Tales from the Bitface

Great, we’ve been paying billions for a nuclear ‘deterrent’ that nobody wants and that doesn’t even work.

🔗 Introducing Pkl, a programming language for configuration :: Pkl Docs

… delighted to announce the open source first release of Pkl (pronounced Pickle), a programming language for producing configuration.

If Apple needed a general-purpose language for configuration, why did they invent their own, rather than using Terraform, say?

But then, this Pkl (‘Pickle’) seems a lot more expressive than Terraform, and a lot more down-to-Earth and less cloudy.

Could be interesting. (H/T @danielpunkass.)

More evidence of comically early spring: daffodils dancing in the sun.

Pending the deal’s publication on Wednesday, it appears that Sunak has offered to keep Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) aligned with European standards if the DUP returned to Stormont.

Best news since Brexit, if true.

It’s still January. It’s the northern hemisphere. So why is this rose flowering? I’ll be wanting to prune it in about a month.

‘Oh rose thou art sick’… But the climate, not the rose.

Currently reading: Monument Maker by David Keenan 📚

I’ve read a few of his before, and they’re all strange. This one may be the strangest yet, but I’m only about 40 pages into a huge book.

I didn’t have China Miéville co-writing a novel with Keanu Reeves on my 2024 bingo card, but here we are.

Currently reading: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka 📚

My current book-club book. Shouldn’t be any trouble to finish it by the 18th.

This year I’m going to do my book posts Micro.blog-style, using its Bookshelves feature. We’ll see how they go.

I read 27 books in 2023; just over one a fortnight, which seems faster than it felt at the time. And I posted 111 times, with the following monthly breakdown:

With my yearly theme of ‘Getting Out and Connection’, I’ll try to put a few more posts out into the world in 2024.

Happy New Year everyone!