Designs in Orbit is my YouTube channel recommendation for March. Since September of last year, this channel has been documenting the efforts to rebuild the Clinchfield Railroad in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, after its destruction due to hurricane Helene. Every video update has taught me something new about the efforts:

• A ridiculous amount of rock and dirt was washed away during the floods. It's amazing just how little effect one dump truck has on the rebuilding efforts; some of the videos on this channel showcase dozens of dump trucks all lined up to dump their loads.
• The amount of work that has already been completed is insane. From rebuilding bridges, to moving rock, to driving pilings to shore up the railroad's track bed, a literal army of workers has made tremendous progress.

The most difficult section of the rebuild is currently ongoing, and the most recent video (below) showcases some of the expertise that excavator operators are employing in this challenging section. It's amazing what humans can do in situations like this!

I've recently been thinking about AI a lot more (who hasn't?), but I struggle to find relevant use cases for it while developing software. What are the real world applications for AI in this space? I can only think of a few low-hanging fruit:

• Writing inline documentation (e.g., method docstrings)
• Writing unit tests (if you do that sort of thing; I don't)
• Explaining legacy code that may be hard to parse
• Developing one-off scripts in infrequently used areas; for example, writing a Bash script (or Windows batch file) to complete a one-time action

What other areas am I missing? If you write software, and you're currently using AI to assist you, in what ways are you putting it to use? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I was shocked and saddened to hear about the passing of Gene Hackman; he was truly one of the greats. His filmography is chock full of fantastic movies: The French Connection (and its amazing sequel), Superman, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, ... the list just keeps going!

My favorite movie of his, however, is The Conversation, a 1974 thriller involving the life of a surveillance expert and the moral dilemma he faces when he uncovers what might be a murder plot. The suspense in this movie just builds and builds, and the acting is off the charts. It also includes a young Harrison Ford and an uncredited appearance by Robert Duvall (another favorite actor of mine).

Here's the trailer to The Conversation. If you haven't seen this film, be sure to check it out.

I love Rick Beato's interviews, but his most recent one might be the best yet. Rick sits down with Robby Krieger and John Densmore from The Doors, and they even play some of their hits in the studio where they recorded some of their albums. Great stuff!

I found another cool YouTube channel that I think is worth checking out, making it my pick for February. DevDuck follows the efforts of an aspiring game developer who is working on his dream game in his spare time. The development logs are reasonably short, they showcase the progress he makes from episode to episode, and they don't stray too far into the weeds. The production values are pretty nice, in my opinion.

I've embedded the first episode of the playlist below. There are 54 episodes (so far) in this playlist, and there's other related content on his channel as well.

I've been playing with ChatGPT recently, primarily as an alternate way to search the web. Tonight, for example, I recalled that there's a Sherlock Holmes story in which Sherlock remarks to Dr. Watson, "These are very deep waters." I couldn't remember the story containing that quote, so I decided to ask ChatGPT with the following prompt:

One of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has a line in it where Sherlock says something to the effect of "these are very deep waters." What is the quote and from what story does it come?

ChatGPT responded that the story that includes this quote is The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb. Not remembering this particular story, I asked to have the story summarized. The summary jogged my memory, but I did a quick search to double check the answer's accuracy.

Lo and behold, ChatGPT was incorrect! This quote actually appears in The Adventure of the Speckled Band (a terrific story, by the way). I found the story text online, and sure it enough it includes the aforementioned quote. A search of the text for The Engineer's Thumb does not contain this quote.

It's interesting to note that these stories are the 10th and 11th stories, respectively, to be written by Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm guessing that ChatGPT made an "off by one" mistake here, which is certainly easy to do.

I can imagine a future where search via AI allows us to side-step the SEO noise that Google pumps into the ether, but it looks like there is still a ways to go. At the rate things are progressing, however, this future may not be too far off.

Here's an amazing survival story from Helene that I stumbled upon on YouTube. It's truly incredible that this guy made it out alive.

I don't play as many PC games as I used to, but Core Keeper has drawn me back in as of late. This top-down sandbox adventure game is bursting with stuff to explore and do, and has a style that's reminiscent of Stardew Valley. In fact, Core Keeper is what happens when Terraria and Stardew Valley have a baby.

There is so much to do in this game that it's almost overwhelming. Exploration and combat are the primary activities, but there's plenty more to occupy your time. You can:

• Build a base
• Mine for ore
• Build automated mining contraptions (so cool!)
• Raise livestock
• Farm crops
• Cook food (which boosts your stats)
• Play music with in-game instruments
• Catch fish
• Craft all kinds of tools and items
• Fight huge bosses
• Build boats, railways, and go-karts to get around the map quickly

Like Terraria, each world you play in is randomized. One of the joys of the exploration side of the game is stumbling upon what the game calls "scenes," hand-crafted areas that usually have neat loot to find. You'll stumble upon giant doors that only open when you use an instrument to play the notes inscribed on them. Other times it will be an abandoned house, often containing useful furniture or crafting stations within. The remains of giant creatures will often have neat stuff located nearby.

