Al Sweigart

Author of "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and other programming books.

Public Key

npub138afdyyaxs7ta0ugnuf3jt3swxtz83gsywf5grg465w5ktqg7z2qds88z7

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgn75kjzwng097h7yf7yce9cc8r93rc5gz8y6yp52a282t9sy0p9qpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qc3kwdh

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relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub138afdyyaxs7ta0ugnuf3jt3swxtz83gsywf5grg465w5ktqg7z2qds88z7

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Last Notes

2024-07-04 19:59:45

I'm looking to hire someone to redesign the http://automatetheboringstuff.com site. I want a lightweight site that uses static files, has a clean look like Wikipedia, without React or animated nonsense. Boring is good.
Any recommendations? Any advice on how to hire a web designer?

2024-06-29 18:09:26

2024 is the year we all start using 600% more deodorant because internet ads told us to put it on our balls and we believed them.

2024-06-22 19:26:57

People who tell me they don't have ad blockers installed on their browser gives me the same feeling as telling me it's not necessary to wipe your ass after going to the bathroom:
I'll keep a straight face for the sake of politeness, but eww.

2024-06-19 18:02:43

Today is a good day to learn about Juneteenth, especially if you're a Texan like me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth

2024-06-18 22:39:52

I've released version 1.9.0 of my pyperclip library, which lets you copy and paste text to the clipboard in Python. Thanks for the many folks who have made contributions: https://pypi.org/project/pyperclip/

2024-06-15 18:29:33

I know it's obnoxious when people ask you not to use certain software, but it's becoming more important to switch from Chrome to Firefox.
(It's easier than you think.)
"Google Chrome's search feature will use AI to dig deeper into your browsing history"
https://www.androidpolice.com/google-chrome-history-search-ai-do-we-want-it/

2024-06-13 16:46:32

Question: In this bit of Python code:
for i in range(len(message)):
chunk = some_str[i:i+10]
...
What is a better variable name than "chunk"? I don't want to use "substring" or "submessage". Maybe "message_part"?

2024-06-11 17:57:32

What if AI goes rogue and turns on humanity?
But also: what if the moon got mad?
https://vimeo.com/925647465

2024-06-08 21:54:55

Republicans are Nazis.
"Colorado GOP calls for burning of Pride flags"
"In a statement to The Hill, Williams said the Colorado Republican Party makes “no apologies for saying God hates pride or pride flags as it’s an agenda that harms children and undermines parental authority.”"
https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4705267-colorado-gop-burning-pride-flags-pride-month-lgbtq-log-cabin/

2024-06-05 19:16:38

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@npub1sys…ckr3 I seriously am considering putting a goldfish bowl in the background. (Though gold fish in small unadorned bowls has come to be known as cruel. Maybe a robot goldfish?)

2024-06-05 18:59:17

Silly project idea: Build a robot to move chess pieces around a board and take photos of common configurations, then open it to let people play chess that shows a photographed board instead of computer graphics. I'd build up a cache of openings, and have the robot take more photos as needed.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/565/073/857/023/304/original/8a6b8da5cc01b7fa.jpg

2024-06-05 15:25:35

How big of a problem is it for Python that when a non-technical Ubuntu user searches App Center for "python" they don't find the Python.org interpreter at all? (But do find other random packages.)
The python.org downloads page for Linux users just links to the source code downloads, which is less than ideal for non-technical users who just want to write some scripts.

2024-06-05 02:34:11

What are the recommended ways to install Python on Windows, macOS, and Linux? Is it downloading from python.org for all of them? Or is it Microsoft Store, Homebrew, and apt-get?

2024-06-04 23:17:31

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@npub1pfe…e2dm It is over *one thousand* football fields!

2024-06-04 17:07:36

If you could lay out bad statistics end to end, they would stretch across the Milky Way Galaxy over a million times.

2024-06-03 17:31:37

Screenshot from the web comic Dresden Codak.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/553/406/636/158/809/original/94616a2f001fa21a.jpg

2024-05-31 03:29:31

Apparently the rule is if you see this Tom Holland video you must tweet this Tom Holland video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-kwCYHOLY

2024-05-31 01:36:50

Ooof. I've been working all day and am finally done. Time to check social media. But first, I'm going to take a looong sip of this coffee...

2024-05-30 16:56:33

What are the pros and cons of using pipenv as opposed to other Python virtual environment packages?

