Thursday, September 5, 2019

  • Elbow.
    • Bloodwork.
      • Walk-in, 8am when they opened. Took 45 minutes in the waiting room and 5 minutes of action.
      • Made a quest account and downloaded the app, can now check results on my phone when they're ready.
    • X-ray.
      • Walk-in, 915am a little after they opened. Took 90 minutes in the waiting room and 5 minutes of action.
    • Picked up both prescriptions from yesterday.
      • Applied the topical painkiller before pull day at the gym. Felt 1000x better. It's incredible how much of a difference it makes. It's incredible how muted my exercise has been for almost 2 years now. Cheers, looking forward to the permanent solution.
  • Pinged and finally settled all Hawaii expenses.
  • Refilled all powders and pills. Threw a lot out; all that's left is turmeric and glucosamine. Once those are gone, I won't reorder. I eat turmeric root directly and I didn't find much benefit from glucosamine.
  • Lamborghini makes an SUV called the Urus. Its MSRP is 200k. Crazy. But, given that 50% of vehicles sales are SUVs nowadays, I get it.
  • Homemade protein bars.
    • Required ingredients. Just 3. My homemade nut butter, oats, and protein powder. Mix in bowl with rubber spoon then chill in fridge/freezer and cut, or just leave in bowl.
    • Optional: Honey, maple, cinnamon, cacao, coconut oil, the usual suspects.
    • Now I don't have to buy clif bars for post-gym anymore! That's the very last processed item in my whole diet, now everything is homemade!
  • Django crash course (traversy media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IyzVyrLSU).
    • python manage.py [runserver|migrate|etc] of flask-scripts comes from django.
    • Default port 8000.
    • Can use jinja, but defaults to django's own template engine (which is really similar anyway).9
    • Comes with a lot by default. An admin interface. Gives a skeleton structure for views, models, settings, and more. Creates all the files for you, just leaving you to edit them.
    • You can do a lot with django, but I still prefer flask for the most part.
  • pgadmin (latest version: 4) is a much better tool for messing with your db than psql. Use it next time.
  • Checked mail for the first time in >1mo. Got the replacement amazon card and activated. Also deposited the $14 treasury disbursement (I think it was a settlement from that credit leak?) using mobile checking which was nice.
  • The pecans at costco are definitely the cheapest, at ~$8/lb. Bought organic pecans for ~$10/lb (from a company called I'm A Nut) on Amazon, which is worth the convenience of online + organic. This is on regular Amazon, not Fresh.
  • Homemade tahini. Just like nut butter, but with seeds. Toast them, then process them. Add a little oil or salt if you want. So good.
  • Bought new tupperware. Tired of lidless, wrong-sized options.
  • Homemade kava. About 3 tablespoons of root and about half a liter (2 cups) of hot water makes a decent strength individual serving. Mix a little coconut oil in (the fat helps with extraction, just like others), then steep for 10 minutes. Then knead the tea bag.
  • Supercontest.
    • TNF verifications, first of the season. App behaved very well. Closed https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/64.
    • There was only one issue. If thursday was picked, it would reject all 5 subsequent picks if you wanted to change one of the other four (which is valid). Fixed it to verify against the current picks.
    • Closed the "before 2019 season" milestone.
  • Chrome on mobile allows you to create desktop shortcuts from your current page, but that doesn't work when you want the url pre-redirect. The trick to get around it? Disable wifi and mobile data, then the browser can't follow the redirect :) Then create the shortcut from the origin site.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

  • All of my limit sells executed. Should transfer money in a couple days.
  • After the all the pushback, zeke signed the biggest RB deal in history. 6yr, 90m. The salary cap in basketball is weird, but the absolute max you can make in a year is about 40m, which is 2-3x higher than football.
  • Chiropractor.
    • Was awesome. Used a percussion machine instead of manually doing the back cracks. Still did the neck rotation cracks by hand.
    • Stretching/cracking at home is fine, as long as you don't go too far or go too jerky.
    • I think mine is more of a muscle strain.
    • Gonna try valerian root and kava for some natural muscle relaxant. Also gonna ice more.
  • Elbow.
    • Saw my primary care for a PT + cortisone referral.
    • Ended up seeding 4 more appointments:
      • X-ray. Called and made one.
      • Blood work. Called and made one.
      • Then you go back and see primary care for the followup with results.
      • Then you get the referral and go to the ortho place for the steroid shot.
    • In the meantime, she gave me prescriptions for higher strength pain + anti-inflammatory pills and creams.
      • Dropped them off. Came back an hour later to pick up, as instructed. It had been sitting on the counter the whole time; it hadn't started being processed.
      • The pharmacist called the doctor a few minutes later to verify the amount (dosage) of anti-inflammatory cream, since it hadn't been written on the rx. The doctor's office was closed, so the verification would have to come the next day and the prescription would be filled tomorrow.
      • This is ridiculous. They're going to give me the same tube, no matter what. They just needed something to write for dosage on the tube. I told her to write the smallest dosage possible, achieving the exact conservative goal that such process requirements are meant to enforce. She couldn't.
      • This is stupid, but not unexpected from a superfluous workflow that charges 1 hour for something that should take 2 minutes in the first place. Medicine and pharma need more engineers.
  • Ordered new running socks (12 pairs) and minimalist running shoes, total $50.
  • Cool instance where amex correctly declined a stolen card close to home based on good ML with user spending habits: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/czt0x2/my_wifes_amex_was_stolen_thieves_attempted_to_use/.
  • Supercontest.
    • Client.
    • Westgate finally posted lines for week 1. Updated, tested, and did final season-readiness verifications on https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/55.
    • Submitted my picks.
    • Created a new ticket for tomorrow's live-game tnf verifications (hopefully none): https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/64.
    • Deployed, talked with petty about email, done.
    • LB was being calculated for all games, even ones that hadn't started yet. Shielded the winner and point calculation with status!='P' so that it only calculates started games. It does show the current point totals and leaderboard placement for active games, as if all were ended immediately.
    • Since the production app is not started with the uwsgi autoreloader, to ingest new changes you have to run `docker-compose restart supercontest-app-prod`.
    • To wipe cells in the production db, do something like `update public.matchup set winner = null where id = XXXX;`.

