The TeX Live 2025 ISO is finally here! It’s available to you now in several ways:| texastim.dev
On a day-to-day basis, I’m working in Windows and Linux on various physical and virtual machines on my network, but no matter where I am, I’m usually in VS Code. I love Code’s extensions and integrated terminal, and it’s plenty enough IDE for me to get real work done in Python no matter which ecosystem I happen to be in. My favorite little timesaver in VS Code these days is right-clicking in the Explorer pane to “Copy path” for a file or directory. This small feature sparks a lot ...| texastim.dev
When I stand up containers and virtual machines on my home network, I typically set them up with postfix using Gmail’s SMTP servers and my Gmail account so they can send emails like notifications and alerts. But as part of an ongoing effort to diversify my tech stack, I decided to make two leaps at once for new containers and VMs going forward: using sendmail as the MTA instead of postfix, and using Fastmail’s SMTP server.| texastim.dev
I’m a fan of alphabetically ordered lists in code and many other places too. It provides an obvious structure for lists of packages, variables, strings, and many other things. It makes checking by eye for the presence or absence of a member or element very quick. As a code base undergoes changes over time, the use of alphabetical order can result in diffs that are smaller and easier to grok. Plus I think alphabetical order appeals on an aesthetic level too, aside from the many practical con...| texastim.dev
Turns out it’s pretty easy to turn a Bash script into a system service that starts on boot and restarts automatically if it goes down. Here’s how.| texastim.dev
My demo URL shortener (GH repo here) is a REST API accepts a regular URL via POST and returns a short code that can be used to get a redirect to the original URL. Users of the API receive a short code and a secret administrative key that they can use to check usage statistics for that short code and optionally delete the short code so it won’t work anymore.| texastim.dev
I created Hayfevr.ly (GH repo to come) to solve a problem I had. Two local allergy clinics and a TV news station posted daily pollen readings on their websites, so I had to keep re-checking three different websites each morning to find out what was making me sneeze each day.| texastim.dev