2024-05-27 19:06:27

The term "funicular" does NOT mean 45 degree angle the way "perpendicular" means 90 degree angle, and I am extremely disappointed to find this out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular

2024-05-27 18:32:13

Man, every since my visit to Pittsburgh I've been low key into funiculars, these twin cable cars on hill sides where one is the counterweight for the other.
I never thought of myself as a "guy on the spectrum who is into trains" but I guess I never found the right kind of train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funicular
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/513/996/754/172/399/original/f50513b25180b9e7.png

2024-05-27 18:19:54

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@npub1ept…jcl3 JOHN THAT WASN'T A MUSEUM JOHN YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF THERE

2024-05-25 20:49:04

I just did my post-#PyConUS covid test and it came up negative. Sharing a sold-out conference with 2,500 people and not coming home with some bug is no small feat, and I'm glad that PyCon has a sensible mask policy (mask indoors, but not at meals or when speaking or taking photos).
We keep each other safe.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/503/218/245/354/236/original/2a891c3bb03757a8.png

2024-05-25 19:15:03

When I am a deranged millionaire, I will create an art museum that features reproductions of famous painting that are horizontally flipped.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/502/848/874/175/901/original/eb1dfe341af7e552.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/502/851/997/848/759/original/2cce7af047cebc5d.png

2024-05-25 08:00:40

On this date in 1856, John Brown and a group of militant abolitionists killed 5 pro-slavery settlers in Kansas.
This was in response to a violent attack on the city of Lawrence by pro-slavery terrorists. It became part of what was later known as Bleeding Kansas.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/500/200/604/693/170/original/a6a119c9af779836.png

2024-05-23 14:42:23

What's funny about the "put glue on pizza" advice from Google AI is that that screenshot could have easily been faked... but you can't prove the AI *didn't* make this recommendation.

2024-05-22 17:20:53

Here's one thing I don't like about how software people write documentation:
If A is a type of X and B is a type of X, there's a preference to separate X into its own definition elsewhere (like deduplicating code by putting it in a function). But this means the explanation of A or B is incomplete, because you have to click to learn what X is. If X is a type of Y, now you have to click again to figure out Y. You just wanted to learn what B was, but now you have to learn everything.

2024-05-20 18:35:00

It's not a big problem if you missed talks at #PyConUS. They're all recorded and will be posted to https://pyvideo.org/ which also has over 18,000 recorded talks from other PyCons around the world.

2024-05-18 23:29:23

The "imitation intelligence" term from @npub12xm…wcpv in this morning's #PyConUS keynote on AI reminded me of this scene from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age", published in 2000:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/464/214/875/791/655/original/186030571f153284.png

2024-05-18 23:20:17

The #PyConUS keynote today by @npub12xm…wcpv is one of the most impressive and important talks I've ever seen. (Up there with K Lars Lohn's 2016 keynote).
I absolutely had to post this photo:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/464/175/948/690/975/original/0cdbd1ab8557749f.jpg

2024-05-18 23:11:23

If you want to see my "Forbidden Zone" music video that I performed for my #pyconus lightning talk, it's online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjk4UMpJqVs and the source is at https://github.com/asweigart/scrollart/blob/main/python/forbiddenzone.py

2024-05-17 05:51:43

I wrote up this blog post a while back on how to do #pycon and I think it mostly holds up: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/how-to-do-pycon.html

2024-05-14 16:22:46

CAPITALISM: Competition ensures that companies are constantly striving to offer superior products at lower prices.
ACTUAL CAPITALISM:
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/439/886/524/928/923/original/e258f47741da3a1f.png

2024-05-11 22:04:32

Reminder that #pyconus has a mandatory mask policy (except when outdoors and at the meals). Thousands of Pythonistas are flying in from all around the world. We keep each other safe.
https://us.pycon.org/2024/about/health-safety-guidelines/

2024-05-08 16:08:06

Cops arresting journalists for covering protests makes sense when you realize that journalists are the intelligence agency of the sworn enemy of the police: the public.

2024-05-07 17:49:41

Democracy must subjugate capitalism, or else capitalism will certainly subjugate democracy.

2024-05-06 21:07:28

"Unrestricted growth is the ideology of cancer."

