Steven Brokaw

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• Secret Lambda Permissions

  This is the culmination of half a days work trying to figure out why my Lambda function didn’t fire:

  The console doesn’t support directly modifying permissions in a function policy. You must use either the AWS CLI or the AWS SDKs.

  In other words: it is a secret setting that we hide from you. Just in case you’re trying to use a versioned lambda function or a function alias.

  12/1/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Election Percentages

  Courtesy David Frum:

  Nixon 1960: 49.55% Gore 2000: 48.38% Kerry 2004: 48.26% Ford 1976: 48.01% Romney 2012: 47.15% Trump 2016: 46.17%

  12/1/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Cleaning Out Argument Labels

  The guys over at CleanCoders made a video series on the creation of an iOS app. While refractoring, they decided to remove keyword arguments.

  We also walked through the code replacing most of the keyword arguments with positional arguments – something that swift does not make particularly convenient. We did this because the code just looked better once it was done.

  I think this is a terrible idea.

  Coincidentally, I’m in the middle of the chapter on function naming in Clean Code. He argues against ternary arguments because it’s too easy to lose track of what arguments belong in the first, second, and third position. “Sounds like argument labels would help,” was my first thought. Looks like he disagrees. It makes me more skeptical of his other advice.

  12/1/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• iTunes Visualizer

  I just realized the iTunes visualizer is still there. I remember Steve Jobs getting up and demonstrating this in a keynote. Does anybody still use this? The only way I would possibly use this is if it were on the AppleTV. As far as I know, it’s not.

  11/30/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Fair Elections

  I keep thinking about this tweet from Garry Kasparov:

  Saying that fair elections are rigged is as much a crime against democracy as saying that rigged elections are fair.

  It’s an odd twist that Trump is casting doubt on an election that he legally won (even if it was with a national minority). I attribute that to a strategy of working the ref. The lie of voter fraud is groundwork on propaganda that will be needed in future efforts to suppress voting rights.

  It also made me think the same idea applies to the news: Saying that fair journalism is biased is as much a crime against truth as saying that biased journalism is fair.

  11/30/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• The Case for Identity Politics

  There has been lots of ink spilled on the evils of identitly politics and how the Democrats have to embrace the color-blind notion of class. Here are a couple of articles that push back on that.

  Michelle Goldberg, in Slate:

  The focus of left-of-center politics in the dark years to come must be on protecting the groups of people who are targets precisely because of their identities. To sideline their interests is to accede to a backlash that has just begun and will only get worse. If Democrats standing up for diversity makes Trump voters feel disrespected, the best response is a slogan popular among enemies of political correctness at Trump rallies: Fuck your feelings.

  Rebecca Traister, in New York Magazine:

  But what’s not funny about all this is that we are in a moment of national crisis, in which the developmental stage of the Dirtbag Left might be mistaken for a flash of political wisdom, when prioritization of the (yes, systemic) approaches to reducing racial, gender, and class inequality is most likely to be walked back in the name of distancing the party from the women and people of color who lost the election.

  11/22/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Laborious Autoposting

  I spent the better part of the evening reading up on the Facebook Graph API and writing a tool that can do my auto-posting for me. Right now it only works with Facebook. It can post images, status updates, and links in their native format. It’s not too smart about interpreting which of those formats it should use. Also, it’s comically inept at getting an authentication token. Long-lived tokens last about 60 days, so I have a while to fix it.

  If you see this, and it says that it was posted by “Emposter,” then it works.

  11/21/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Trump Appointments and Transparency

  From the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

  The Senate can [demand transparency] by refusing to confirm any nominations until Trump takes the following steps to promote faith that a Trump presidency will not enrich himself and his family:

  1. Releases his tax returns;

  2. Releases a detailed and current financial disclosure that includes beneficial ownership information on all “shell companies” that are part of the Trump Organization;

  3. Follows the advice of the The Wall Street Journal editorial page that “Mr. Trump’s best option is to liquidate his stake in the company” via “a leveraged buyout or an initial public offering";

  11/20/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Entrepreneurs to Trump

  Entrepreneurs to Trump: Don’t take away our Obamacare

  (Warning: Obnoxious autoplay video on that page.)

  Before Obamacare, people were tied to their jobs because of a lack of health insurance options on the individual market. Here are five people who were empowered by Obamacare to leave their wage jobs and start new businesses.

  11/20/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• The Original Bernie Bro

  

  Hint: This Bernie is not named Sanders.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• RealAle Overview

  Mmmm…beer…

  

  A wide-angle view of the RealAle plant. You can see the Hans Piis cans over to the left.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Push to Cross

  

  South Congress Crossing

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere

  I’ve been reading about IndieWeb and the goal of publishing on my own site and syndicating the content out, or POSSE. I’ve had a personal blog for years, but never really posted to it much. Never as much as Facebook. In part, this is an attempt to break out of those networks. Or at least de-emphasize them.

  My current attempt is the SNAP plugin on WordPress. It’s going ok. I like that it doesn’t brand itself when posting. It’s my Facebook app that has permission to post. It has pretty good customization of the post format.

  I’d like the ability to customize the post format based on the WordPress post type. The template for a Photo post should be different from a Link, which should be different from a long text article. I’d also like is a way to pull in links to article I’ve liked, or retweeted. It looks like I’ll have to use another tool for that.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Posting Links is Lame

  The last couple of posts I made went to Facebook as links back to my site. That is not how I meant things to go. I’m not trying to drive traffic to my site. I don’t even have any traffic analytics installed. I just want this to show up in the timeline.

  Hopefully, the full text of this post will appear on Facebook. You can read it in its entirety in your timeline, and never visit my site. That it he goal.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• No Age, FFF 2009

  For some reason, this stood out tonight. No Age, back when Fun Fun Fun was at Waterloo Park.

  

  Also: Get off my lawn.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Look at All This Beer!

  Hans Pils, as far as the eye can see!

  

  I happened upon a tour of the RealAle brewery in Blanco a while ago. As thirst-quenching as this looks, it’s palettes of empty cans.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• It's a Living

  This is one of my favorite SXSW photos. On the stage is a John Langord band that’s going bananas, but these guys are just working the sound board, so you can go nuts in the audience.

  

  Soundboard at Yard Dog

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Improve Your Writing with Flesch‑Kinkaid

  I came across this little bit of wisdom via Hacker News:

  There’s one trick that everybody who writes sales knows and nobody else seems to know. This trick is so effective that Microsoft Word has it even built in so you can test while you write.

  …

  The F-K score.

  The Flesch-Kincaid score determines what grade level you are writing. If your score is 10, you are writing at a 10th grade reading level. If your score is 12, you are writing at a 12th grade level. And so on.

  As it turns out, I wrote an app for that. The thing it has over Microsoft Word is that it caculates the F-K score continuously in the background. It also has a couple of tools that suggests how you can improve your score.

  I had a very specific use case for that app: a project my wife had in her publishing job. It also does vocabulary tracking, which she needed. Now that her project is over, I find it hard to get motivated to update it. It makes virtually no money. Maybe I should add a Post to Web feature and reposition it as Write Sales Copy That Coverts kind of tool.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Bastille Day Jugglers

  

  Jugglers at the Bastille Day celebration at the Fench Legation.

  11/19/2016, 6:00:00 PM

• Fisherman on Lake LBJ

  

  Rescued from the archives.

  6/15/2016, 7:00:00 PM