Fred and Loathing on The Internet

The Sunny Side of the Repository

2023-Oct-12

The git commit that marks this blog post belongs to another repository. The new back-end is done! That part actually has no model changes. It did give me the chance to make some decisions about how the work is going to be divided into modules. I think I’ll have a Spotify API request library of functions, a data definition module so I can keep a consistent schema of the tables involved, and each table will get its own module, with script for their cron jobs. All but one are daily jobs. I'll stagger out a few minutes in between them around four pm. The optimist in me thought if I really really worked smart and over long hours I could get some new Flask views plugged into this backend by Monday. That could happen. If I made zero mistakes. Today I lost fifteen minutes trying to trace an error from reusing a known good function because I put a comma after something that shouldn’t.

I realize there has not been a book review over here on the blog for quite some time. That is indeed a reflection of me spending my time on stuff other than fancy books. Thankfully that was a brief spell, and I’m back to reading that high brow college stuff. Lately it has been a book about the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. I believe a movie was made about this book recently. I had not seen it but have heard good things.

What this book gives me right away is that look at the endless scale of bureaucracy that comes with the Soviet command structure. The chapters that focus on the physicality of an actual explosion in a nuclear reactor were wonderful. I immediately forgot about them once the next chapter started waking up all the Soviet higher-ups about the incident. It was a Matryoshka doll of increasing party rank with some miscommunication in between each layer.

When I read the Three Body Problem, I actually bailed on the book about two thirds in. I went into that book looking for a peek into the Chinese version of command economy filled with party officials in a uni-party state. The ideas put forth from the book were fun to consider, but that was not the payoff I was hoping to get from reading a sci-fi book heavily involved with Chinese state science.

The Cheynobyl book is in the late evening of the first day the Politburo could get a top dog over to Ukraine and start making the party’s will happen. The up and down of communicating facts about a disaster can be dry. This writer keeps me on my toes with tidbits of obscene party loyalty.