The video below documents the first revenue train since Helene to run down the Clinchfield subdivision in the North Carolina mountains. This route was completely destroyed by Helene, and just under a year later is now back open. Amazing work by all the crews involved!

My wife and I enjoy watching travel shows (Rick Steves, for example), so we were pleased recently to stumble upon Jeb Brooks' channel, which is my channel recommendation for September. Jeb and his wife Suzanne post videos on all types of travel with a particular focus on trains, a mode of transport that we also enjoy.

The video I have linked below covers a multi-day trip they took across Canada in a first class train cabin. I've been impressed with their attention to detail in their videos, as well as the videography. Both Jeb and Suzanne are a little goofy, which makes for some truly enjoyable content. They are also fellow North Carolinians, which is cool (they live in Greensboro). Be sure to check them out!

I love watching experts do what they do best. A new-to-me YouTube channel allows me to do just that: Captain Retriever follows the efforts of Jesse Hofmeister as he both recovers and tows boats in and around Palm City, Florida. The videos have no narration, but it is so evident that this guy knows what he's doing.

Some of the skills he demonstrates on his channel include righting capsized boats, refloating sunken boats (a true challenge, it seems), and towing boats to safety. The video I've linked to below was posted just today, and shows his skill at navigating extremely tight canals with a boat in tow. I was truly amazed at how he knew just what to do to keep the towed boat safe from the numerous hazards.

Be sure to check it out.

This afternoon I spent all of about 5 minutes whipping up a "logo" for this site in Google Gemini. My initial prompt was:

Generate a logo for a site named "Born Geek" in the style of a video game.

The result was this (click to view the larger variant):

This was a neat first step, but I felt it was a little too video-gamey. I then added to the prompt:

I like the style of this image, though I'd also enjoy it if there were other "geeky" embellishments. Can you add some indications of programming or computers to it?

This was the result of that tweak (again, click to expand):

I thought this was cute, though it still leans heavily into the video game esthetic. I'll use it in the site sidebar for now, but wow, what a world we live in! Just a few text prompts, a few seconds of image generation, and boom: a passable image. This kind of thing would have taken weeks to design years ago!

I discovered this YouTube channel tonight, and it is delightfully odd. As a result, it's my instant July pick. Be sure to watch the videos in order (it starts with Episode 2 for some reason), as they build on each other. There are a lot of good running gags, making this a channel to keep tabs on. Here's the video that sucked me in:

My June YouTube channel recommendation is The Tim Traveller. Billed as "Travel Videos for Nerds," this channel has a number of delightful videos:

• How a Spectacular Piece of Pedantry Created an International Enclave
• What's the Oldest Surviving Building on Earth?
• The British Railway Station Where You Can Only Travel by Boat
• Can a Toboggan Beat the Oslo Metro?

Tim's humor is really enjoyable as are the little pedantic nuances he injects into almost each video. It's a crime that this channel doesn't have more subscribers. Below is a video on a strange political quirk that causes an island to revert its country of ownership every 6 months!

Today marks 20 years (!) since I published my first blog entry, though I'm pretty sure Born Geek predates that to some degree. WordPress was my platform of choice way back when, but I've since moved on to greener pastures.

Remember blogs? For many years, they were everywhere. I subscribed to a bunch of them via RSS (which has sadly also seemingly decreased in popularity), covering a whole range of topics: web design, video gaming, photography, software, etc. Those were the good old days before social media and the algorithm came along and ruined everything.

Though I don't post here super regularly, I do still enjoy sharing cool things that I stumble across. It's neat to have a platform where I'm in control. Thanks to anyone who still reads the things I post. I plan to continue!

The latest Smarter Every Day video paints a dire picture of the United States' ability to manufacture anything complex. Definitely worth a watch. I definitely want to change the way I purchase products as a result of this, and likely will start avoiding Amazon when possible.

Also, I definitely want one of these scrubbers!

My YouTube channel recommendation for May is a brand new one: Grossman Woodworking & DIY. The host, Brian Grossman, is starting a woodworking business from scratch and with limited experience. He's documenting the entire process, whether he succeeds or not, and has some ambitious plans (including converting an old building into a woodshop).

The video I've linked below is an overview of his business after just 1 month. It's an honest take on becoming a business, which is refreshing in a sea of woodworking content replete with successful (and wealthy) hosts. This is definitely a channel to keep your eye on if you're into this kind of thing!

As with many open source projects, the documentation for the Select2 JavaScript plugin is pretty terrible. I always have a tough time finding what I need, so this morning I decided to let ChatGPT help me instead. Here was my prompt:

I am using the Select2 JavaScript package for my project, and I have a select element hooked up so that it returns dynamic options using the ajax callback. I would like for the list of options that are shown to the user to be long form text (example: "[1234] My Project Name"), but when the user selects an option, I only want the ID to appear (example: "[1234]"). Is this possible?