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

  • PMI dropped below 50 for the first time since 2016: https://www.instituteforsupplymanagement.org/ISMReport/MfgROB.cfm.
  • A thought experiment that usually helps people with differing opinions see some common perspective: If the world were the size of your block, would you make the same decision?
    • Would you still take advantage of that loophole you found in a business, or would you tell the owner because he's your neighbor?
    • Would you still invest in that tobacco cart when he's selling to your kids and their friends afterschool?
  • All depth charts for all teams and all offensive positions in one page: https://fftoday.com/nfl/depth.php?o=one_page&Side=Off&order_by=.
  • Beet stalks/leaves, radish leaves, and cucumbers cannot stay in the dank fridge drawers. They must be kept dry on the racks, or juiced immediately when I cut after delivery.
  • Liquidated everything in my robinhood account except MSFT, YUM (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), and BYND.
    • This includes AMAT, MKSI, LRCX, MSB, TSM.
  • Healthcare.
    • Created an account on healthnet to find providers. I can now access all my ID numbers, benefits, etc.
    • Chiro is covered under ancillary services, which uses an external search provider (ashlink, you can find the link on your profile page). Scheduled an appt with the 4th provider I called.
    • Tried to get a PT or sports medicine appointment for the elbow cortisone. The ones I called needed a group referral from my primary care provider. Scheduled an appt with her to get that. 
    • My copay is $0 for everything, which is great, but overall the experience of finding a provider has been pretty bad. Getting the account set up with the right information to filter options, calling and finding that they actually don't take healthnet, etc.
    • I also never received an ID card for healthnet (I did for medi-cal), so I ordered one.
  • Got an unsolicited text from a 2020 presidential campaign today. One of the most instant ways to get me not to vote for you.

Monday, September 2, 2019

  • Started watching schitt's creek. Good show.
  • Horribly verbose article, but centers on an important piece of advice: https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-read-academic-content-once-and-remember-it-forever-e44f26d82566. After you learn something new, summarize it to yourself every morning for the next week. This will force you to retain the information, it will require that you understand it enough to explain it, it will remind you of the small corners that are easier to forget, allowing you to look them back up, etc.
  • Went to Benihana.
  • Added the chrome extension "Improved YouTube" - it now defaults to 1.5 speed, removes all ads, and equalizes volume.
  • The new meat tenderizer works incredibly. It uses the spike grid instead of just a mallet. Flattened >1lb breasts to under a quarter inch. Smoked curry chicken.
  • Blake St. fantasy draft.

