Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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Archive for March 2020

Posts (14) :: Photos (5)

Posts

  • My COVID19 Diary is still ongoing, although that TOC is starting to get unwieldy. Need to think of a better UX solution for that. “Time is meaningless under extreme enhanced community quarantine” (Click to view full-size) “Time is meaningless under extreme enhanced community quarantine” 29 Mar 2020 12:00amView postClose I know it’s probably unrealistic, but I’m hoping the lockdown somehow gets lifted sooner rather than later.

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  • (Too late for the theatrical release, but it’s tradition for comic book movies, so here we are.) Overall: Totally watchable, maybe slightly better than Suicide Squad for me. Somehow still fits into some kind of DCEU continuity (after Suicide Squad) the movie is really centered around Harley, to the detriment of the other characters. I can understand why they titled it the way they did, and I can appreciate the effort to have Harley carry a Birds of Prey introduction to the masses.

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    Posted by under post at #movies #spoiler-free-review
    Also on: mastodon twitter / 0 / 320 words
  • Browsers and HTTP

    Drew Devault wrote a great post/rant about the reckless limitless scope of modern web browsers: I conclude that it is impossible to build a new web browser. The complexity of the web is obscene. The creation of a new web browser would be comparable in effort to the Apollo program or the Manhattan project. For the past year or so, I’ve been thinking about contributing to an open source project.

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  • I originally had this as a tweetstorm/rant, but it ended up quite long, so I’m posting it to the blog too. It is mostly frustration at how poorly the people in charge are handling things. Instead of asking for more budget, the govt should be telling us first how they are planning to spend the money they are already allocated, which they claimed was sufficient. Instead of saying we can’t do mass testing because of limited kits, they should be telling us about their plans for getting more testing kits, ppes, hospital capacity, etc.

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  • Past week has been difficult productivity-wise. I mean, the isolation isn’t really a problem for me since I’m usually at home anyway. But it’s difficult to find the energy to be productive about anything. It’s like the whole pandemic situation manifests as a lingering ball of anxiety in the back of my head. My parents are prayerful and hopeful that things get resolved quickly, but I’m not super optimistic - I think it’s likely to go long.

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    Posted by under post at #weeknotes
    Also on: mastodon twitter / 0 / 615 words
  • “It’s chaos, be kind” - Michelle McNamara on the world. Current events: This past week has been… challenging to say the least. Especially if you’re the sort who experiences anxiety over the smallest uncertainty. I was originally going to write about local COVID19 happenings in this space, but it ended up being way too many words. I spun it off into a separate post, and intend to update it periodically as events unfold.

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    Posted by under post at #weeknotes
    Also on: mastodon mastodon twitter / 0 / 746 words
  • COVID19 Diary

    This post will largely be about the effects of the COVID-19 virus on my country, the Philippines, including government and society’s response, largely from a personal POV. It’s actually a bit difficult to write about, but I figure it’s something I would like to be able to look back on in the future, so let’s give it a shot. The reason it’s difficult to write about is that events are unfolding and changing rapidly, and a lot of things are still unclear.

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  • Upcoming Gaming Things

    Some gaming things I’m looking forward to in the coming weeks: 12 Mar: Historic anthology 2 and return of Historic ranked in Magic Arena. Looking forward to new cards being added to the Historic pool! 18 Mar: Release of Federations DLC for Stellaris. I’m not planning to get the DLC, what I’m looking forward to is the accompanying free patch since one of the promises is improved late-game performance, something which made playing this game very annoying during the past year.

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    Posted by under post at #gaming
    Also on: twitter mastodon mastodon / 1 0 / 344 words
  • Since I stopped being a full-time employee at the end of 2015, I’ve missed around four years of monthly SSS payments. This isn’t really that big a deal, since I’ve already paid more than 10 years of premiums, I’m already guaranteed to get a pension from SSS when I reach retirement age. However, this past January I decided to resume making SSS premium payments on a voluntary basis. I had to research a bit and ask some friends about the whole process, so I thought I’d document it here both for my own recollection and in case someone finds it useful.

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    Posted by under post at #philippines
    Also on: twitter mastodon mastodon / 0 / 1003 words
  • Weeknotes 2020-03-08

    The Week That Was: The COVID19 pandemic is starting to pick up steam, both internationally (including the US) and here in the Philippines. The Trump administration seems to be handling things poorly, which would be typical to expect of an administration not used to transparency or integrity. For all our sakes they need to get their act together. The PH government appears to be doing slightly better (assuming no hidden epidemic), although their messaging still seems to be all over the place.

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    Posted by under post at #weeknotes
    Also on: twitter mastodon mastodon / 0 / 1040 words
  • Posted by under post at #gaming #games gaming
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 741 words
  • Pure CSS Spoilers

    Edit 2020/04/17: A month and a half later, I found a better way to do this! I previously had some post that had some content hidden via spoiler tags, using a custom Hugo shortcode. Since I’m an old-school developer I was previously doing this using some Javascript run on load: let elements = document.querySelectorAll(".spoiler_header"); Array.prototype.forEach.call(elements, function(el, i) { el.addEventListener( 'click', function( event ) { let nextEl = el.nextElementSibling; let display = getComputedStyle(nextEl)['display']; if (display == 'none') { nextEl.

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    Posted by under post at #software development #css
    Also on: twitter / 2 0 / 320 words
  • Date Your Work

    Part the first: I recently read/replied to a twitter thread by Patrick McKenzie: Quoted patio11's tweet: A disturbing large percentage of citations of some of my best work say “Written in 2012 but still relevant”, which a) is a direct artifact of the blogging form factor, b) is an unforced error, and c) I should just fix forever when I achieve activation energy. He continues with a short Twitter thread (click through for more), asserting that having the date on the post front-and-center is a problem because even though the article content is almost always relevant, people will tend to judge it based on the fact that it’s more than a decade old.

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    Posted by under post at
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 764 words
  • Weeknotes 2020-03-01

    It’s March! These weeknotes are coming in late in the day, for various reasons. The world news recently has mostly revolved around the COVID19 pandemic. Even the Americans are starting to get worried now. The PH still has surprisingly few cases, and we’ve even been commended by WHO for our containment efforts! Those of us who are used to our government’s usual level of competence are a bit wary - for all we know we might already have a hidden epidemic going undetected.

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    Posted by under post at #weeknotes
    Also on: twitter / 0 / 323 words

Photos

People: The president’s presscon is over two hours late!
Me:
“Time is meaningless under extreme enhanced community quarantine”
Survey: what does your work-from-home desk/workspace/battle station look like?
Mood:
(I really hope I don’t have to edit this every month)
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