Combat is pretty simple, generally. There are three classes you can play as, with a fourth minor class: melee, ranger, magic, and summoner. The melee and ranger classes are both reasonably well balanced, but the mage and summoner classes need work. I've read that these were added towards the end of development, so hopefully some future balances will be made here (additional content is planned for the game, according to the developers).

If you're looking for a fun time-sink, this is it. Be sure to check it out if you haven't already.

For my first new-to-me YouTube channel recommendation of 2025, I'm going with Ben Kilner. Specifically, the 100 Year Old Derelict Stables to Dream Workshop playlist, the first installment of which is embedded below.

This series has been so enjoyable! Each episode is not too long, and many of them have incredible timelapses of the effort this guy is putting into rehabilitating an old building. And what an effort! Ben is putting an amazing amount of "elbow grease" into this renovation, and he's come a decent way since the first episode. New episodes continue to get posted, so be sure to give it a follow if you are interested in this kind of thing.

In an effort to try and stay current, I have migrated this website from Bootstrap 4.6 to Bootstrap 5.3. The migration documentation is shockingly long and detailed, and I'm sure there are things that slipped through the cracks here and there. It doesn't help that version 5 expects radically different markup in some cases from its predecessor.

I am also now using a new lightbox plugin for my image gallery posts, but I find that the new plugin leaves a lot to be desired. Given how simple its code is, I'll likely roll my own version in the future to improve upon the look and feel.

If you find issues, be sure to let me know. I no longer bother using a sandbox site to test this stuff out (who needs testing?!?), so things are bound to shift around some over the coming days.

Back in 2020, I put together a very simple virtual environment helper script for Python virtual environments in Windows. One issue this previous incarnation had was the inability to walk up the tree structure, looking for virtual environment folders above the current level. As a result, you always had to be in the root of the project to activate or deactivate the virtual environment.

I've finally spent a little time fixing this, and the improved script is below. The script will now walk up the tree structure, allowing you to activate or deactivate the environment, regardless of your depth in the tree. Just save the contents as a batch file named work.bat, put it in your PATH, and use either work or work off to activate or deactivate the environment, respectively.

@echo off

set "startDir=%cd%"

:: Get the drive letter from the start directory
for %%D in (%startDir%) do set "drive=%%~dD"

:: Traverse upwards from here
set "currentDir=%startDir%"
:loop

:: Stop if we reach the root of the drive
if "%cd%"=="%drive%\" (
    echo Unable to locate venv folder in this tree
    exit /b
)

if exist "%cd%\venv" (
    if "%1" == "off" (
        echo Deactivating virtual environment
        call "%cd%\venv\Scripts\deactivate.bat"
        echo.
    ) else (
        echo Activating virtual environment
        call "%cd%\venv\Scripts\activate.bat"
    )
    cd %startDir%
    exit /b
)

:: Move up one level
cd ..
goto loop

I consume a lot of YouTube content; in fact, YouTube is essentially all I watch these days. Lots of the content I watch comes from channels I'm subscribed to (over 100 at the moment), but I always enjoy seeking out new things to watch. One of my goals for 2025 is to find 12 new channels to subscribe to. Once a month, I'll do my best to post what I've found here at the site. The ground rules for this effort will be:

1. The channel must be a new-to-me channel, so no recommendations for those that I've covered here before (which are plentiful).
2. Ideally, the channel should be small-ish. I'm sure there are giant channels out there that I'm missing out on, but I always love finding the diamond in the rough.

Many of the channels I subscribe to are naturally things I'm interested in, but I'm on the hunt for new stuff and I'd like to expand my horizons. As such, I'll try to limit my recommendations to things outside of my wheelhouse (though that won't be a hard and fast rule).

If you have any channels you routinely enjoy, please leave a comment. I'd be interested in hearing about them!

As is typical for this time of year, I'm spending some time updating this website. I've fixed two long-standing bugs: the contact form should now work properly, and the comment form for posts should now look much better on mobile devices.

The Git Bash prompt in Windows is shockingly slow. I found this gist that speeds it up considerably. Simply place this in your user's .bash_profile file.