2024-05-05 18:02:06

I went to the cafe but forgot my wallet, so I went back home. I couldn't find my wallet, but remembered I could pay with my phone so I went back to the cafe. Afterwards, I went back home to look for my wallet. My wallet was in my pocket the whole time.
Whoever solves the "how to function enough without coffee to get coffee" problem will win a goddamn Nobel prize.

2024-05-02 18:02:47

When I hear "AI" I mentally replace it with "automated WikiHow article generator" because that's what ChatGPT-4's output quality looks like to me.
"Will automated WikiHow article generators replace software engineers and doctors?"

2024-05-01 16:53:36

The anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, where the National Guard fired live rounds on student protesters and murdered four, is in a few days on May 4th, by the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

2024-04-23 20:46:32

UHG.
I just realized that I need to be sure to say "Thank you" and "You've been very helpful" on calls with service workers because the damn company certainly uses speech recognition to get bogus metrics on "customer satisfaction" and not being "satisfied" enough could be used as an excuse to get them fired.
So now *I* have to do emotional labor as part of their shitty job.

2024-04-19 21:28:44

I created a new piece of scroll art: "Hexagon Portals"
https://scrollart.org/static/hex-portals-fullscreen.html?fg=white&bg=black

2024-04-17 22:37:30

Star Trek as liberal propaganda
https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/02/star-trek-as-liberal-propaganda.html
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/288/478/781/963/179/original/bee70db493f217b7.png

2024-04-17 21:02:07

I'm speaking at PyTexas in Austin this weekend. I remind myself that I need to put effort into my slides and presentation, because otherwise I've effectively drawn a hundred people into a half hour meeting that could have been an email.

2024-04-17 20:55:28

"I need to buy a typewriter and 12-gauge pump action shotgun. Do you know a company that makes a good one?"
"You're not going to believe this..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Remington_and_Sons

2024-04-13 20:37:33

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@npub1f6a…pnql Do I need a tiktok account to see the store link? I'm in the US and would definitely like to buy a bucket of rocks.

2024-04-08 18:27:28

Y'all aren't ready for my truth bomb that mimes are awesome and you already like mimes.
Tape Face is a mime.
Blue Man Group are mimes.
Mr. Bean is a mime.
They are the epitome of "show don't tell." Mimes are awesome and you already love them.

2024-04-01 02:24:34

I made a new form of art called scroll art which is like animated ASCII art that beginners can code because you only need to know print(), loops, and a couple other programming concepts. You can see examples here: https://scrollart.org/

2024-03-30 16:50:28

Why do books about selection bias always sell so well?

2024-03-25 14:43:09

Fuck it. I'm just going to start advertising all my software as "Generated with Al that has a university computer science degree" and all my books as "Written by Human-Intelligence Level Al".
Switching to Al from Albert in college will be the most lucrative decision I've ever made.

2024-03-25 14:04:45

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@npub1lrv…tth9
Is it Palantir?
Yeah, it turns out to be Palantir.

2024-03-21 14:09:07

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@npub1pfe…e2dm Heh. I've never heard of Ask Different until now and it doesn't appear in the first ten pages of search results when I searched for this. :)
Though I should start poking around that site now that I've switched to Mac.

2024-03-20 20:42:25

I'm in NYC and I visited Penn Station today. It's a good metaphor for America because it's new and shiny and recently remodeled but everyone is sitting on the floor because benches would attract homeless people.

2024-03-20 15:10:33

I recently switched to macOS and had to learn how to paste text without formatting (Command-Option-Shift-V, btw) but the content farm web page I learned it from had so much crap on it.
So I posted the question and answer to superuser.com: https://superuser.com/questions/1835911/how-to-paste-text-without-font-style-formatting-on-macos

2024-03-20 14:56:26

"Billionaires are a symptom of poverty."
Every once in a while I'm reminded that my "wasting time" on this site is not wasting time, because it's how I can incredible ideas or articulations like this.

2024-03-14 17:09:54

If you have a minute, any idea why the "description" key-value pair in this JSON file on GitHub is in white text and doesn't have syntax highlighting? The JSON seems to validate:
https://github.com/pyvideo/data/blob/main/montreal-python/videos/mp68-writing-a-python-interpreter-in-python-from-scratch.json

2024-03-09 16:03:53

Is their a sort of Internet Archive but for tracking when websites go down? Like, I clicked a link and it went to not just a 404 but the entire website was gone. I'd like to know when it went away.
Is this a service that would be useful? To who and in what context?

