#107 — Nov 30, 2025 by Evan Chen

TIL http://nyarchlinux.moe/ exists this is so funny

#106 — Nov 28, 2025 by Evan Chen

omg the Papago app has a Christmas earmuffs it's so cute

Also I totally did not know this but:

The name Papago comes from the Esperanto word for parrot.

#105 — Nov 28, 2025 by Evan Chen

I finally know the difference between UTF-8, UTF-16, and Unicode. It was actually easy to understand, I just never thought to until now when I was surfing Wikipedia and actually read about character encodings. Wish I had earlier just for feeling less ignorant.

#104 — Nov 26, 2025 by Evan Chen

I am grudgingly trying out Pomodoro for my Anki study sessions to see if helps my concentration. Feels like a death knell.

#103 — Nov 26, 2025 by Evan Chen

Actually I find it kind of cute that in Korean, 결혼하다 (to marry) is an intransitive verb (unlike in English where it's transitive --- so you "marry with someone", rather than "marry someone").

#102 — Nov 25, 2025 by Evan Chen

OTIS-WEB is now on uv too and all the Django applications are in harmony

#101 — Nov 25, 2025 by Evan Chen

Technology tried out today:

• direnv
• copier

Seem to be working as advertised.

#100 — Nov 25, 2025 by Evan Chen

At one point, the Internet was a place where anyone could carve out a little piece and say, "This is me." (source)

Yeah... I feel that.

#99 — Nov 25, 2025 by Evan Chen

You know, gunicorn just kind of worked with no fuss. (SIGHUP works as advertised and now I don't have downtime when I update my site.) I feel like usually software doesn't do that for me so I feel grateful for that.

#98 — Nov 24, 2025 by Evan Chen

Despite being a myself human, I feel is if I have no real understanding of how to teach humans how to solve math problems. I just go off vibes and what-seems-to-work-in-practice and then kind of pray.

Trying to teach robots is even worse, because I'm not a robot, so I don't even have empathy as a compass to fall back on.

#97 — Nov 23, 2025 by Evan Chen

Me learning how to send HUP to gunicorn.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -euo pipefail
umask 002

reload() {
    uv sync --all-extras --no-dev
    uv run --no-sync python3 manage.py migrate
    kill -HUP "$GUNICORN_PID"
}

trap reload HUP

# Initial sync and migrate
uv sync --all-extras --no-dev
uv run --no-sync python3 manage.py migrate

# Start gunicorn in background
uv run --no-sync gunicorn atheweb.wsgi &
GUNICORN_PID=$!

# Wait for gunicorn, restarting wait after signals
while kill -0 "$GUNICORN_PID" 2>/dev/null; do
    wait "$GUNICORN_PID" || true
done

#96 — Nov 23, 2025 by Evan Chen

Somethings comes over me when I'm coding. It's like I can't stop until everything is written and polished and perfect. Or it'll just bug me to the point I can't work on anything else.

#95 — Nov 22, 2025 by Evan Chen

I think my mom is finally starting to remember that the puzzle hunt I go to every January is called "mystery hunt", not "treasure hunt".

#94 — Nov 21, 2025 by Evan Chen

Now that I have 3 Django projects instead of 1, I feel like I'm trying my hardest to make sure the infrastructure is as similar as possible between them. The ideal case is .pre-commit-config.yaml and Makefile can just be copy-pasted between projects while ci.yml is project-agnostic:

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  ci:
    name: ✨ Full CI Audit Workflow
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: 🧾 Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v6

      - name: 🐍 Set up Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v6
        with:
          python-version: "3.13"

      - name: 📦 Install uv
        uses: astral-sh/setup-uv@v7
        with:
          enable-cache: true

      - name: 📥 Install dependencies
        run: uv sync

      - name: 🧼 Check formatting
        run: make fmt

      - name: 🔍 Run checks
        run: make check

      - name: 🧪 Run tests
        run: make test

#93 — Nov 21, 2025 by Evan Chen

Still amazed by uv.

I'm completely unqualified to take about programming, but something about uv just "feels right". I don't what I'm referring to, but it's a feeling I've had ever since I started using it.

#92 — Nov 19, 2025 by Evan Chen

Turns out that it's not actually that useful to memorize your friend's birthdays if you don't know what the current date is.

#91 — Nov 16, 2025 by Evan Chen

okay yes i admit it. pre-commit (and prek) are better than the glue scripts i was using before.

#90 — Nov 14, 2025 by Evan Chen

First time I've had my name misspelled as "Professor Loh".

Hi Professor Loh,

My name is $NAME, and I am working on a project called $APP under my
company $COMPANY.

I've been following vEnhance for years, and I deeply admire the clarity,
creativity, and rigor you bring to mathematical explanations. Your approach
to problem solving and mathematical thinking has inspired countless
students preparing for Olympiad-style contests.

Because $APP's mission is closely aligned with empowering students to
think more deeply and develop strong reasoning skills, I wanted to reach
out about a possible collaboration.

$APP is a math Olympiad practice app for Grades 1--12 (currently 1--8). It
features problem sets designed around competition-style thinking, with
progressive difficulty, logical reasoning challenges, XP-based progression,
badges, streaks, and topic-level performance tracking.

Students use $APP while preparing for contests such as the AMC, AIME, IMO,
Math Kangaroo, and many school-level Olympiads.

...

#89 — Nov 14, 2025 by Evan Chen

The NearlyFreeSpech FAQ is actually really addicting to read. Has a lot of personality.

#88 — Nov 13, 2025 by Evan Chen

I can't take people who use the word "democratize" seriously.