rixx

pretalx▪Python/Django/vue.js▪Three Django projects in a trench coat▪he/him

Admin here. Please report instead of DMing.

Website: https://rixx.de
Better website: https://books.rixx.de
semi-public account: rixx (npub1cq7…rdqj)
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Last Notes

2026-08-21 09:34:07 UTC

ugh I was reminded of the newer "modern" html input types again, day ruined
a good rant about the useless bs that is `input type=range` helped, but … not enough, never enough

2026-08-01 18:06:00 UTC

I've held out this long, but I might finally be getting a 3d printer

2026-07-26 22:43:56 UTC

I did not realise I had strong feelings on docstrings. I use them sparingly, and while they are a hack, at least they serve a good purpose.
I know people have opinions on the placement of line breaks and quotes, but I thought I was above these things. That this was Python programmers yearning for curly-brace level style wars.
I was mistaken.
I just encountered docstrings written in regular quotes rather than triple quotes and, no, apparently I DO have strong feelings on docstrings.
#python

2026-07-24 09:59:40 UTC

The Internet is an amazing place that we built.
(None of us are free of sin.)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/974/362/123/347/280/original/b0ab1de7919790bb.png

2026-05-23 16:22:25 UTC

Firefox noooo
#firefox #ai
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/116/624/798/011/172/442/original/09e09f4a81c4b7db.png

2026-05-13 13:42:24 UTC

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It's a nice pun; Russian Карандаш means “pencil”.

2026-05-13 06:43:59 UTC

TIL there is a pencil manufacturer in Switzerland called Caran d’Ache, lmao.

2026-05-08 06:43:56 UTC

Excellent post on the correct SI unit for (HTTP or not) request rate: https://entropicthoughts.com/si-units-for-request-rate
The world needs more blog posts like this.

2026-01-24 10:16:01 UTC

“What if I Simply put tailscale in initramfs?”: statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged (that is, @npub1429…5dlm ). Very cool blog post on remotely unlocking an encrypted boot partition: https://jyn.dev/remotely-unlocking-an-encrypted-hard-disk/

2025-11-21 11:13:54 UTC

39C3 Ticket Marketplace: now available at https://tickets.events.ccc.de/39c3/secondhand/
FAQ: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/tickets.html#reselling
#39c3 #39c3tickets

2025-11-03 09:20:19 UTC

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Klarer Fall von „der schnellste Weg eine Lösung zu finden, ist, laut zu behaupten, dass es keine Lösung gibt, und auf hilfreiche Nerds zu warten“. Danke!

2025-11-03 08:40:58 UTC

git config --global alias.cherry-mash '!f() { git cherry-pick "$1" && git reset --soft HEAD~1 && git reset; }; f'

2025-09-10 07:49:48 UTC

Looking for a laptop for my (very cool, she's having me tell you) sister who is about to start uni. So on the light side (and 14"), should last a good number of years, and be able to run stuff like Krita and CAD tools.
I'm probably looking at Lenovo or Dell by default, but any recs welcome. What would y'all go for in terms of memory and power? 16g enough?

2025-07-17 09:15:01 UTC

in (trad, nobody uses it) IT German, a stack is called a "cellar", which always struck me as ridiculous: it doesn't fit what's going on at all. like, what is the commonality with a stack – is it that you can put stuff in and take it out again? absurd
(it's not even badly translated, it's an original term, patented in the 50s)
however, I do think using names that illustrate what's going on is a great idea to make things more memorable
so anyways, a doubly linked list is now a paternoster

2025-06-05 11:00:43 UTC

It’s a great day when you find yourself placing a PDB breakpoint in django.db.models.sql.compiler.SQLCompiler._order_by_pairs

2025-04-14 08:05:49 UTC

Delightful morning reading: “An ssh adventure” (or: smuggling your bashrc onto remote servers)
The perfect amount of unhinged. I was already sold on reading the whole thing and giggling throughout when I got to “The filesystem is basically global state, global state is morally wrong.”
https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2149340
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/335/279/062/129/415/original/18fea2a42ef40adb.png

2025-04-10 17:09:21 UTC

OH: putting the sad in sysadmin

2025-02-23 09:43:47 UTC

1) vote (esp in the German election today, but also generally)
2) this, when you look at the results and want to cry / burn things down / stay in bed forever
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/114/052/541/883/884/137/original/67cbcf2aba896c24.jpeg

2025-01-26 07:25:04 UTC

ooh, #Inkscape feature I often want and didn't know existed: you can hold 'f' in order to hide everything that is outside the document boundaries
this is so neat

