Alex Willmer's Avatar

Alex Willmer

@alex.moreati.org.uk

Python and Ansible developer. Recovering Sherlock. Armchair energy pundit. Pun usually intended. He/they. 🐘 @alex@moreati.org.uk https://social.moreati.org.uk/@alex

53 Followers  |  81 Following  |  185 Posts  |  Joined: 21.10.2024  |  1.7035

Latest posts by alex.moreati.org.uk on Bluesky

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Injured runaway horse retires from military service Quaker, 15, was one of five Household Cavalry horses spooked while on an exercise in Belgravia.

"the horses got lost. They were at a place called Wilson Crescent. They came around the crescent the wrong way and exited on the east side. Had they exited on the north side they'd have gone back to Hyde Park" -- Lt Col Matt Woodward, www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
TIL horses play Mornington Crescent

11.10.2025 09:50 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Client Challenge

Announcing lzma-cf 0.0.3 pypi.org/project/lzma... Now with 1000% more pre-compiled wheels on Linux and macOS pypi.org/project/lzma...

09.10.2025 08:38 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

08.10.2025 16:20 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I wonder whether multiple rotors is the production design, or just a stepping stone for protypes. I imagine a single rotor would get more power for the same size, but it might be too heavy for the inflatable parts to lift/support. Maybe it's easier just to go to higher alttitude with faster winds.

05.10.2025 23:07 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Post image Post image

The S1500 is the largest floating wind turbine ever launched.
It's 60m long, 40m in diameter and houses 12 turbine-generators in its annular duct, generating potentially 1.2 MWe travelling down a high voltage tether to the ground.
Belongs to Beijing SAWES Energy Technology Co.

05.10.2025 21:04 β€” πŸ‘ 40    πŸ” 6    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
Professor Farnsworth announcing "Good body, everynews! lzma_cf supports multithreaded compression"

Professor Farnsworth announcing "Good body, everynews! lzma_cf supports multithreaded compression"

Announcing lzma-cf: multithreaded LZMA for .xz files in Python; through the power of CFFI and standing on the shoulders of PyPy pypi.org/project/lzma... #Python

03.10.2025 16:24 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Screenshot of the post this is in reply to. The πŸ‘‰ isn't rendered, 3 οΏ½ glyphs appear in it's place.

Screenshot of the post this is in reply to. The πŸ‘‰ isn't rendered, 3 οΏ½ glyphs appear in it's place.

FYI, there's something slightly odd with Unicode in these Bluesky posts. Here's how this one appears in my timeline (Firefox 143.0.1, amcos 15.6.1). However it eppears correctly abovce the reply form as I type this.

30.09.2025 14:31 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

yes, and Blue Peter methodically reading out URLs in full: aitch tee tee pee colon forward slash forward slash bee bee cee dot cee oh dot you kay forward slash ...

29.09.2025 15:47 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Can an 8 x NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra SXM HGX B300 run Crysis? Or less flippantly: if/when the arse falls out of the AI market, could I buy a liquidated AI accelerator to use as a GPU? Or are they too specialised to be repurposed? Could another branch of computing snap them up, e.g. fluid dynamics?

29.09.2025 14:59 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Talk Of Fascism Dangerous, Warns Ministry Of Compliance

Talk Of Fascism Dangerous, Warns Ministry Of Compliance

Talk Of Fascism Dangerous, Warns Ministry Of Compliance

26.09.2025 16:00 β€” πŸ‘ 15138    πŸ” 3889    πŸ’¬ 120    πŸ“Œ 105

The PyCon UK loo fix had a regression, so today I changed the flush valve. It turns out the cistern was "secured" to the wall by sealent and the power of friendship. For now it's just the friendship.

25.09.2025 17:43 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Philanthropies Strike a Promising Deal to Turn Back H.I.V.

This is huge: β€œA drug that provides near-perfect protection against H.I.V. with shots just twice a year will be made available at $40 per patient annually in low- and middle-income countries, offering new hope… making lenacapavir a realistic choice in countries with constrained resources.”