# Very very fast __git_ps1 implementation 
# 100% pure Bash (no forking) function to determine the name of the current git branch
# Modified from: https://gist.github.com/Ragnoroct/c4c3bf37913afb9469d8fc8cffea5b2f
# Which was inspired by https://gist.github.com/wolever/6525437
function __fastgit_ps1 () {
    branch=""

    local headfile head branch
    local dir="$PWD"

    while [ -n "$dir" ]; do
        if [ -e "$dir/.git/HEAD" ]; then
            headfile="$dir/.git/HEAD"
            break
        fi
        dir="${dir%/*}"
    done

    if [ -e "$headfile" ]; then
        read -r head < "$headfile" || return
        case "$head" in
            ref:*) branch="${head##*/}" ;;
            "") branch="" ;;
            *) branch="${head:0:7}" ;;  #Detached head. You can change the format for this too.
        esac
    fi

    if [ ! -z "$branch" ]; then
        branch="($branch)"
    fi

    # Edit to suit your needs. Note the branch will be wrapped in parenthesis if it's set. Completely empty otherwise.
    export PS1="\[\e]0;\W\a\]\n\[\e[32m\]\u@\H \[\e[33m\]\w\[\e[0m\] \[\033[36m\]$branch\[\033[0m\]\n\$ "
}
export PROMPT_COMMAND=__fastgit_ps1

Earlier this week Valve released a 20th (!!) anniversary update for Half Life 2. One of the major features added is developer commentary, which they shipped for Episode 1 and 2, but never for the original game. It's been very interesting to listen to the commentary so far (I'm only about half-way through the game), and I've learned several interesting things that I didn't previously know:

• In the very first platform puzzle, if you try to throw all of the crates out of the window (breaking the puzzle in the process), a new crate is spawned in while you aren't looking; very clever!
• Loot crates will typically drop whatever you're most in need of at the moment.
• Eli winks at the player when he says that Alyx is the only thing Gordon can't handle; I've played this game countless times and I've never noted that detail!
• If given long enough, seagulls will perch on the dune-buggy and poop on it! You can then clean the buggy off by driving through shallow water.

Also released was a 2-hour documentary on the making of the game, which I'm also about half-way through. It's always fun to peer behind the curtain on stuff like this.

The recent devastation in western North Carolina from hurricane Helene is truly mind-boggling. There is no doubt that it will be multiple years before the roads there are back to anything resembling "normal." I'm sure the death toll will also only go up from where it is now, which is heartbreaking. Watching on the news, one can't help but to feel utterly helpless.

One aspect of this ever-changing story that will be fascinating to watch will be how the North Carolina DOT chooses to repair the collapse of I-40:

In addition to the curved section shown above, a longer, straighter section also washed out, with the adjacent river coming perilously close to the road's edge. From a logistical perspective, it's going to be very interesting to see how they choose to fix this collapse. Is it better to cut into the neighboring rock and essentially shift the road away from the river's edge? Do you try to backfill the river somehow? I can only imagine the engineering challenges that await this repair.

A terrific YouTube channel to follow for this kind of content is Casey Jones - Professional Engineer. He often digs deep into stories such as this, providing his own insights as a certified civil engineer. The video below has some good footage of the damage the highway received, along with some brief commentary about the challenges ahead.

Here's an interesting video describing how the calories within food are determined.

I recently read, though I don't recall where, someone comparing Amazon to a giant flea market. That statement really struck me as profound, and I've been thinking about it quite a bit. Like Google before it, searches at Amazon have grown worse in recent years, with loads more noise and less signal.

For example, when I search for woodworking t-squares, the results I'm shown are rife with Chinese no-name brands. In fact, I have to browse to the 9th item in the list to see a name brand item (Irwin, in my case). The 39th item is a Woodpeckers branded item, the gold standard that most other companies try to copy. Comically, that item is only 3-inches in length!

Nearly every other search I've performed recently has been similar: drawer slides, children's star lamp, etc. Every search results in junk; and I mean junk! Some of the reviews on these things are comical. I've started using the Fakespot browser plugin to try and help weed through the junk, but it's still a struggle.

As a result, I have been turning elsewhere to find reliable products. Home Depot and Ace Hardware are two of the go-to websites recently for product comparisons (I shop for mostly home improvement stuff these days). I am still guilty of using Amazon for the convenience of quick shipping, but I've also been shopping locally more and more. Local shops just don't have that skeezy feeling to them.

I've been listening to a lot of The Moody Blues recently. They definitely have a sound, but I like it! The following album, On the Threshold of a Dream, is a particularly strong entry, though many of their albums from this period are equally as good, including Days of Future Passed and A Question of Balance.

Give it a listen.

I have a shipment coming in two parts that I'm excited to get. The first part came via Amazon shipping and arrived mid-day. I looked at the other part and saw this:

Inevitably, this means that the shipment is delayed by at least one day. I know this is a first world problem, but I'd love to have an option to avoid using USPS as a means of shipment. Certainly Amazon can do that?