Sunday, September 1, 2019

  • This channel doodlechaos is so cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcBn04IyELc&feature=youtu.be. He syncs classic songs with that line rider game.
  • Finance.
    • Great article on algorithm trading: https://medium.com/s/story/predicting-the-stock-market-is-easier-than-you-might-think-4f1e0bc05cfe.
    • As a nonprofessional trader, your best bet is to follow exactly what the smart money (professionals) are doing. Jump on their trains. You can't outsmart them, and they have a much larger influence on the market.
    • Remember, the word for technology in the investment banking + hedge fund profession is FinTech.
    • GDP is a fantastic predictor for success.
    • ISM = institute for supply management. They publish a monthly index, based on hard data, about how the economy is trending. 50 is neutral, 0 bad, 100 good.
      • If it's hovering above 50, that's good and you'll see bull growth in most markets.
      • If it's increasing, no matter where it currently is, that's good and you'll see bull growth in most markets.
      • If it's hovering below 50, that's bad and you'll see bear decline in most markets.
      • If it's decreasing, no matter where it currently is, that's bad and you'll see bear decline in most markets.
      • Therefore: Buy when ISM is below 50 but trending upward after a valley. Sell when ISM is above 50 but trending downward after a peak.
      • Example report: https://www.instituteforsupplymanagement.org/ISMReport/MfgROB.cfm. This is so useful. Given the current state of slight growth but slowing rate, the advice would be to sell soon when it plateaus.
    • PMI = purchasing manager's index. JPMorgan publishes this. It's including in the ISM report. Same general idea.
  • There are tons of other css libraries out there for frontend besides bootstrap: bulma, spectre, tailwind, ant, foundation. They're similar: bunch of classes to help lay out and style sites. Most use flexbox for gridding like bootstrap, as well as offering many similar components and utilities. Some are pure cs, some have features that require js and offer a corresponding bundle.
  • Added logos to the supercontest readme: https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/blob/master/README.md. Took a while (annoyingly) to get the md/html rendering to jive, and I did it on master like an idiot, but it looks much better now. If ever I want to do this on another landing page, it will just be a copy-paste.
  • Made walnut butter. Still good, but my least favorite of the nut butters by far.
  • Alembic is written by the same guy who wrote SQLAlchemy.
  • Solid pier night for wes' farewell yesterday. Saw Dom Mazzetti from broscience at tower 12, said wassup.
  • Reread a lot of the bootstrap documentation for tables and forms.
  • Supercontest.
    • Updated the week_matchups and week_picks templates to use bootstrap tables properly.
    • Pale green, light coral, and khaki were the primary colors - now it's table-success, table-danger, and table-warning.
    • Added routes and nav buttons for /graphql and /graph, the latter being split from the lb into its own view.
    • Added season to the pick and matchup tables. Created two migrations: one for the new col without the NOT NULL constraint, then another to add it. Since the db exists already, you do the first, backfill all the values as desired, then do the second.
      • Psql cmmand to write all the values: update public.pick set season=2018; commit;
      • Manually edited the alembic migration to do this all in a single version file: add col, set value, add null constraint.
    • Flask can't do nested blueprints, so I basically converted week_blueprint to season_week. The matchups and picks routes use both. The leaderboard and graph routes only use season. Added similar url_defaults and value preprocessors for g, where many of the subsequent db queries are dependent on season now.
    • Season addition was a lot of work. It was a nontrivial uprooting of most views/templates/models. Every db interaction basically had to be updated to specify season now.
    • Reorganized the template hierarchy so that everything wasn't just in layout.html anymore. It's a lot cleaner now, nesting all the nav rows and everything. Each template has a corresponding js file (for the most part).
    • Active-navlink logic is universal now. All have the id nav_<route>, then it just inspects window.location.pathname.split('/').includes(id) to add the active class. All navs do this except the week navs, which work slightly differently. They don't just display all available weeks, they display all 17 from the beginning, and disables the ones that aren't available yet. This is because the nested grid, 17>12. It's easier to just lay out the structure and fill it in as it comes, rather than make the html grid nesting dynamic. It distinguishing these ids to loop over by using weeknav_ instead of nav_.
    • Added a function is_today() which does the str-int mapping for days of the week. This is already being used for restricting picks wed-sat. I added it to the fetching of scores on the /matchups route as well, so that it only checks the nfl scores if it's a gameday (thurs, sun, mon).
    • Ran into some problems because datetime.now() type objects are off in the docker container locally, as well as on the digital ocean droplet. Looks like they're just utc:
      • bmahlstedt@bmahlstedt-xps13:~/code/supercontest$ docker-compose exec -T supercontest-app-dev date
      • Sun Sep  1 05:18:22 UTC 2019
      • bmahlstedt@bmahlstedt-xps13:~/code/supercontest$ docker-compose exec -T supercontest-database date
      • Sun Sep  1 05:18:33 UTC 2019
      • bmahlstedt@bmahlstedt-xps13:~/code/supercontest$ date
      • Sat Aug 31 22:18:39 PDT 2019
    • Fixed by adding the following to the dockerfile:
      • RUN echo America/Los_Angeles >/etc/timezone && ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime && dpkg-reconfigure -f noninteractive tzdata
    • Flask appends any unused values as query params, so for the lb/graph I had to remove the week info in url_defaults and value_preprocessor. Only need season.
    • Switch from nav pills to tabs to better imply hierarchy.
    • Closed the season ticket: https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/54.
    • Changed everyone's name (on the prod db) to properly split first and last.
    • Deployed to production.
    • Emailed everybody with the new site and instructions. Done! Last items will be wednesday's smoketests when the lines are released.
  • The new joker movie is apparently phenomenal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGVQLHvwOY.
  • Impunity is the same root as punish, immunity from punishment.
  • The flask-scripts/python/alembic migrations all operate on a local database, so you have two options: run the commands in the db container or copy the db over and run the commands on the host. In order to do the former, you'd have to bloat the db with system apps like python, so I'm going to do the latter.
  • ctrl-t as a vim shortcut for tabs conflicts with ctags' shortcut ctrl-t to jump back a definition. I find the latter more useful.
  • zip(*iterableWithNestedIterables) is how you unpack in python! Never knew that was the inverse of itself.

Friday, August 30, 2019

  • Retract your bed into the ceiling: https://www.bumblebeespaces.com/.
  • The jinja templates have access to the entire g object by default, you don't explicitly need to pass it or its attributes.
  • Bootstrap.
    • Bootstrap source classes: https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/dist/css/bootstrap-utilities.css (and an analogous file for grid, etc).
    • center-block -> mx-auto.
    • Great comment on centering options in bootstrap 4: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42559095.
    • If you go more than 12 cols, it wraps. There are a few other ways to get around this: nested grids and scrolling.
    • "responsive" is such that it updates as your viewport size changes (changing from fullscreen to half, etc). You can specifically use these responsive classes on components like tables, and there are analogs for items like containers (container-fluid).
  • Supercontest.
    • Fixed the g usage, no longer passing it back to the templating engine. All of the views are 1000x cleaner no. Passing request.url_rule.endpoint for the inferred self blueprint string (like url_for('week.week_picks')) instead of week_link_prefix or switch_link.
    • week existed in the url_defaults dict as a key, but was undefined when coming from the lb view, so it didn't look up the max. Changed that to infer the max when either nonexistent OR undefined.
    • Restyled EVERYTHING. Removed a lot of my custom css in favor of the bs alternatives.
    • A lot of inconsistency was from my usage of bootstrap 4 syntax but with bootstrap 3 compiled css/js in my project vcs. Upgraded, and swapped to cdn usage of bootstrap and notify. Bootstrap requires jquery and popper.
    • Added jumbotron for ads at the top.
    • Made the syncing nice between 'active' class state for the navlinks. Js basically checks the url and infers what page it's on.
    • col-auto for variable width based on content. Changed the name/email nav item to this, in case a name or email is very long. Don't want it to span two lines.
    • Renamed the / endpoint to /matchups explicitly. This made the url inference easier to match to the tag ids for active class states.
    • no-gutters on the row didn't do exactly what I wanted for the week navs. I nested the grids in a container-fluid for 100% width, then manually set px-0 on the inner cols. Both inner and outer cols had text-center, and both inner and outer rows had justify-content-center. Looks perf now, for all breakpoints.
    • Converted the tables to bootstrap. They basically had everything I had written custom in css. So much cleaner.
  • In chrome devtools, when inspecting elements, on the css tab: if a property is crossed out, it means that something more specific or something downstream overrode it.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

