casselc

Joined 9 years ago

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27
Submissions
19
Member since
Sep 4
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/chuckcassel; my proof: https://keybase.io/chuckcassel/sigs/QA9TzBqsCpVVdNqz3Z64k29tAHh9apzj5_1EqCeyK_I ]
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Recent submissions

Comment · 10 months ago
If you look at a map of the fiber-optic network in the US, my parents spent most of the 90s surveying the portion along the Gulf coast from Texas to Florida and up the Atlantic coast to New England for Sprint, MCI, Level 3, and other companies that no longer exist and AutoLISP was used to generate most of their drawings.

From what I can remember, we made a spreadsheet template that captured the title block information and a list of bearings and distances with some optional columns for field notes, landmarks/monuments, elevations and other measurements, etc. and I wrote some AutoLISP code that would generate an overview drawing and a set of scale drawings for the route. It figured out the bounds for each segment based on the scale and drawing size and then drew the route like a turtle and added the various callouts and a consistent title block and legend. There was also some ability to draw details about the railroad/pipeline whose right of way was being used, but I don't remember exactly how it worked.

My mom (secretarially trained typist, self-taught Lotus/Excel wiz, former drafting assistant at an RBOC) would enter everything into the template and use it to generate basis drawings which they might then tweak and finalize by hand. It dramatically reduced the amount of time they spent creating drawings to the point they could usually finish the drawings for a week of surveying in a couple of hours. I like to think of it as my small contribution to the Internet.

I was in high school at the time and taught myself AutoLISP from some combination of in-app docs/help and mall bookstore fare. Now I desperately want to go dig through floppy disks at my parents' place to see if any remnants remain to look back at how younger me did everything. It was the first truly useful software that I ever wrote, and in hindsight, might've planted the brainworm that led me to Clojure decades later :)

Comment · 2 years ago
The primary performance benefits with Enterprise are access to the G1 garbage collector and profile-guided optimization
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
Because it’s JScript, which was abandoned prior to ES6.
Comment · 3 years ago
I’d second this sentiment and encourage the previous poster and some of the other replies to consider fostering for a local shelter.

We started fostering early in the pandemic, a few months after losing a very special guy, and it’s been very fulfilling. You‘ll get a chance to help some cats or kittens get out of a cage for a few weeks and find new homes - and I’d be surprised if you don’t eventually find one whose home just happens to be yours.

Comment · 3 years ago
My first computer had a button to do it whenever you felt like.
Comment · 4 years ago
“Lexicon” by Max Barry is another good novel that plays with this premise.
Comment · 4 years ago
Not who you asked, but as someone interested in small/hobby farm equipment to enable a couple people to do more work, more efficiently: The actual products seem nice and they have a variety of things that would be useful to us. I’d like to be able to buy a common flatbed lifting/dumping platform at about half those prices and be able to separately purchase and easily swap out the various wheelbarrow and garden/utility wagon bases. Ability to upgrade/replace motor and batteries. Ability to use the platform for additional powered implements like spreaders, seed drills, flail mower, auger, etc I’d like to be able to operate it in either a push-in-front (wheelbarrow) or pull-behind (wagon) fashion and for the drive and steering controls to work well in both cases. Stretch goals: a low speed follow-me mode with basic obstacle detection/avoidance. A go-to-programmed-location-and-come-back-wherever-here-is mode, optionally dumping or waiting for interaction at the other end.
Comment · 5 years ago
It doesn't help with stuff found in the wild, but if you're working from a text most math books will either list all symbols at the beginning of the index with references to where the notation is introduced and defined, or they have a separate symbol index or glossary of notation.
Comment · 5 years ago
This article is from 2017.
Comment · 5 years ago
From the article, it's not clear this ever went out as a wireless AMBER alert, just to people subscribed to an email alert system. The wireless alerts and highway signage are part of the secondary distribution system, so might not have actually been triggered.
Comment · 5 years ago
If only AWS Cloud Map wasn't $0.10/resource outside of ECS you could reasonably have your API cake and query it using DNS too.
Comment · 5 years ago
I mean, kinda same, because my lizard brain still remembers getting burned - but in theory it's not much different than what Storage Gateway in File Gateway mode or Nasuni and others have been doing for years, is it?
Comment · 6 years ago

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