It returned the exact magic I needed, which I've pasted below. Incredible!

Response I Received

Yes, this is possible with Select2 by customizing how the options are rendered and how the selected value is displayed. Specifically, you'll use:

• templateResult to control how items appear in the dropdown.
• templateSelection to control how the selected item is displayed.
• Ensure that the underlying id is the short text (e.g., [1234]), and the text can be long form ([1234] My Project Name).

Example Code:

$('#your-select').select2({
  ajax: {
    url: '/your/data/source',
    dataType: 'json',
    processResults: function (data) {
      return {
        results: data.map(function (item) {
          return {
            id: `[${item.id}]`,             // What gets submitted/stored
            text: `[${item.id}] ${item.name}` // What shows in dropdown
          };
        })
      };
    }
  },
  templateResult: function (data) {
    return data.text; // Full label in the dropdown
  },
  templateSelection: function (data) {
    return data.id; // Just the ID when selected
  },
  escapeMarkup: function (markup) { return markup; } // Optional, if using HTML
});

I seem to have trouble remembering all of the various variables and identifiers in Python's pathlib library, so I'm making myself a cheat sheet for future reference.

from pathlib import Path

# A target path that we want to operate on
path = Path("C:/Repos/myproject/mycoolfile.7z")

# path.parts ==> ('C:\\', 'Repos', 'myproject', 'mycoolfile.7z')
# path.drive ==> 'C:'
# path.root ==> '\\'
# path.anchor ==> 'C:\\'
# path.parents ==> Immutable sequence; see note #1 below
# path.parent ==> WindowsPath("C:/Repos/myproject")
# path.name ==> 'mycoolfile.7z'
# path.suffix ==> '.7z'; see note #2 below
# path.stem ==> 'mycoolfile'

A few notes:

1. The parents property returns an immutable sequence of the parents. In the example above, the result would be:
   • WindowsPath('C:/Repos/myproject')
   • WindowsPath('C:/Repos')
   • WindowsPath('C:/')
2. The suffix property only returns the final suffix, so the suffix of mycoolfile.tar.gz is just .gz. Use .suffixes to get a list of the suffixes in the path: ['.tar', '.gz']

My wife and I just finished watching through all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This series is, for my money, the absolute best of Star Trek. Granted, I've only watched through the first three Trek series (so far!), but any others would be hard pressed to top this one.

What makes this series so memorable are the shades of gray that it brings to the Trek universe. Both the original series and Next Generation feel to me like most westerns of the 1940s and 1950s: you always know who the bad guys are, and the good guys are always in the right. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, feels like the grittier westerns of the late 1960s and 1970s: the good guys aren't always good, and the bad guys aren't always bad. There's such nuance in these stories!

Here are a few episodes that truly blew me away:

The Visitor
This season 4 episode will have you shedding a tear or two by the end. In this episode, an accident leaves Captain Benjamin Sisko frozen in time, leaving his son Jake with a lifelong obsession with rescuing his father, having his resolve tested when they briefly reunite every few decades. Wow!

Trials and Tribble-ations
The cast of the show are injected right into a classic Original Series episode, right alongside Captain Kirk and company! This was such a clever thing to do, and the execution was remarkable.

Far Beyond the Stars
Star Trek is at its best when it boils a plot down to the essence of science fiction. This episode literally delivers that exact premise: Captain Benjamin Sisko is worn down by the stress of the Dominion War. During a visit from his father, he experiences dream-like visions of being an African-American science-fiction writer facing racism in mid–20th century New York City. The main cast of the series, along with several recurring cast members, portray 20th-century humans in Sisko's vision; those who play alien characters appear in this episode unusually without their alien costumes and makeup. This might have been my favorite episode of the entire run.

In the Pale Moonlight
Captain Sisko shows just how dark he can be in this fantastic episode. The squeaky clean image of the Federation is shattered here, leaving us to ponder the evils beneath its outer veneer.

I highly recommend this series if you've never given it a chance.

Lexington Lab Band is my YouTube channel recommendation for April. For my money, this is the best cover band on YouTube (and possibly the planet). I've embedded my favorite cover of theirs below, but there are so many other good ones. The one thing I appreciate most is that they cover a vast array of music genres:

• Hollywood Nights - Bob Seger
• Enter Sandman - Metallica
• Jessica - Allman Brothers
• Burning Down the House - Talking Heads
• Everybody Want to Rule the World - Tears for Fears
• Rainy Day Woman - Waylon Jennings

There's a lot of great musicianship here, so be sure to check it out.

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 a few of their hits in the studio where they recorded previous 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.