  • Some chargers have a UV bath for sanitizing your phone: https://www.amazon.com/PhoneSoap-Sanitizer-Universal-Patented-Clinically/dp/B072R6MJKQ.
  • In Python, you can unpack (destructure) strings as an iterable just like a list!
  • Should probably hook my public github apps into travisci at some point.
  • Talked with the spacex folks a little bit about investing. Many hold philip morris, which is bullshit, but we talked about recession strategies as well. Some are putting into fixed rate savings accounts @2.5%, which I guarantee I can beat on the public market. My portfolio grew during 07-09. Companies like Netflix, Amazon, Groupon, Lego, and many more all saw between 20-80% annual growth during the last bear.
  • APR is a little different, it's the charge.
  • The rule of 72: timeToDouble= 72/interestRate So if you want to double your money in ten years, you need to find an annual interest rate of 7.2%.
  • two-movies.name is a good alternative for stuff like yesmovies, watchseries, movie4k, etc.
  • Vegas odds has the 2019-2020 nba champs at clippers (3.5) lakers (4) bucks (6) rockets (8) 76ers (8) warriors (12).
  • Placed fresh order. Trying a ton of new vegetables to juice like radicchio, green cabbage (usually do red), and golden beets (usually do red).
  • The Jamie from JRE is Jamie Vernon: http://www.youngjamie.com/. He's a producer/photographer/gamer. His website isn't encrypted lol.
  • Started using google calendar more deliberately. Wanted to avoid conflicts like the blake st trip.
    • Uninstalled ticktick, no longer need a todo list. Calendar has tasks and I want to keep it all in the same place.
  • SpaceX FF draft.
  • Bottled kombucha for second fermentation with blueberries. Made new batch.
  • Supercontest.
    • Talked logistics with petty for a little bit. Gave the creds to the account.
    • Created another ticket with some cleanup: https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/35.
    • Made the sc container names unique to not conflict with bmahlstedt.com.
    • Docker system prune (not volumes), reclaiming 13GB lol.
    • The password had been wiped on the supercontest db in my local persistent volume. Alter user to fix it, back to what it was before.
    • Jinja's |safe filter is what you use to disable all autoescaping. This allows you to do things like pass raw html via python strings to the renderer (similar to a jsx fashion, having html in the app), rather than relying on the template to contain all of the html.
    • Removed the week shim, the / home route will run the url_defaults to set the week at the max available.
    • Restricted it so that other users' picks for the current week are hidden until midnight on saturday.
    • Made the leaderboard, graph, and navbar show first name and last name instead of email. If names aren't present, it defaults back to email.
    • Customized the flask-user templates for various things like registration and login. Removed my main/profile and replaced it with the standard user/edit_user_profile. It was just naivete when I first built the app.
    • Centered everything, including the feedback route. Styled them all much better and much more consistent. There was a lot of shitty styling, and still is. I've moved bits and pieces over to the proper bootstrap implementation, but there's still a lot of conflict between custom classes and styles.
    • Closed https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/supercontest/issues/35.
  • Slight bootstrap refresher, since enough time usually passes between UI projects to forget syntax.
    • form-group for inputs with other tags. form-control for styling.
    • container, row, and col. You can align and justify within. 12 columns. Assign width however you want, and it can be different across different screen sizes. Comes with natural gutters, 15px on each side of each column. You can lay out forms in rows/cols in the same way.
    • text-center. <abbr> for hover. <pre> and <code> for code. Variables. User input. nav, navbar (dropdown), jumbotron.
    • clearfix should be added to the parent div around floating elements, like float-right or left.
    • Pagination, popovers, progress bars, spinners, shadows.
    • Width w height h padding p margin m. Margin can go negative (padding can't), so you could have something like mr-lg-n2 which would mean negative right margin on large viewports.
    • Screen size callouts apply to that and anything larger. sm > 576px, md > 768px, lg > 992px, xl > 1200px.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

