Update for the week ending on Friday, Nov 18, 2022

TinyPilot

Management

• Had three 1:1s with teammates
• Got into a dispute with a 3D printing vendor
  • They had me sign a credit card authorization form for $5,240
  • They charged my credit card $5,567.50,
  • When I asked them, they said that the authorization I signed said, “taxes not included” so they’re allowed to charge above the amount they showed me for taxes.
  • I find it deceptive, and I’ve never seen a merchant omit taxes until after the purchase agreement, so I’m pushing back.

Software development

• Switched TinyPilot Debian package build to use debhelper
  • debhelper is really hard to use, but it does certain things in the expected Debian way, so it’s good to know we’re doing things the way we’re supposed to
• Added lintian to the build
  • Lintian is a Debian package linter, kind of handy but a little picky/noisy if you’re not preparing a package for a real distro
• Tried to unbundle libnice10 from our janus Debian package
  • I thought it would be easy, but I had to give up after 3 hours
• Switched docker buildx to use --progress=plain when running on CircleCI
  • Otherwise the logs are a mess
• Improve debuggability of our Dockerfile by moving the apt-get steps above the build args
  • Usually, I like having build args at the top, but this was preventing Docker from caching expensive layers
• Reduced the instance size on our CircleCI Janus build
  • I realized that since we’re using remote Docker builds, the instance size did nothing, so we were idling a large, 4 vCPU instance for 40 mins per build

Customer support

• Reviewed FAQ explaining how to diagnose a “No Signal” error

Misc

• Provisioned a new office laptop

mtlynch.io

• Published my October retrospective

ScreenJournal

ScreenJournal is a new project I just started. The idea is basically Goodreads, but for TV and movies. Or letterboxd, but focused on small communities.

• Add support for editing reviews
• Improved test isolation by clearing database between tests
  • This feels very hacky, but I can’t figure out a better way of doing end-to-end tests without each test impacting the state of other tests
• Fix rendering of newlines in reviews

Family home videos

• Debuted the rewritten version of my home video sharing site with my family
• Learned to implement client-side search in JavaScript
  • It’s neat, albeit a little confusing and it still doesn’t totally work how I expect

Misc

• Saw a local improv show
• Cleaned my dishwasher with vinegar and baking soda cycles
• Joined Github Copilot class action lawsuit
  • The law office called and left a message the next day. I called back and left a message, but haven’t heard anything since.
• Did monthly personal expenses
• Updated my health insurance