TABROOM
So we’ve launched an actual formal Tabroom newsletter! I’ll still talk here about the process of software development in the context of what it means for me, since this space is just mine to ramble and update folks about my goings on. Leaving out my day job omits too much, and there’s always things I’d like to say that apply more to me than to the software. The intent of the newsletter is for people who are more interested in this as a Tabroom user than a Friend of Me, which is fine. And it’ll still go out in my voice, I’m told.
If you’d prefer just the Tabroom announcements, please sign up here.
At any rate, I’ve started tinkering with TanStack Query thanks to Hardy’s recommendation, and while it simplified things, it did cause me to retread on some conquered ground as it were. I’m going to have to stop doing that. The challenge with a rewrite is when your drive for the ultimate purity in code means you just keep rewriting the first parts over and over again. Coming from a stack that hasn’t changed or had new tooling since 2010, I’m not used to avoiding the temptation to switch to the latest shiny tool; and in JS world that tool is released every two weeks.
In operational land, I made it through the Stanford+ weekend (26,000 students & judges) and the Cal/Harvard weekend (23,500 students & judges) without a blink.
WHEREABOUTS
I’m taking my traditional sojourn after the tournament up at the North Coast, in Fort Bragg this time. Fort Bragg is festooned with signs protesting a proposal to rename the town so it’s no longer named after a Confederate general. The name predates the Confederacy, as it happens, but not for great reasons. It turns out ol’ Braxton Bragg was the former commanding officer of the person who built that first fort here. However, the fort existed to exterminate the local Indian tribes, to clear the land for more redwood logging. So even if it’s sorta free of the Confederate association, it runs smack into another stain on history.
The keep-the-name crew is mostly focused on the fact that the town has never felt a real connection with ol’ General Bragg in any of its traditions, tourism or marketing. And changing the name would cost a pile of money that’s not insignificant for a small town on the remote coast. Personally, I think their best unmade argument is that Bragg was such a horrendous general, his efforts may have helped the North prevail more effectively than many Union officers could claim. He lots a ton of battles, opening the door to Sherman’s march, and in the process was so hated by his own soldiers that they plotted and attempted to assassinate him multiple times.
But at any rate, the coastline remains a strip of beautiful hills, trees, fog and dark skies, which are all things I relish, and are hard to find. There are far too few places that humans live where the night is allowed to be dark, and the air is filled with only the sounds of oceans and frogs.
March will find me in Wilmington in the early part of the month, and LA in the middle, and probably hiking in New Hampshire or Maine for the spring melt waterfall season, when a muddy stomp is rewarded by torrents across New England.
THE OTHER STUFF
I’m re-reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, an old favorite I haven’t read in far too long. Not much writing otherwise these days, because I’ve been trying to get my photographs in order, and helping the neighbor clear out some Old Crappe from our shared basement. There’s an understandable impulse when trying to empty an overly full basement to find new homes for all the items therein; surely some of these 138 VHS tapes would have value to someone who likes the almost-retro! But at some point you have to realize the energy expended in finding them new homes surpasses their worth. I am in the self appointed role of “I’ll find a place that wants them or toss them for you” which makes it psychologically easier, I think.