And last Friday, the 13th, we executed that idea. He played bass guitar, I played tenor sax, and we recorded jam session on gopro.

A little bit EQ in DaVinchi Resolve

and here we go on bandcamp:

It was a lot of fun and I already want to do it again!!!

All means of reaching the actual help is covered/buffered/greased/hidden and poisined. You will see links or buttons that “suddenly” do not work.

FAQs that you need to steer through to find out an answer how to contact their support (which will just open another door in that labyrinth). FAQ generated by “AI” to “help you” – another layer of dust and bullshit to distract you. Chat with “support” is just another blanket to bump you off the actuall support (if it even exist for that company). It will be a “smart” “AI” bot that will rip your soul asking stupid forms and answering obvious things. Like my recent experience, when PostNL app messages you “Your post is delivered to you and is in your brievenbus!” – I was at home the whole day and at the moment of the message too, nothing was actually delivered and nothing is in my door’s post-hole. You check that post’s track-n-trace and it says “Delivered 10 min ago and post in your door” – quite stupid. You go to the PostNL “support” and end up in chat with “AI” bot. You ask for help as a post was not delivered to you, he asks for a track-n-trace id, and then replies to you like nothing happened: “Delivered 10 min ago and post in your door”. And then it’s a scenario of a phsyco movie: you talk to a dumb asshole, who holds your fate in his hands and nothing moves to resolution.

Support via ServiceNow tickets – “nice one”: you click on “Create a ticket” then you are on a page saying that first you’ll be tried to help by their “AI” – which is a dumb search over their dumb collection of beuracratic instructions… and it finds nothing about your problem. Fuck yes, because I know what is the problem (need to reset a cache in Nexus repository proxy but I lack permissions and is trying to find someone who can do that) but I need to go through “AI” help first. After “AI” surrended I am able to fill in “more details” and a “link to the problematic page” (which does not pass the validation due to presence of fragments in the link, Merry X-mass) and then… good luck to find that small button “submit” (which was initially on the page and was just non-valid until) you pass that torture with “AI”. Ah, forgot to mention – the snowflakes animation on that “support” page was amazing :sarcasm:.

I believe I can easily find more examples of “support” bullshit we are diving deeper with every day.

https://woordenlijst.org

https://nt2taalmenu.nl/nt2-b1-grammatica-menuverledentijd/

https://thedutchonlineacademy.com

TL;DR; I can write posts here with blocks like:

{ % texcret %}
This text must be hidden from public eyes (read encrypted).
{ % endtexcret %}

(I put extra space in tag opennings to go under the radar with the example above).

And they are texcreted into blocks like this at pre-commit via a texcret cli:

WUtMQjIAWoR+A+pe1UDbfMDaAAMtLS0AAeeq6Csra2XDS9x+sKSkQpZACVKqCLx6ngbV9BYAMC83eSK29gi7IOBJ2ryrO1UXZskCpjyCG7i/SL7wYA7+MkHTmz+NwrRdQjFM/d6XPqNIBJywYy2/fbElDne0RGqguuZsEXnFmwPfn3uw63j/UahX3+dGIuWIwFWj6W1Foz+5aJx3xnoK6KQ0qFfdZpCcC/wJILEuYzMpk1HN

Which I can temporarily decrypt (in-page without any network communication) magically by performing the following click pattern on it: dblclick - click - dblclick.

Check the demo or github repo.

Since beginning of August I got locked on a mechanical wrist watch. As a message of disgrace towards the smartwatches, smartphones and third-party apps running on my computers.

How so? Being a computer geek all my life I am loosing fate in them. But thinking deeper over that, I think better would be to say I’m loosing fate in people programming them. Not excluding myself.

I would not brag over the LLMs and all the “AI” things happenning in recent years. Talking in general about computer programms that are here to help people: are they?

You can say — “If it does the job, it’s good enough”. I disagree: consumerism is already leaving piles of crap at places of the “least concerned”. Places where beneficiars are not living. Places where their sellers are not living. Places where those who are living, will get that crap and nothing more.

So apps are everywhere now in our lives. And they are mostly crap. Name it.

Spotify — now playing, while I’m typing it. Just a few seconds ago it skipped a song midair like nothing happened. It’s discovery playlists are useless, I feel hopeless everytime I try them. “Best (something)” playlists are even worser: I hop-off after I exercise the “skip” button for almost a minute, not even being able to listen for some decent time for a song. Should it be matching my music taste or pumping me with some algorithmic one’s?

Proton Mail — (maybe you didn’t even hear of that one) — recent update changed the UX of the archive action, the most-used one, and it feels like a hiccup now when you slide email left.

Guardian App — with heir cursed limit of 30 topics you can follow: I’ve developed that number to almost 50 when suddenly it stopped working and asked me to decrease my choices until I can add new. It is very frustrating to try to find out what is the limit when you stay at 49 and, you remove more and it still says you are above the number, but what number it does not bother mentioning. Later they fixed that by mentioning the limit is 30. Still lame.