2025-01-15 08:04:13 UTC

I'm still sad that phone cards aren't a thing anymore for the weird art you got to carry around with you, and any local train company providing physical Deutschlandticket cards should get on that imo.
But in all fairness, the Berlin one at least isn't boring
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/831/328/289/849/733/original/7b2fc71ca1d92008.jpg

2025-01-02 13:35:49 UTC

If the Dutch camps are looking for a new name for the next iteration already, may I suggest
TLD
Three Letters, Dutch
#why2025 #mch2022 #sha2017 #ohm2013

2024-12-10 13:22:54 UTC

Form, meet function (via https://morphimus.tumblr.com/post/171062926274)
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/628/732/440/320/574/original/544b91252e2e09f4.png

2024-12-04 20:55:12 UTC

At my book club, we've just decided that the correct genre for LotR is Bromantasy.
you're welcome / sorry

2024-12-03 10:15:03 UTC

Ugh, just saw the new #wrapstodon feature that adds a “Year in Review” to Mastodon – it’s up on mastodon.social already, and will be part of v4.4.0.
It’s super number-go-up brain: You’re part of the top x % of Mastodon users! You had so many new followers and posts!
Plus a super cringe and unnecessary “We won’t tell Bernie” message under the top-% stat. Jfc.
I opened an issue asking to let server administrators turn this off before it even starts: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/33150
#mastoadmin
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/588/356/361/621/059/original/edc9f98ca7e683e2.png

2024-11-27 10:13:20 UTC

Today is a `pip isntall e- .` kind of day.

2024-11-23 15:32:49 UTC

I’ve finally caved and wrote an auto moderator for Mastodon that can take care of some reports automatically.
Running it manually for now to see if it works as intended, but I think this will be a net positive for us. Watch this space 👀 #mastoadmin

2024-11-23 09:33:52 UTC

it’s cold and gloomy, so it’s time to knit something warm and cozy
and like every year, my main observation is that programmers could stand to learn a thing or ten from knitters re: documentation. a good pattern is a beauty of clarity, technicality (with a helpful appendix for the noobs), but also further guidance and observations rather than just "I auto-generated this documentation, good luck"

2024-11-07 14:41:03 UTC

If you’re ever in an interview for a software job and are asked what happens internally when you open google.com, then a new answer has just dropped:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atcqMWqB3hw

2024-11-06 14:58:02 UTC

So, when you block an instance as a mastodon administrator, on account of that instance spewing spam like mad and also none of your users following anybody there, this will NOT resolve any of the >100 reports your users have openend against that instance, despite the reports now being useless.
And of course, Mastodon still has no bulk editing of reports, so you die the death of a thousand ~~papercuts~~ report-clicks … or you just add report-resolving to your management script:
#mastoadmin
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/436/587/594/148/554/original/c2c7c6fc8126ee2a.png

2024-10-27 20:52:31 UTC

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“Harry, did you put the Olson database into your init system?”, Dumbledore asked calmly.

2024-10-27 20:49:08 UTC

Imagine wondering “When’s the next time that Christmas will be a Tuesday/Wednesday, for those sweet optimal public holidays (Jan 1st being exactly a week later)?”
Now imagine asking, idk, google or Siri or god forbid an actual calendar, instead of turning to the best tool for the job: systemd.
#systemd #linuxadmin #linux #systemd
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/381/333/219/889/773/original/06a6c8474181e98f.png

2024-10-18 07:01:52 UTC

Late to the party, but another consequence of the whole IO territory thing:
“On Friday 21st March 2025 at 02:50 UTC the sun will finally set on the British "Empire"”: https://www.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/1fv9ti6/on_friday_21st_march_2025_at_0250_utc_the_sun/
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/327/134/320/463/100/original/24b081d89084c02f.png

2024-10-15 01:32:54 UTC

When I plug in the second display after booting up, sometimes my it'll properly choose a second background image (I have a random rotation going on). But some other times, it'll just extend the outermost pixel for the entire second screen. Today, this turned out really well. The second display was even prettier than the first one!
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/308/853/513/159/052/original/fc60306cb2e016e7.png

2024-10-14 11:16:48 UTC

Finally got around to fixing my custom Mastodon stylesheet after the big update.
It's now 185 lines long and there are still things that I want to get around to (but mostly in the admin UI, which – I'm suffering anyway if I'm in there, might as well leave it ugly).
It's not even about anything big, but the dark purple direction of stock Mastodon is really uncomfortable to look at for me.
(Though I am proud of the CW rendering as "▸ Subject:", see rightmost column).
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/305/491/865/271/567/original/f13958b59bc201f8.png

2024-10-11 14:12:50 UTC

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Thanks! This'll definitely end up as some kind of blog post, I'm just waiting for Carlton to publish his first, both to learn something and to write something that complements his.
I do like a cookbook kind of approach – I most often find myself wondering "wait, how do I add a class/attribute to this form field again? something with the widget? what if it's an implicit modelform field?", and either search online or look at other code …

2024-10-10 22:58:49 UTC

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"short" braindump of the frustrations I had with the form rendering stuff
https://gist.github.com/rixx/70fbc8197ed445d9b16652fc42ac269f
(nearly-none of this is about new Django features, fwiw)
It probably boils down to "I'm bad at reading the docs and the code exists and things happen in BoundField oh god", but if we're a bit more charitable, then there are some possibly hard to follow bits in both the docs and the code.