  • eslint-utils>1.4.1 was a critical pin fix. Dependabot submitted PRs for both.
  • David Blaine gave a tech talk on how to hold your breath for longer:
    • Hyperventilate beforehand (breath in and out very quickly). This purges your body of CO2.
    • Full breath in. Don't let any out.
    • Don't move at all. Even eyes. Every movement uses oxygen.
    • Larger lung capacity is a natural advantage.
    • Be in shape. The lower your resting heart rate, the more efficient your oxygen will be.
    • Be lighter. The less pounds you carry, the less oxygen you need.
    • If you breathe pure O2 (artificially) beforehand, you can hold a lot longer as well.
    • During an extreme breathholding attempt, your BPM can drop to ~10. Holyyyyy cow.
  • Financial research:
    • Feds typically try to keep inflation at about 2% year over year for economic stability. This is a good number to keep in mind for annual raises.
    • We are currently in a very long bull market, about 2009-2019. The common definition for a bull market is a 20% swing. So if S&P500 for example hits a low of $1000, then eventually rises to 1200, the bull market will be the time period from that rise until it falls to 1000 again. But it's flexible, bull markets are just general upward trends. There was a long bull market from 1982-2000 (dotcom through y2k). Bear markets are the opposite. These are stupid names. The bull tends to attack upwards whereas the bear swipes downwards.
    • Insider sales (executives of big companies selling stock) are often good signs of a swing towards bear. This has been increasing a ton lately (aug saw over 10b sales).
    • Yield curve inversion is a comparison of 2yr vs 10yr treasury notes. The longterm note should yield higher interest in a good market, obviously. When it inverts and the 2yr note yields higher interest, it usually means a decline is on its way. The late 20XX recession hit about 2 years after the inversion. Right now, the 2yr is at 1.526% and the 10yr is at 1.479%. The metric here is -4.7 basis points, which is the hundredth-of-percentile difference. This is a really bad inversion.
    • The ongoing china trade struggles, tariffs, and presidential tweets are also causing some economic risk.
    • All factors above considered, we're very likely headed for bear. Timing is the golden ticket now.
    • During recessions, invest in bigger companies. Less risk. Small companies and companies with debt usually do not survive.
    • Treasury bonds are one of the safest places to put money before/during a recession. You're effectively loaning the government money and you get paid the interest. This loan is part of the national debt! You can't just buy bonds like shares on the public market, you bid for them.
    • Gameplan, I guess: sell some of my smaller holdings and finish the tax burden. If any leftover: bonds or low risk low return big companies.
  • Digital ocean sent me an email that they had detected an unsecured mongo instance on my droplet. This is such a cool service - I love it.
    • Mongo starts up by default without auth. Any user on the local system can create/delete/read/write. This is how the blog component of my bmahlstedt.com site was set up.
    • I would shell into the database (which persists over a docker volume) and add the admin user. Then add a conf file with the creds (gitignore) just like supercontest, and use it within the backend app's docker composition so that it could authenticate when it tries to communicate with the db container. Then you enable auth in the mongo system conf file. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-mongodb-on-ubuntu-16-04. I chose not to do this, because I don't use the blog.
  • A research elephant was given 297mg (that's like 3000 doses) of acid in 1962: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/feb/26/research.science.
  • Five square puzzle, programmatic solution. http://thinkingames.com/WorkPages/ProductSingle.aspx?pID=5.
    • Always check the simple brute force first.
      • There are 5^25 permutations of the grid if you ignore rotation and piece constraints. That's 298 quadrillion possibilities, which is way too much to brute force. Even if each grid took 1 microsecond to check, the whole state space would take 1000 years to verify.
    • What about if we approach it with the piece-placing route?
      • Each 1x2 piece has 20 positions while vertical and 20 positions while horizontal. Then if you count for flipping while in each position, that's 80 positions total. Each 1x3 piece has 15 positions while vertical and 15 positions while horizontal. Then if you count for flipping while in each position, that's 60 positions total. 
      • There are two 1x2 pieces and seven 1x3 pieces, so we have 80^2*60^7 = 1.79e16. This is 18 quadrillion instead of 298. We're getting a little closer.
      • In reality, there are many fewer because as each piece is placed, it increasingly constrains the available positions of the remaining pieces.
    • Sounds like we should do a recursive piece-placing strategy, failing fast if any configuration fails?
      • Ok but first, ignore the symbols. Let's simply check the permutations for shape placement. Once we have this number N, we can probably brute force. For each shape-constrained grid, we'll have 14*12*10*8*6*4*2*4*2 options, or 5,160,000. The number N shouldn't be too high, there are only so many ways to organize items of length 3 in a 5x5 grid.
      • Well let's look at an anchoring strategy for the recursion. This will constrain it even further. No matter the state of the grid, every piece can be considered to have an anchor: its upper-left-most cell. So every grid has 9 anchors. From each anchor, there are only 4 options: 3x1 horizontally, 3x1 vertically, 2x1 horizontally, 2x1 vertically. So we can iterate through each of these permutations, 4^9 = 262,000. Starting in the upper left origin, walk all of these paths with 4 branches at each anchor. This should yield 4x duplicate solutions as well for 90deg rotations, so we expect ~65,000 total iterations to find N from above, N, being a much smaller number because a small percentage of the anchor permutations fit all 9 pieces on the grid.
      • There ended up being 164 permutations of shape placements, counting all rotations, which means that N = 41.
      • The first attempt at part 2, recursively placing all permutations of the 9 pieces for 5,160,000 options without fail-fast, railed my i5 at 100% cpu for 4 minutes, growing the stack to about 85% of my 4GB of RAM then using the majority of 8GB swap as well. The calculation was not done after 20min, for a single grid of the N=41, so I killed it and proceeded with the validity check after each placement.
      • Properly failing fast on part two's recursion yields 32 solutions in ~16s on my i5. This is from N = 164, so we haven't respected rotation yet. The stack is negligible in mem. Once all 32 solutions are known, we could write a programmatic deduplication of the rotation/mirror equivalents, but 32 is small enough to do by hand.
    • Solved:
    • Put all code in https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/fivesquared.
  • Trading bot:
    • Created new github repo for this app.
    • Wrote my own robinhood api wrapper for transactions, stripped mostly from jamonek. I don't trust third-party code with my financial keys.
    • Used yahoo_fin for the inputs. Confirmed they offer live pricing now.
  • In py>=3.4, the reload built-in has moved to importlib.reload(). Use `from importlib import reload` then stay the course.
  • "Patience is not the ability to wait - it's how we behave while we're waiting." - Joyce Meyer
  • If your flow requires break/continue to various layers of loops (more than 1 away), then you need to refactor into functions.