Calendar iOS — knows better how to add new event’s info than you: even when you’ve already added the date and time and then picked up a similar-called event from a drop-down list, it replaces you entries with the time of the event you selected for the f#cking name!

Oceanic dive app for iOS — these motherf#ckers managed to release a new version last year that crashed on iOS 17 while still being listed as min required in App Store. There is nothing more upsetting than a crashing dving app on your wrist, when you’re already in a wetsuite in a water set for the dive. Consumer smartwatch from the company with zero experience in diving and an app from the company with zero experience in a app development.

Quick (GoPro) — search the internet, it’s a PITA to use it, don’t want to talk about it more.

Instagram, Facebook — I deleted them at the very beginning of the year and do not miss at all. Could be the ones professionaly built, but you know what — they somehow decided they know better what their users need. Trivial things, they all “do the job” for them: feeding me with their POV of news and posts, algorithms and moderation rules.

Strava, Garmin, Suunto… all busy with their cash flow and not the customers. Check the recent Strava suite over Garmin. Poor Strava was asked to attribute the data uploaded from Garmin devices and they call it a “user’s data” but they did decide themselves what is better for the user when they restricted their API use a year ago.

I can continue the list. But if we go to the professional development, it’s the same: opinionated choices can be good. Can be bad. I meet the bad choices too often. Maybe I just notice the bad things…

So if you can program, do yourself a favor: write programs for yourself.

PS. I wear a mechanical watch on my wrist now and it reminds me that there are good things in life that run no shit and that are completely yours once you bought them. Good luck.

Checked the dev setup for this USB CYUSB4013-FCAXI from infineon last Saturday. Freely visible gap in guidelines quality between modern tools like ReactJS and that ModusToolbox.

Did end up with building Hello World example project, but development of the custom driver will take more effort.

First steps

1. Noticing a diver in the water, ask him to inflate his BCD, and KEEP EYES ON HIM
2. DO NOT turn away and:
   1. ask 2 guys nearby (preferably by name) to lock a bearing on the diver from both sides from you (15-20 meters from you).
   2. ask 3rd guy to get fins, snorkel, mask and flotation device and swim to the diver.
   3. ask first 2 guys if they have the bearing locked.
      1. Only when they confirm it, you can turn your eyes off the diver and continue organization on the shore.

After the bearing is locked

1. Ask 4th guy to come to you and be ready to call 112, and take a note of the time.
2. (?) Ask two more guys to prepare their scuba sets in case of need.
3. When snorkeler reaches the diver he checks if he is responsive: if not, he comm’s to the shore (to you) “Non-responsive diver, call 112” and begins checking if he’s breathing.
4. You ask the 4th guy to call 112 and say that “There is a non-responsive diver in the water, at {LOCATION}”.
5. You ask 5th guy to bring AED and oxygen.
6. By that time snorkeler comm’s to the shore if diver is not breathing. You relay that to the guy on the phone, so to tell 112 that “Diver is non-responsive and not breathing”.
7. Snorkeler should start breathing procedures and towing the diver to the shore.
8. You command first 2 guys (with the bearing) to prepare the shore for getting the diver in: bringing net or sail for the lift.
9. You ask another guy to meet the ambulance and check if they can come to the spot easily.
10. You ask another guy to help with keeping the shore area clean.
11. You help the snorkeler with direction where to reach the shore.
12. You choose/ask a guy on the shore, who will begin the CPR.
13. When snorkeler is at the lift area, you control the lifting procedures explicitly:
    1. telling what to do with corners of the sail
    2. where to keep the head of the diver etc.
    3. count-down the lift action
14. You command the guy to start CPR with 2 breaths first.
15. You ask the phone guy to make a note of CPR start time.
16. If AED and oxygen is at hand, then guys should start preparing them already.
17. You ask the phone guy to make notes of start time of AED and oxygen and count AED shocks.
18. You ask another guy to prepare for a switch with CPR, so they can switch after each AED shock.
19. You ask a guy to lift the diver’s scuba set on the shore.
20. You ask a guy to:
    1. get diver’s divecomputer, check and make notes of:
       1. the max depth
       2. bottom time,
       3. any warnings
       4. was it air or Nitrox
       5. was there other dives today?
       6. and keep it close to the diver.
    2. also to check what remaining pressure is on the diver’s scuba set and if it is working.
21. You wait for ambulance and can make a spot area clean of other scuba sets etc. (EMS take a lot of space!)

When ambulance arrived

1. CPR should not stop.
2. You ask the phone guy and dive-computer guys to assist you with time notes and AED counts and provide all the info:
   1. What did you see, when
   2. What was organized and when
   3. What oxygen is provided
   4. What depth and bottom time and warning were obtained from the computer and was the scuba working and was there air or Nitrox left.