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Erik J

@erkjlvk.bsky.social
63 followers 154 following 104 posts

I build www.fileside.app and will bleat about its development here.

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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The third and correct attempt uses a Segmenter, which is equipped with knowledge about exactly which Unicode code points can combine with which other ones, and therefore also sees the modifier code as part of the same character.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The second attempt uses an iterator to convert the string, and the iterator is smarter than substring(), so it extracts both halves of the code point representing the thumb. It still fails to understand that the subsequent character is a modifier though.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The first attempt uses String.substring() which assumes that characters are 16 bits long. The thumbs-up emoji needs more, so we only get the first half of it, which shows up as a special surrogate code.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Explanation: The brown thumbs-up emoji consists of a Unicode character with a code point of U+1F44D (i.e. greater than 16 bits) plus a skintone modifier code of U+1F3FE (also >16 bits).
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Extracting the first character from a string is hard.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's a great relief to see that Opus 5.5 has managed to dial down the tendency towards overcooked word soup that sounds like it was written by a pompous third-rate novelist turned Silicon Valley bro.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Did a write-up of how I leveraged ideas from software architecture to re-engineer Fileside 2. It turned into quite an interesting exercise since Electron apps offer a number of unique challenges. www.fileside.app/blog/2026-09...
fileside.app
Architecting a desktop app in 2026
This article is about applying classic software architecture principles to Fileside, a modern desktop app built with Electron, TypeScript and React. We’ll be talking mostly about the high-level struct...
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Sketch's About page is just great. Wonderfully strong stances against enshittification and for local-first principles. It just convinced me to upgrade my old license instead of moving to the competition. www.sketch.com/about-us/
sketch.com
About Sketch · What makes us different
We’re an independent company making decisions for our customers and ourselves. Discover how we’ve chosen a different path.
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Reposted by Erik J
Scott Tolinski @tolin.ski · 31/07/2026
I’m exploring the mental health effects of AI coding. This is a super quick (blazing fast), anonymous survey. Please fill out and share so that the responses will be well rounded. forms.gle/dpD8Tk1QnXAz...
forms.gle
AI Coding & Mental Health
All answers are anonymous.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I love that every Mac still comes with the 1934 Webster's dictionary in the form of /usr/share/dict/words, added to BSD on 5 June 1993. Here's a snippet to pick a random word, by combining it with the random byte generator at /dev/urandom.
A bash script to generate a random word.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I totally get why people use AI agents to write code. I do too. What I don't get is why people willingly choose to erase their own voice in written communication. Why replace your unique personality with bland, generic AI speak?
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Today I had the pleasure of adding a new testimonial to the website. Fileside got its first celebrity supporter!
A screenshot of a testimonial from Lex Fridman.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Nice to see the Internet is still capable of surprising you!
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Am I the only one who finds relative dates in UIs, like "3 days ago" or "in 1 hour", frustrating and unhelpful? Just tell me the exact time instead of resorting to some hand-wavy approximation. Especially when the event lies in the future.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
And now there's ZCode as well from z.ai...
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Using dnd-kit (dndkit.com) feels like such a relief compared to fighting with the previous generation of JS drag & drop libraries. It's powering both the layout bar and the table headers in Fileside.
dndkit.com
dnd kit – The modern toolkit for building drag and drop interfaces
An extensible drag and drop toolkit written in TypeScript. Framework-agnostic core with first-class integrations for React, Vue, Svelte, and Solid.
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Reposted by Erik J
Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
AI companies really think they can solve the alignment problem when we still haven't aligned the technology of like, knives
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
What is it with tech projects and 3-letter names starting with Z? Zed (IDE), Zen (browser), Zig (programming language), Zod (validation library), Zag (UI library), Zaq (step sequencer). Not to mention good old Zip.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
It's official! Fileside 2.0 is finally ready. www.fileside.app/blog/2026-06...
fileside.app
Introducing Fileside 2
It’s done. It took a bit longer than I’d hoped but Fileside 2 is done. It represents an almost complete rewrite and features a new thumbnail grid, a completely reworked layout management system, non-b...
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Reposted by Erik J
Jason Cohen @asmartbear.com · 08/06/2026
“Who is the best Indie Maker?” There is no such thing. Part of the joy of indie-making is that you’ve escaped rat race defining “better” as things like “most revenue” or “most customers” or “most revenue per employee” or “most employees.”
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Fileside 2.0 release candidate is now in testing. Public release should hopefully only be a matter of days now!
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Reposted by Erik J
niki grayson @nikigrayson.com · 02/04/2026