2024-10-10 06:06:20 UTC

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noo, wait, it's not in a readable state yet!

2024-10-10 00:47:15 UTC

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I managed to rip out (finally, FINALLY) django-bootstrap4 in ~a day (assuming 10h work days: https://github.com/pretalx/pretalx/pull/1846), so it's not terrible, but there are a bunch of conveniences that I feel a framework should provide – and the real trouble is that they are hard / impossible to add.
(And sure, I could fix some of the things I want to fix by just overriding the default Django widget templates, but eww.)

2024-10-09 18:18:03 UTC

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… off the record, though – this ain't podcast material.
(I keep thinking about writing a blog post, but it's not that, either – too negative, too grumpy etc)

2024-10-09 14:53:42 UTC

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My list of grumps is steadily growing, and I'd say maybe half of it is documentation? But parts of it are definitely structural. If I was less used to digging around in library source code / less experienced, I think I'd have quit in frustration hours ago – like I said, it's not due to field groups being around (that's actually definitely good), it's more that … once you try to seriously use them, everything else is janky and in your (well, my) way.

2024-10-09 14:31:37 UTC

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The field group template isn't really the issue, it's more that it's the cause of me finally rendering my forms rather than relying on meh-ish libraries, and the whole experience does not spark joy. There are so many janky corners, and I spend half my time reading Django code to figure out why and where things happen.

2024-10-09 12:40:05 UTC

Switching from yesterday's grump about HTML forms to today's grump about #Django forms.
And here I thought updating to current Django would make form-rendering fun and games.

2024-10-08 12:03:04 UTC

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Instead of my rant, I present to you this beauty. Frontend development is great.
#machKaputtWasDichKaputtMacht
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/113/271/697/343/510/925/original/f9358ab1a7fd2512.png

2024-10-08 10:17:14 UTC

I'm home sick, so I'm naturally reading HTML specs and composing my latest rant at how frustratingly half-baked HTML5 is, particularly with respect to forms and inputs.
(I have like three drafts of this rant lying about, time to add a fourth …)

2024-09-01 20:45:39 UTC

If I ever create a programming language, it will accept "elseif", "else if", "elif", and "elsif".
(he said, having just confidently and without checking committed the wrong version in a language he uses every day)

2024-08-22 08:50:40 UTC

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Yeah uh thank you for that contribution, very helpful, amaze

2024-08-22 08:39:10 UTC

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Imagine if web.dev, the web development blog by the Chrome team, had the latest coolest tech like … RSS feeds for their blog. Then you could just subscribe to https://web.dev/series/baseline-newly-available and get notified about newly availble CSS features …
(To add insult to injury, they load their list of blog posts via JS, so you can't even point a good feed reader at the /blog/ page and have it scrape for new posts. Eww.)

2024-08-22 08:29:20 UTC

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Related: Is there something like a caniuse.com newsfeed that tells me when a feature has become supported by all major browsers (or, ideally, supported by major browsers for a month, half a year, a year …)?

2024-08-22 08:21:15 UTC

TIL: relative colours in #CSS. You define an origin colour, and then modify (with the magic r/g/b/alpha variables for rgb) or override the values. Supported in all major browsers now (except Firefox for Android): https://caniuse.com/css-relative-colors
Example: Use the primary colour, but make it transparent and reduce how green it is:
rgb(from var(--primary-colour) r calc(g/2) b / calc(alpha * 0.5))

2024-08-07 06:46:26 UTC

Geschlechtsneutrale Sprache schon krass, ich hätte ganz unreflektiert "Spaziergänger" gesagt statt "Gehwegende" 🤭
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/919/386/101/646/295/original/760e534ffb8564fb.jpg

2024-08-02 20:02:24 UTC

The officially best news of the $interval:
World of Goo 2 is now out (and you can buy it directly from the publisher, DRM free):
https://worldofgoo2.com/
https://assets.chaos.social/media_attachments/files/112/894/207/713/443/750/original/1556f4c8b3a5596e.webp