Monday, August 26, 2019

  • You have 3 natural cortisol peaks throughout the day, 8-9, 12-1, and 5-6 (approximately). While cortisol is normal regarded as the bad stress hormone, this is only after long-term stress effects. Short-term, cortisol can be regarded as the body's natural upper to increase alertness. Drinking caffeine while the body is already peaking cortisol is not efficient, because then your body starts relying on the external caffeine and reduces internal cortisol production. This is more detrimental than you'd expect - it both REDUCES your natural energy levels and makes you more tolerant of caffeine for external stim. You want to drink caffeine during the cortisol valleys, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. This is like any other drug - take it when you need it, not when the symptoms are absent.
  • Smoked a curry pork butt today.
  • LD50 is the dose which would be lethal for 50% of people.
  • Tons of markets suffered (toys, cars, etc) at the end of last week due to trade wars with China, tariffs, Trump tweets to pull production from China, etc.
  • Yes, the gelatin in jello and candy is the same gelatin from rendered animal collagen.
  • The yahoo_fin module shows that the live stock prices change on the order of magnitude: seconds. It's not consistent. Sometimes it's one second. Sometimes it's 15 seconds.
  • James Randi had a show called exploring psychic powers where he made fools of people who claimed to be psychics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldr2JTuHBy0.
  • Finance research.
    • Joined 3 subreddits: r/investing, r/personalfinance, and r/tax.
    • SpaceX should be shielded from gigantic market dip, because fundamentally our product has nothing to do with China, and because we're a private company, but unfortunately that's not how the market works. Our valuations will see a decrease from this. I attribute it mainly to how misguided the concept of investment has become. People are not investing because they believe in things, adding value to products they support; they invest as a moneymaking opportunity. They invest for personal financial growth. This lumps the market into a singularity, a big pool representing fluctuating waves of chances, not orthogonal markets representing their respective contributions to society. If investors actually placed money based on virtue, each corner could roller coaster in isolation from the others.
    • ETF = exchange traded fund. These are collections of other assets that are grouped to track an index, like the S&P500 ETF does for S&P500.
  • "Link in bio" on instagram is annoying af. Just give me the link, don't shamelessly take 4 seconds to self-promote. You're intentionally injecting the equivalent of an ad between the customer and their desired content, causing a bad taste in their mouth before consumption. Not smart.
  • New Chappelle standup on Netflix.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

  • googlefinance used to be a maintained python wrapper for realtime stock data, but no longer. Yahoo-finance used to be 15min delayed, so it was a lesser option, but now it appears that it offers live prices and is maintained. I'll use yahoo-fin for my bot.
  • Joe silva was the longtime matchmaker for the ufc, but now the role is filled by Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard. They're the #2 decisionmakers after Dana.
  • Went to an IT-chapter2 themed haunted house last night to promo the upcoming movie. Was awesome.
  • Also saw Ready or Not, which was surprisingly good. I had no idea it was half comedy.
  • Chipotles, by definition, are just smoked jalepenos. I'll try some with the pork butt tomorrow. They only need to be on for an hour or so.
  • Went to Smorgasburg for BBQ day. Finally had Moos. Was very good.
  • Andrew luck retired, shocking everyone.
  • My amazon visa was declined the past couple times. They didn't have online support, so I called. They card had expired, and they had not sent a replacement. The agent said that was weird - the automated system should have done so already. Got a new one on the way.
  • Went to Smorgasburg for the first time. The "row" in the arts district is pretty nice, but the neighboring smorgasburg sector is kinda dumpy. It's a distribution center that has worn forklifts and homeless clutter. They fill it with food stands every sunday and it becomes a nice little food court.
  • Moos was there. Overall grade: B+. Satisfied, overall. A- for the actual grade in pitmaster quality, but marked down for the ludicrous prices.
    • A. Brisket was very good. Got point only. burnt ends were tasty, good seasoning level. Very tender. Franklins remains untouched, but this comes in shortly after. Light on smoke flavor (i prefer heavy), but light on seasoning (i prefer light) and fantastic on moisture. This is better than my homemade brisket.
    • B-. Spare ribs. Decent. Was wrapped too early, because the bark formation was minimal. Not seasoned much at all. My ribs are better.
    • C+. Beef ribs. Ok. This cut is hard to screw up because it's so fatty, so the flavor can't really be missed, but the tenderness was average. Doesn't come close to my homemade honey/maple short ribs. I would have given this a B+, but the price was asinine. They charge $56/lb for the regular beef ribs, and $60/lb for the pastrami beef ribs. Absolutely-fuggin-ridiculous. You can get raw short rib, from the plate, prime grade, for $7/lb from a decent distributor.

