Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

View amcgregor's full-sized avatar
🏢
I died! …well, I got better…

Alice Zoë Bevan–McGregor amcgregor

🏢
I died! …well, I got better…
View GitHub Profile
@amcgregor
amcgregor / 1-Initial Spam.md
Last active April 29, 2024 16:21
My e-mailed response to QuillBot’s spam. Seems legit.

Hi,

Are you tired of spending hours trying to find the right words to convey your thoughts effectively? Look no further! QuillBot's AI-powered paraphrasing tool is set to transform your writing experience. Link: https://try.quillbot.com/uwzs9l19o6uq

With QuillBot's Paraphraser, your words will truly matter. Our tool is designed to help you use the right vocabulary, tone, and style for any occasion. Whether you need to rephrase a sentence, paragraph, essay, or article, our complimentary and easy-to-use tool will deliver exceptional results with just a simple tap.

Why do countless students, writers, and professionals worldwide choose QuillBot?

  1. Limitless Custom Modes: With 8 predefined modes and the option to create an infinite number of Custom modes, Paraphraser provides boundless possibilities for rephrasing text to suit your unique requirements.
@amcgregor
amcgregor / questions.md
Last active April 5, 2024 04:25 — forked from jacktolmie/gist:7af6fb196c361ef562cf45416066711f
Answers to informational interview questions provided by “FuzzyBottom” in the #webdev Libera IRC channel.
  1. Name (made up if you want)

Alice Bevan-McGregor (yay, Welsh + Scottish!)

  1. Please describe the tasks that are performed during a normal work week.

A wide variety from project management ("ScrumBan"), devops, IT infrastructure management/maintenance, to light QA validation and web design; beyond the typical sit-down and code software development aspects. Sitting down to code is driven by the project managment; "work item" / "product backlog item" / "feature" categorization and prioritization left to a qualification specialist from QA and the "product owner", respectively. Effort estimation guiding the prioritization handled by myself and my development team.

  1. What education, training, and related experience does an applicant require to work in this field?
@amcgregor
amcgregor / not_streamlit.py
Last active November 13, 2023 15:38 — forked from spinningcat/streamlit.py
Reference https://github.com/amcgregor/python-samples/blob/main/Metaprogramming/Alternate%20Class%20Instantiation.ipynb "the punchline" and "making it importable" sections for what `html.tag` is.
from html import tag as H
def app(environ, start_response):
start_response('200 OK', [])
page = H.html [
H.title("Transvoice App"), # I use double quotes for human text, single for machine.
H.style("…"),
H.article(data_layout='twin') [
H.header [ H.h3 [ "Main Language" ] ],
@amcgregor
amcgregor / don-cristo-coffee.md
Last active October 13, 2023 20:06
My review of vaping products, notably the VooPoo Argus GT 2 200W starter kit, and specifically the TPP-X "Pod" Tank, as well as the Alien 220W "mod". WTH is with the fascination with "pods"—I demand reusable. Which the TPP-X tank is… but really. C'mon.

Is it coffee? Tobacco? Chocolate? All of the above! This brings back fond memories of first switching to vaping where I used naturally brewed juices made from Virginia flue-cured tobacco. Delicious.

@amcgregor
amcgregor / interesting-extortion.md
Created September 23, 2023 15:50
Interesting extortion spam (that obviously was easily caught by my spam filter) with some interesting tell-tale signs. I just really can't help but ridicule it publicly.

Original e-mail contained the following, where the full sentence is a link:

Hi,

I have important information for you (and about you).

Good luck!

The link was of a large block of text encoded into: https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=…

@amcgregor
amcgregor / zight-cloudapp-deletion-demand.md
Last active September 23, 2023 14:28
Zight (formerly CloudApp) just doesn't want to see me go. Even though I haven't paid in years, and they've been in the process of deleting my content slowly over the course of those years.

The amount of effort y'all go to for retention is absurd. I've already requested this once, and was ignored, now DELETE MY ACCOUNT.

Six questions to cancel my plan, which apparently is worth $69.69/month—funE JOKE—and it fails. I've already manually gone through more than a hundred pages of largely lost data (since y'all have been deleting it from the storage back-end for a while). When requested several years ago, you were unable to provide an archive of my data.

This behaviour, were I an EU citizen, would be actually illegal. (Data portability, right to be forgotten.)

Video of my attempt to unsubscribe, and the insane retention attempts: https://p199.p4.n0.cdn.getcloudapp.com/items/7KuXxpjm/dc375f4f-9efb-447f-9dfa-07b982fd4c8b.mp4

DELETE MY ACCOUNT

@amcgregor
amcgregor / 0-things-review.md
Last active September 6, 2023 20:53
The review I left on the App Store for the GTD task management app, Things. Which I like and can recommend, but can not recommend using for inspiration.

★★★☆☆

Excellent GTD task management, with quibbles.

A few of the keyboard shortcuts are a touch non-obvious, and in the early days I had some difficulty with task database corruption—I have a TON of items, projects, and areas. Those are the general quibbles.

The personal one: it amuses me to no end that while the latest update as of 2023-09-06 now includes vector graphics and dynamic scale, in 2009 they threatened to sue me when I demonstrated what might be possible using them by showing a tiny bit of HTML and CSS. It took 14 years to implement the functionality. 14 years.

"…or even talk about the fact that you copied the design, it has the potential to hurt us and cause damage to us."

@amcgregor
amcgregor / _example.py
Last active July 10, 2023 13:04
An example of a WIP WebCore resource dispatch implementation for "generic" database-backed collections and resources.
from webob.exc import HTTPConflict
from web.dispatch.resource.action import Action
from web.dispatch.resource.generic import GenericCollection as Collection
from web.secuity import when
from web.gilt.helper import _, L_
if __debug__: from web.app.static import Static
@amcgregor
amcgregor / comment.md
Created June 19, 2023 01:58
My video comment on this week's Free Style the News with Zaid Tabani, re: the Reddit Blackout and Twitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMsps7jjLN0&lc=UgzoL2EpQB4x2YuUACF4AaABAg

What's a dit, and why is it red? I mean, I keep intoning to friends, "If it's free, you're the product." Reddit has just admitted y'all are worth nothing. At least, not enough to keep the lights on. Despite all of the content produced, and hours volunteered for curation. And software developers having professional teams writing software to extend the ecosystem.

Worth. Nothing to them.

Musk with Twitter has demonstrated that having a lying cheapskate fascist encouraging your one real revenue stream (advertisement) to abandon you may be an unwise life choice, and that not paying rent might not be a viable long-term strategy; but this is 🤬 obvious. You don't acquire a thing only to destroy it.

Or you do, and I'll herald Musk as the solution to our world's modern problems if Twitter is just step one, next up: Meta and Facebook. But… he's not actually that rich. Or that altruistic. Or that intelligent. He's just been coasting on the backs of the brilliant people around him. His "solo" ventures are quite literal

@amcgregor
amcgregor / backed-console.js
Last active August 4, 2023 19:01
Python-like prototype additions, polyfills, and server-backed client-side behaviour.
// console.* Polyfill and, in production, no-op replacement.
(function() {
// An inspired polyfill for standard web browser user agent console interactions.
//
// This serves several purposes:
//
// 1. Add standardized methods missing from the local implementation to prevent code calling these from producing exceptions which halt JavaScript execution.
// 2. Direct certain logging actions at a back-end server collection endpoint, for archival, analytics, and diagnostics.
// 3. Squelch (mute or silence) "noisier" console endpoints to prevent user agents from exposing diagnostic information to end-users.