24.09.2025 11:51 β€” πŸ‘ 4164    πŸ” 1314    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 152

PyCon UK fixed my toilet.
If your fill valve is topping up your cistern every couple of hours, try turning off the water and visiting a Python conference for a few days. When you get home note the empty cistern and turn the water back on. The problem may have resolved itself. #PyConUK

23.09.2025 08:52 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
PYCON UK 2025: Localization and translation of programming languages, Felienne Hermans
YouTube video by PyCon UK PYCON UK 2025: Localization and translation of programming languages, Felienne Hermans

When is a digit simultaneously a number and not a number? When you try to internationalise an English centric programming language www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri3W... #PyConUK

21.09.2025 06:58 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Client Challenge

Mitogen 0.3.29 is out with support for Python 3.14
🐍 https://pypi.org/project/mitogen/0.3.29/
πŸ—’οΈ https://mitogen.networkgenomics.com/changelog.html

18.09.2025 22:49 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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1999: Global solar power exceeds 1000 MW.
2012: Global solar power exceeds 100,000 MW.
2022: Global solar power exceeds 1,000,000 MW.
2024: Global solar power exceeds 2,000,000 MW.

18.09.2025 21:34 β€” πŸ‘ 111    πŸ” 19    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

> To reduce waste, we encourage you to bring your own lanyard

Slap me and call me a one hoopy frood, I've remembered to pack my lanyard (and my towel) #PyConUK

18.09.2025 17:41 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

A side note: I think the source package Python-3.14.0rc2.tar.xz was produced by libarchive bsdtar, perhaps on macOS. It doesn't contain the optional XZ block headers compressed size or uncompressed size. GNU tar (using xz-utils) seems to always produce them.

12.09.2025 20:55 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Compression is a tricky part - most binary deltas operate on uncompressed data. Once I've assembled foo-1.0.1.tar how do I make foo.1.0.1.tar.gz (or .xz) so the sha256 or sha512 matches what's published? Initial investigation suggests it may be possible in some cases, more details to come.

12.09.2025 20:43 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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GitHub - moreati/blob2blob: A playground for recreating software packages bit for bit A playground for recreating software packages bit for bit - moreati/blob2blob

i've been playing with stripping the contents out of tarballs and zip files github.com/moreati/blob.... It annoys me that we download 500 MB of foo-1.0.0.tar.gz then another 500 MB of foo-1.0.1.tar.gz. I want to download a small delta; or store the file payloads seperately, de-duplicated.

12.09.2025 20:37 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I voted

05.09.2025 17:09 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Multiple members are allowed in a gzip file Multiple members are allowed in a gzip file. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

#TIL A gzip (.gz) file can contain multiple compressed "members". When decompressing such a file `gzip` appears to concatenate multiple members into a single output file, e.g. gist.github.com/moreati/939f...

05.09.2025 11:13 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

`Ungrittibanzli()` a function name that leaves an impression github.com/google/gritt...

04.09.2025 07:59 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

$ python3 -m hash_fixture -n 1000
000000001 hash-fixture/v0 sha256-47DEQpj8HBSa+/TImW+5JCeuQeRkm5NMpJWZG3hSuFU=
...
000001000 hash-fixture/v0 sha256-9RdzeZe/n9KmfFw8shsxR6mnnIaGp6QJv76d9y0ZFJU=

31.08.2025 23:20 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Client Challenge

Announcing hash-fixture pypi.org/project/hash... Create reproducible test files on the fly to test data transfer or storage. A stable checksum guaranteed, or your money back. #Python #Testing

31.08.2025 23:20 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Debating: should release a package with just the '-' arg -> sys.stdin/sys.stdout translation in argparse.FileType? Python 3.14 will (rightly) deprecate FIleType. It conflates validation & file opening in bug prone ways. However I'd like to avoid `if args.arg == '-': ... else: ...` everywhere.

29.08.2025 22:14 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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GitHub - jirutka/setup-alpine: Easily use Alpine Linux on GitHub Actions, with support for QEMU user emulator Easily use Alpine Linux on GitHub Actions, with support for QEMU user emulator - jirutka/setup-alpine

Nifty Github Actions trick: run tests or other steps inside an Alpine chroot, even on a different architecture (emulated by Qemu) github.com/jirutka/setu...

28.08.2025 15:30 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

TIL: The URL "https://github.com/pamelafox.png" redirects to my GitHub profile pic. That's handy!

27.08.2025 19:09 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 1    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Configuration & API β€” Nox 2025.5.1 documentation

#TIL Nox can read the supported Python versions from pyproject.toml nox.thea.codes/en/stable/co...

27.08.2025 19:48 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Don’t ask forgiveness, radiate intent As simple encouragement to act, β€œask forgiveness, not permission” is fair enough. But here are 4 reasons to signal your intentions:

It's better to radiate intent than to ask forgiveness, or ask permission. I intend to try this out as a new (to me) maxim. Thanks to @elizayer.bsky.social medium.com/@ElizAyer/do...

21.08.2025 10:36 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

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