Saturday, August 24, 2019

  • Went through MD/HN.
  • Read a bit of Vue's docs, for comparison to React.
    • vue init webpack <myproj> is like create-react-app
    • Still use components, and they update as the underlying data changes, but you do so with classic html/css/js rather than jsx (html in js). You CAN combine these all into a single .vue file with meta js/css/html.
    • You get a few useful html classes like v-for v-if v-bind v-on which allow you to conditionally/customizably display data and/or events.
  • Next.js is the framework for full node/react apps (as opposed to create-react-app for simple single-page apps).
  • Daytrading is ... just transacting throughout the day on small fluctuations, rather than long-term.
  • Shorting, You do this when you think something is overvalued or you expect it to drop.
    • Selling shares that you do not own with the obligation to buy them back later.
    • Say I short company A. I go to a broker and "sell" 10 shares for $100 each. I then have $1000 and the requirement to "buy" the shares back at some later date.
    • This is like the opposite of a regular transaction, where you buy and hope it increases.
    • If the price drops, as I expected, to something like $80 then when I "buy" all 10, I will have effectively bought at 80 and sold at 100, making a profit of $20 per share.
    • If the price INCREASES, then you are losing money. If it goes to $150, you've lost $50 on each share.
    • There is an important difference with this method. Shorting stocks can theoretically lose you an infinite amount of money. With a regular stock purchase, say for $30, you can only lose that $30. If you short a $30 stock, like an early google share, and it rises to $1000, you've lost $970, and will continue to lose more as the price increases.
  • Good documentary about dana white and the fertitta brothers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWMG1PsR21U. TUF saved the early days of the UFC!
    • Lot of respect for these guys building a product that THEY supported. Decisions were not solely made for finance or for business, they were made for the furtherment of the sport. These 3 men believed MMA should be up there with NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL, so they sole intent of the UFC was the exposure of that to the fans.
    • WME bought the UFC for 4 billion recently. They also own zuffa, miss universe, and more. WME stands for WIlliam Morris Endeavor, but the company is simply known as Endeavor now.
    • Here are the rankings for sports agencies from 2018: https://www.forbes.com/sports-agencies/list.
  • Bobbing a bike is making it naked and removing the passenger assemblies so it ends at the seat (like a bobtail). I won't remove the tail of the bmw so that I can still use the saddlebags.
  • Breakfast at Hangar with the softball crew.
  • Change it to ceddit in the url to see the mod-removed comments, etc.
  • The reason you have to import react in seemingly unnecessary places is usually due to jsx.
  • Dockerfiles can have multiple RUN instructions to build the image, but only one CMD or ENTRYPOINT. This is what is run to start the image.
  • Docker rework for bmahlstedt.com.
    • Standardized the docker compose file with separate services (and dockerfiles, where necessary) for dev and prod.
    • Got it proxied by the nginx container, with routing by domain), and certified by the letsencrypt container (super simple with current umbrella docker-compose infra).
    • The frontend in production is actually pretty easy. You just run npm build in an intermediate container then point nginx at the static files in a second container (the docker name for this is multistage build). The output of ./build/ goes into /usr/share/nginx/html.
      • Remember, the output of this build looks hardly like the source js you wrote. It bundles and minifies quite a bit for the optimized production build.
      • Another kinda weird thing - you still use jwilder/nginx-proxy to route the initial requests to the proper domain. This goes to a flask app with uwsgi on the supercontest app, but for bmahlstedt.com, it goes from the nginx reverse proxy container to another nginx container serving the npm build output. This is not superfluous, something needs to serve the static files. There's another container running pm2/node for the backend, obviously - this just makes more sense because it's nginx->pm2 instead of nginx->nginx.
    • Instead of starting the app with `node` I start it with `pm2` the node process manager. This allows you to start/stop/monitor and more.
    • The only increase in complexity is because of react-router, which you have to make dynamic. To do this, you simply overwrite the default nginx.conf to include root and index.
    • The other
    • Deployed to production. Closed ticket #9.
  • Cool CDN to get SVGs for common brands: https://github.com/simple-icons/simple-icons.

        Thursday, August 22, 2019

        • Last night at midnight was my 1 billion second birthday! Legitimately more excited than my regular birthdays. This happens once in a lifetime. Went and saw a rooftop bar showing of the big lebowski.
        • Digital ocean now supports managed mysql and redis databases. This is convenient (although I do all the management myself).
        • Finished the rusty lake / cube escape series. Absolutely loved them. Intriguing story, macabre, good difficulty balance.
        • Lactose intolerance can be beaten: https://elemental.medium.com/can-you-make-a-lactose-intolerance-disappear-de4f4948d8d. The human body is wonderfully adaptive. The more dairy you consume, the more tolerant you become.
        • You already knew about this, but remember that flamescope is the name for netflix' graphical perf tool: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/netflix-flamescope-a57ca19d47bb.
        • Making almond milk is the same process as oat milk (blend, strain), but you can optionally do any of the following beforehand: soak, roast, peel. You can skip any of those, you just won't get as much flavor out.
        • Removed over 20 fairing pieces on the BMW. Looks so much better now:

        Tuesday, August 20, 2019

        • Tallow and lard are basically the same, but tallow is from beef and lard is from pork. You simply render the fat (trimming away meat, blood, etc) low and slow and then cheesecloth filter it. While still liquid, you can pour into a pan and then cut into bars after it solidifies at room temp. Then you can use it for cooking, lotion, candles, etc.
        • There is a really cool set of escape room mobile games called the rusty lake series. This is the order to play: seasons, lake, arles, harvey's box, case 23, mill, hotel, birthday, theatre, roots, cave, paradise, paradox. I've beaten 7 of the 13 so far, all without hints.
        • Remember LAMP = linux apache mysql php. It's an oldschool stack.
        • Served papers to the ex for briley. Interesting process. Sent FL-100/110/120/140/142/150, filled out FL-115 as the server myself. Basically just disclosures of assets and then an agreement on how to divide.
          • Certified mail costs a few extra dollars and the courier ensures that the package is delivered to the recipient directly.
          • "Return Receipt" is when they mail you a slip immediately when the recipient acquires the package.
        • A gallon of whole milk blended together with 3-4 jars of peanut butter is ~20,000 calories.
        • You can create separate docker-compose files for dev vs prod, or you can create separate services within a single docker-compose file. I prefer the latter. Both require specific command line syntax anyway:
          • docker-compose -f docker-compose-prod.yml up
          • docker-compose up app-prod
        • NODE_ENV is an important environment variable. Express understands it automatically. It basically disables all caching and gives you more verbose logs.
        • You should create anonymous volumes for node_modules in docker containers running node apps, if you are also mounting your source dir, because otherwise it will overwrite.
        • Remember that the BUILD is all that knows about the dockerfile. You may have slight overlap between actions in the docker-compose and the actually dockerfile because of this. Examples:
          • Mounting the src directory vs COPY it over.
          • command: or CMD to start the app.
        • Docker recomposition.
          • Finished all dev containers for frontend/backend/database. Moving on to production next.
          • The full address to link containers like app <-> db should use the container NAME (your choice), not localhost or anything.
          • For some reason, mongoose's NewUrlParser fails on mongodb://database:27017. Weird. Changed back to the (still default) old, deprecated one.
          • You can clean up renamed containers with docker-compose up --remove-orphans
          • The axios posts in the react frontend query the backend for blog posts and such. Previously, when everything was on one host, localhost was sufficient as an address here. I had to create a docker network and specify it for all containers that want to talk over it. https://medium.com/@xiaolishen/develop-in-docker-a-node-backend-and-a-react-front-end-talking-to-each-other-5c522156f634.