2024-03-08 17:02:25

The best thing about the animated ASCII art I created that I call "scroll art" isn't that it's a great way for beginner programmers to make cool things knowing a minimal amount of programming concepts.
It's that it's a project that required registering a domain name that I have actually finished:
https://scrollart.org

2024-03-07 05:28:13

If you need practice programming challenges for beginners, my ebook Python Programming Exercises, Gently Explained is 99 cents or free on my website: https://inventwithpython.com/pythongently/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/052/511/556/325/192/original/c893dbab3ba4f953.png

2024-03-05 22:22:47

Suffragetto was a board game published around 1908 where two teams, "women" and "police", vie to move past each others blockades.
Just in case if you were wondering if riots for social justice was anything new.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragetto

2024-03-05 16:10:26

So I'm attending the Recurse Center in Brooklyn right now. It's a 12-week retreat for software developers. It's like an intense fire hose of awesomeness aimed at my face.
My February has been productive and exhausting. https://www.recurse.com/

2024-03-01 18:08:28

I scratch off the 3-digit CVV code from the back of all my credit and debit cards, since I have them memorized (and stored in a password manager).
Does anyone else do this? Is there some reason I shouldn't do this?

2024-02-28 03:08:10

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@npub1qz2…nlrg It's completely accurate for the purpose the author intends.

2024-02-23 16:28:53

The whole "no atheists in foxholes" thing never made sense to me until I realized it came from the same people who tortured people for witchcraft confessions and used the confessions as their argument for the existence of witches.

2024-02-14 15:41:37

How am I supposed to explain to my child that there are more than three states of matter?!?!
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/930/354/625/627/641/original/49febc75d0e2b1c6.png

2024-02-12 14:19:01

"And this language is called JavaScript."
Because it's like Java?
"No. It's completely unlike Java. And this language is called C#."
Because it's like C++?
"No, it's more like Java."

2024-01-30 16:47:31

Retired software engineer and national treasure K Lars Lohn uses math and some Python code to track an irritating early morning booming noise that was waking the community: https://www.twobraids.com/2024/01/air-cannon.html

2024-01-28 17:18:08

I found this about cats using toilets:
"I trained my cat to do this. I can only urge you to not do this as well. My cat associated the smell of drains with a place to piss and shit. Any sink. The bathtub. She once hopped into the dishwasher and pissed in it. Then without noticing we ran it. When the dishwasher finishes the door automatically opens and hot steamy piss clouds are released. Teaching your cat to use the toilet is wrong and you will be punished for your hubris. Turn back."

2024-01-27 16:01:34

I just thought of MUDs. Remember MUDs?
They were text and didn't have graphics like the SNES or PlayStation, but they were real time and multiplayer. It was amazing in the pre-WoW, pre-Everquest era. (The family PC couldn't run those 3D games anyway.)
I'm just reading on networking stuff and I thought of MUDs, is all.

2024-01-27 02:50:40

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@npub1f6a…pnql I really wish I could automatically add stuff to prompts, namely, "Just give me the answer as a single word or sentence." and "Just give me the list without preface or an explanation of each item in the list."

2024-01-17 17:01:03

I use the same copy of Photoshop CS 6 that I've had for two decades because it works. But it doesn't run on modern macOS and I'm afraid Windows will follow suit. What should I use instead? Gimp? Something else? (Please only respond if you have personal experience with the software, not just stuff you heard about.)

2024-01-14 23:20:16

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@npub1ma4…sd6q The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/756/628/084/210/024/original/97cd38056a5a7cb6.png

2024-01-12 02:27:05

eBay to pay $3 million after several of its executives stalked and sent disturbing packages to a news website.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feds-charge-ebay-stalking-scandal-ina-david-steiner/
Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady."

2024-01-09 22:10:20

Fuckin' A, the future is going to suck when LLMs have ruined search results with LLM-generated spam content, forcing us to use LLMs to get information.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/728/041/208/856/823/original/0dd3176eff25fecb.png

2024-01-07 23:26:15

I'm looking up brick and mortar stores to buy skin care products. To show you how much this is new to me, I thought the name of the store was "Semaphore."

2024-01-07 18:34:58

"I'm getting old," I say with a deep, exhausted sigh as I open a new privacy-mode tab to google what the hell "stronk identity" means.

