020 yeah if you if you were to go into visual studio code actually matter of fact I'll just put the link in here and you were to click on the review stuff I'm gonna put it down here uh doggone it why does it do that now um if you go look at that all the latest ones are one stars and it's because they put everything behind paywalls. Like people are, people are mad about it. And I guess rightfully so that's, that's one of the things we've talked about in the past is

like when you make something free and available and then, and then later on you decide to break a bunch of functionality that people have relied on, you know, that's, uh, that's rough. Oh, and also to follow up to this, this was specifically for doing the interactive rebasing, the, the get commands, right? Jay-Z ran into something. This has been a couple of weeks ago that was really odd. So he was doing an edit of, uh, I think it was a config map jay-z i think in them and you're muted by the way dang it sorry yeah so i was editing uh i was editing in vim but uh it was canines uh that had the problem ah so it was canines. So this is something for people to be aware of. He had canines open.

He was editing a config map. So he went to the config map he wanted to do, hit E, and it brings up the editor. And in his case, he had it in line to Vim in the shell and pasted in some changes, saved it it looked like everything was good but it was stripping out characters specifically the closing uh square bracket don't know why but it jacked everything up right like it broke it broke stuff and we're like what's going on and so he ended up changing the editor from them with canines to pointing to individual studio code and that resolved the problem completely so yeah it was crazy craziest thing and uh yeah it just so happened those config maps had json in them and so there were like arrays and stuff that uh were suddenly mixing missing

brackets and that's really hard to spot by eye i think you're alan i think you're the one that was like wait a minute what's that well yeah So basically I copied it all and put it into individual studio code and turned it into YAML or JSON or whatever it was. And it was pointed like screaming about these things. And I was like, no way he would have missed those. That doesn't make sense. So yeah. Um, you're muted again. You like to mute yourself a lot. I do. I think I'm kind of sick. I'm kind of like sniffly allergies. There's allergies up here in Georgia. I didn't know.

Yeah, there are several times a year. Yeah. Well, you know anything about that? Yeah. Oh man. So, yeah. So, uh, yeah. Subscribe to us on iTunes. Spotify. really the one time whatever your favorite app

is we're there leave us a review if you have it already uh yeah hit the coding blocks.net for your the show notes examples discussion more hit us back with your feedback questions rants you can hit us up on uh codingbox.net slash slack to join the slack um you know hit us up there uh hit you know hit us up on twitter wherever do we call it that anymore i don't know some people are always like formerly known as you know whatever yeah and on that bombshell yeah i suppose if you want to be notified of season two, I just did the most perfect, uh, top gear callback ending and you had to ruin it by keep talking.

I've been said, and on that bombshell. Yes. That means that's, that's it. It's over. Say it one more time. Say it one more time.

And on that bombshell, my LinkedIn is still open and my, uh, steam. Uh, so if you want to send me an invite. Wait, what were you saying? And on that bombshell...