        Monday, August 19, 2019

        • Bought and smoked a pork butt. Served with homemade corn tortillas.
        • Made new batch of cinnamon oat milk.
        • Transferred banana hibiscus kombucha to the fridge after second fermentation. Was tasty, but not as sweet as usual because it fermented for longer than usual due to vacation. Lots of bubbles.
        • Made new batch of pecan butter. This one was toasted (350F/5m), with touches of cinnamon, salt, and maple.
        • Paid outstanding bill from Dr. Levy.
        • Notes from the hawaiian imu:
          • You're not smoking the meat, you're heating up rocks and then using them as the single heat source while insulated.
          • Dig a pit. Wood on bottom. Rocks above that.
          • Burn mesquite wood for a couple hours until the rocks are hot. Almost all of the flavor from the smoke is lost to the atmosphere.
          • Banana stalks above the rocks.
          • Pig wrapped in chicken wire and place on banana stalks. We only salted (no rub), and it was right before (not enough time to brine).
          • Tea leaves above pig for flavor. Banana leaves above tea leaves for insulation.
          • Wet burlap above banana leaves for humidity.
          • Tarp above burlap for water insulation. Dirt above tarp for heat insulation.
          • Come back in 8-12 hours. No probes!
          • Every cut was pulled, not just the shoulders. Big pans of full-pig pulled pork.
          • All around, a pretty archaic process. Almost all could be replaced with a barrel, just a metal cylinder for smoking. The biggest crimes are definitely the wasted smoke, no brine/rub, and the lack of closed-loop temperature control.
          • It came out pretty tasty still. Hogs are delicious. Not fall off the bone tender - I expect it was probably at ~180F. The shoulderblades and hip bones were actually kinda hard to remove, which doesn't happen at 200+.
          • No smoke ring, as expected because the pig wasn't exposed to wood fire.
          • No bark. No convection. This is particularly tough because the hog is not a homogeneous cut, each region needs and saw different temps (uncontrolled).
        • c10k was a challenge proposed to web developers a few decades ago: create a web server that can handle 10,000 clients at once. http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html. nginx was written in response to this challenge!
        • Reworked the docker composition for bmahlstedt.com: https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/bmahlstedt.com/issues/9.
          • Mongod was not an enabled unit on my machine, so when the laptop died on vacation, systemd did not restart the service on return.
          • postgres default is 5432, mongo is 27017. Remember that you'll get binding address-in-use errors if you have the db running on the host and you try to start the container. Kill it on the host with `sudo systemctl stop <>` or change the port.
          • Added the whole shebang. Dockerfiles for each container build, compose to bring all the services together, makefile to wrap the common service start commands.
        • "Saturday night palsy" is a medical condition where you can permanently damage nerves by sleeping on them wrongly after drinking.
        • Betsy wedding trip is the same weekend as the blake st socal trip. Planning miscoordination.
        • Finished eloquent javascript and added all notes to drive.
        • Watched the new lion king in the background. Was pretty good.
        • MIME = multipurpose internet mail extensions. This is a spec for many things, the most common being content-type headers. All popular languages offer a module that can infer the correct mime types based on most common file extensions.

        Saturday, August 17, 2019

        Friday, August 16, 2019

        • Home from Hawaii. Such a good trip.
          • Uploaded my pics from both legs to their respective shared albums on google photos.
        • Amazon fresh order. Cut and prepped all veggies. Made cacao oat milk.
        • Bottled the banana hibiscus kombucha for second fermentation. Started the next batch (green tea).
        • My raw cacao powder had a prop 65 warning for reproductive harm on it? https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov/fact-sheets/foods.
        • App idea: single-click payment splitter. Similar to splitwise, but a few critical features. You push a button in the app on your phone, and it will check the most recent transaction on your credit card to populate the total. If that's not available, or you paid cash, you can take a single picture of the bill to populate the total. The app then autodetects your friends' phones in the nearby vicinity. It proposes those N people to split it with, then allows you to confirm (or add/remove people, changes portions, etc). Once the whole dinner/vacation/whatever is finished, you can settle up, integrate with venmo, etc. If all goes well, bill splitting becomes a single click of a button whenever you pay for the group.
        • Fed mouse.
        • Verified that my contact info was correct for both of my domains (required by ICANN).

        Wednesday, August 7, 2019

        • Fantastic guide to forms in react:
        • Checked in to hawaii flight. Annoying to have to pay to check a bag ($30). There's gonna be traffic on the way to a 9am flight, and LAX is under construction, so I'm gonna take the bike.
        • To rename a variable during an es6 obj deconstruction, do `const { key: newName } = obj`
        • Added password protection to form submission in the blog component of the app (rather than the whole route, so people can still read). It's simple for now, just an env var defined at server start, and an <input type="password"> field that it checks before creating/editing and a prompt before deleting any blog posts in the db and frontend.
        • axios' delete method passes data. post passes body.
        • PM2 is a very popular process manager for node. It can be used to start an express app, like `pm2 app.js` instead of `node app.js` or nodemon app.js`.
        • Created the ticket for and started working on the container deployment of the new apps that make up bmahlstedt.com: https://github.com/brianmahlstedt/bmahlstedt.com/issues/9. Will finish when I get back from Hawaii in a week!
        Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)