right now the astronauts are calling houston because the computer on the spaceship is running two instances of microsoft outlook and they can't figure out why. nasa is about to remote into the computer
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Craft and rigour still matter in software development, because a codebase that's hard to understand for humans seems to be hard to understand for AI agents too.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Fileside 2 beta is go!
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Today I'm testing the release candidates for the first beta of Fileside 2...
Directory listing showing beta builds of Fileside 2.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Turns out Gemini Flash 3 is almost as capable a coding agent as Opus 4.6, at a 10th of the cost! It's my default model in Cursor now.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
New header is taking shape...
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Not long until first Fileside 2 beta now... It's amazing how much easier it is to add new features after the full refactoring of the app architecture.
Fileside 2 timeline arrow.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
After a fresh round of UI library research, I think I will start relying more on ark-ui.com than on www.radix-ui.com for future needs. PandaCSS from the same team looks good too!
ark-ui.com
Home | Ark UI
A headless UI library with over 45+ components designed to build reusable, scalable Design Systems that works for a wide range of JS frameworks.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Finally Fileside has a thumbnail grid.
Fileside 2 in thumbnail grid mode.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
This looks like a cool project! How would you say it differentiates itself from something like open-props.style? They seem like brethren.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Cool initiative, Attila! Looking forward to seeing this take shape. I had somewhat similar motivations for starting to build my own file manager a while ago, although it's not specific to music. I am one of those weirdos who still insist on maintaining a manual folder hierarchy for my collection...
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
One small commit for man, one giant leap for Fileside. After months of disentangling, we've finally arrived at a clean cut between native and renderer worlds.
Diff showing enabling sandboxed renderer.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
And now the final piece of the migration puzzle is also in place.
Timeline graphic with completed tasks
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
One checkbox closer to Fileside 2.0. Search has now also been migrated to the new worker process architecture.
Progress timeline graphic
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
Fileside 2 progress update: All file operations have now been converted to (optionally) run in separate worker processes, freeing up the UI during long transfers.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Fileside's Black Friday sale has started. 66% off on a lifetime license up until Cyber Monday 1 Dec. Get it while it's hot! www.fileside.app
fileside.app
Home
Fileside is a modern multi-pane file manager that lets you create workspaces for different projects. It's a great alternative to Finder on Mac and Explorer on Windows.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Beautiful
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
After last week's announcement, 80 people have signed up as beta testers for Fileside 2. This should be a fun release cycle!
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Just published an update on the plan for Fileside 2.0 and how the work is progressing. www.fileside.app/blog/2025-10...
fileside.app
The plan for Fileside 2
Over the past year I’ve had a steady stream of emails asking if a Fileside version 2 is coming. One even wondered whether the project is still being maintained…
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
She's my new hero. This is soo good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMoz...
youtube.com
vibe physics
YouTube video by Angela Collier
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
A method in a class gets created once, then reused. A function in a React function component gets recreated once per instance (or even every render if you forget useCallback). Now add this up for a data-dense view like a directory listing with 100s of individual cells.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
Just vibecoded the remainder of my Trello notes away into my custom Markdown-file-based Kanban setup in less time than it took to listen through Carl Craig's Songs about Food and Revolutionary Art.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Image credit: @bram.us
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
It's 2025 and we can finally generate dynamic colours using just CSS in production. The syntax takes some getting used to, but it's so handy for all those little brighten/darken/saturate/desaturate tweaks you need in every UI.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
This is so true. ffmpeg is a beast, it can do absolutely anything with audio/video if you just utter the right incantation. I doubt more than a handful of people in the universe truly understand its internals.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Today I discovered that saturation can go backwards in CSS. Who'd have thought.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
When you say pwsh core is not supported, do you just mean that a menu entry for launching it is missing?
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
That's great to hear! There's no official place for that yet, volume has been low enough that I've just handled it via email so far. A Terminal pane is a neat idea, even if maybe somewhat outside of the core scope of a GUI file manager.
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Erik J @erkjlvk.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
The sycophancy level has been ramped up so much in current coding agents. Hard not to get the impression they're just telling me what I want to hear when every single prompt is "absolutely right", "raising a very valid and important point", "a nuanced and insightful remark" and so on.
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