As he usually does (and of which I'm always appreciative) JCS shared my most recent Emacs post in which I go over a small Elisp routine that I wrote. JCS commented that he liked that I don't post process or edit my videos. I work through whatever I'm doing and if I make a mistake, so be it, I'll try to figure it out live. I do things this way partly because of laziness but also because I think the result is more authentic.

Yesterday I found myself in a situation where I had a text document interspersed with a bunch of email addresses and I wanted to extract those email addresses. Specifically, I had to copy email addresses from a couple of spreadsheets and other sources and I thought it would be faster to copy lines form the sheets instead of email cells as well as just grabbing text from the other sources and then isolating the email addresses in Emacs.

Happy holiday season to all. Blogging wise, I usually write up a bunch of posts on Advent of Code - a 25 day programming event where each day a new two part challenge is released. It's been running since 2015 with this being the tenth year. Last year I wrote up five days, the year before only two but for 2021 and 2020 I wrote up around 25 of them.

Most students who study CS in college plan to go into industry in one manner or another. Unfortunately most college CS programs are still designed with the assumption that all undergraduate CS majors want to pursue a PhD. I've addressed this periodically here and that's not the focus for today. Of those who want to enter industry, it seems a fair number are interested in the startup ecosystem - they want to either be part of a startup - a small agile effort that they hope can change the world or even start their own company.

Over in Facebook's Computer Science Educators group there was an article posted on CS grads going back for a "panic" master's degree since the job market isn't terrific. Now, going for more education, at least for those who can afford it has been a tried and true practice in weaker job markets. If you look at my former students with Masters degrees you'll certainly notice clusters around bad times in tech hiring.

Over the past couple of months I've had a number of interactions with former students. A fourth of July celebration with some of my first students, a bunch of dinners dinners and a couple of alumni events. It got me thinking that while I was the same person and same teacher for all of them, I was also a different person and teacher. We all evolve over time. One particular conversation made me think.

Blue skies smiling at me Nothing but blue skies do I see Last week, Bluesky seemed to really take off. What's Bluesky? The simplest answer is that it's another possible Twitter, or do I have to say X, alternative. Like many others, I left Twitter shortly after Musk took over. Actually, I just stopped using it. I didn't actually deactivate my account until relatively recently but other than logging on to do that, I hadn't been on Twitter since late 2022 or so.

We finished up the trip with a few days in Amsterdam. Sitting in our hotel now writing this post and trying not to stress out over the elections until it's time for dinner. Getting to town was a little hectic. Turns out there was a train with some mechanical issues on the line so two thirds of the trains into Amsterdam from Leiden were crowded. It only slowed us down by about a half hour but it was a little hectic and much more crowded than I would have liked.

Before heading off to the Netherlands we had one more day in Belgium. In Antwerp Specifically. We stayed one night right across from the railway station which is particularly magnificent. First stop, the Plantin Moretus Museum. This museum focuses on two 16th century printers - Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus. The museum, which is based in their homes and printing business covers the history of the family, the evolution of their printing business and the industry in general as well as the development of technology.

After Paris, we spent a few days in Belgium. We have a friend there - Helen, who teaches at the International School. Helen and Devorah taught together at the Manhattan Center for Science and Math back in the day and while I got to see Helen on my last visit here with Batya last year, Devorah hasn't seen her for almost a decade. This was more of a visiting part of our trip than a run around like chickens without heads touring part but we still got in some good stuff.