2024-01-02 18:49:46

We have 14 years to fix Y2K38 bugs.
Like the hole in the ozone layer, we dismiss the severity of Y2K because it was a problem we took seriously and fixed before it could have big impacts.
https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/

2024-01-01 04:43:53

So where do you see yourself five years from now?
Heh.
Heheheh.
Ha ha ha. Five... five years... ha ha ha
HA HA HAAA HA HA HA HAAA HOO BOY

2023-12-30 03:15:46

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/666/955/050/460/499/original/4a7104f12376fe69.webp

2023-12-28 21:19:54

My Thinkpad has a 14in screen and I'm fine with it. I'm buying a macbook pro. Is the 16in screen much better?

2023-12-27 03:23:48

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@npub1az9…swru "If you don't pay for the product, you are the product" is such a quaint thought in 2023; they're going to make you product even if you pay. Capitalism doesn't leave money on the table.

2023-12-27 02:23:24

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@npub1lrv…tth9 I don't think there's ever been a time I've come across the name Tom Nichols and I haven't raised an eyebrow. I'm not seeing what others find respectable about him; he's always been in the "will one day drop the mask" category for me.

2023-12-19 18:05:46

On the one hand, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
On the other hand, how do you expect to stop fascism if you can't even stop eating at Chick-fil-A?

2023-12-04 03:20:48

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/519/756/303/623/077/original/e5e7071e496f3963.webp

2023-11-05 17:26:18

Remember when computers would do what you told them, instead of trying to constantly shove suggestions/reminders/ads that you don't care about and specifically uninstall or get blockers for?

2023-11-03 16:17:24

Can someone point me to an article or explanation about this? Sam Bankman-Fried took $9b from customers and gave them worthless tokens or whatever, but it's not like the money was literally set on fire. It went somewhere. Who has it now?

2023-11-01 04:33:12

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@npub1lrv…tth9 I really wish journalists would stop posting whatever thing comes out of that guy's mouth. Reporting on what fascists say at face value is repeating fascist propaganda.

2023-10-24 20:32:43

Have you used PDFsam or Apache PDFbox? What are your opinions of them? I'm looking for free, Win/Mac/Linux applications for editing PDFs (even if its just at the split and merge pages level.)

2023-10-18 22:20:33

I am this close to quitting being a tech book author and creating a startup whose search engine ranks websites by how little enshittification they have.
It'll basically be Wikipedia and Stack Overflow and people's old Geocities websites.

2023-10-16 03:12:06

Night out with the boys. We're getting wild out here.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/242/031/655/493/968/original/597ae27fdf0b8736.jpg

2023-10-11 04:36:31

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/214/053/490/494/761/original/22e1757fd4e894bc.jpg

2023-10-09 21:33:35

You can help charity and get the ebook of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition for 45% off from this Humble Bundle link:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/automate-the-boring-stuff-with-python-2nd-edition

2023-10-03 17:11:39

ChatGPT-4 seems to be pretty good at taking the flawed output of OCR and producing the corrected text.

2023-10-02 19:54:16

Python 3.12 has released today!
Ha! Python 3.12. What will they think of next?
https://docs.python.org/3.12/whatsnew/3.12.html

2023-09-30 20:40:13

The pre-order page for the third edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is now up! Use coupon code PREORDER to get 25% off!
https://nostarch.com/automate-boring-stuff-python-3rd-edition

2023-09-30 20:37:28

If the government, media, and so-called free market were all incapable of stopping an obvious scam like cryptocurrency and NFTs (and, in fact, encouraged it every step of the way for years), what does that tell us about our politics, journalists, and economic system?

2023-09-26 17:21:06

Have you ever seen a form where "female" was listed before "male"? Like, the "female" checkbox was to the left or above the "male" checkbox?
Isn't it weird how "male" is always (not usually, but always) comes first?
Just something I noticed.

2023-09-22 17:02:27

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@npub1hyk…3p33 @npub14qs…qwuh @npub1sqf…5skr I like how "my boyfriend and i even had an argument during your talk and now we are not speaking" is also somehow your fault.

2023-09-18 21:30:30

I'm doing a Reddit AMA on the r/python subreddit right now. Check it out and Ask Me Anything.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/16m0yqk/ama_i_am_al_sweigart_author_of_automate_the/

2023-09-18 17:05:27

We are wealthy enough to feed, cloth, and shelter everyone.
Capitalism only decides who gets paid.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/086/763/480/954/847/original/81bd5d824aaee6f5.webp