Sign in

Heath

@heathhenley.dev
332 followers 1.7K following 489 posts

Señor Application Engineer at a small sonar shop. Writing about things here: heathhenley.dev

PostsRepliesMedia
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 27/09/2026
I feel like the probability of accidentally wearing an article of clothing inside out or backwards rises exponentially after college age
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 11/09/2026
I really appreciate this framing - I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings about it and the meaning / utility split makes a lot of sense to me.
010
Reposted by Heath
Bob Nystrom @stuffwithstuff.com · 29/01/2026
Forgive me, I wrote a thing about AI: journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2026/01/24/t...
journal.stuffwithstuff.com
The Value of Things – journal.stuffwithstuff.com
88311
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 26/08/2026
Cleaning out our office at work, we’re moving down the road - found these relics
Physical boxes for win7 and visual studio upgrades
030
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 17/07/2026
I got a budget notification that my s3 bucket with 50 images in it exceeded my $5 budget limit....by $50 million dollars
020
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 06/06/2026
This is the site of the guy who came up with problem I guess, it has a list of weird pieces jonka364.github.io/stendhal/ste...
jonka364.github.io
Gallery
120
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 06/06/2026
If you weird non standard “chess” pieces some other cool patterns pop up too heathhenley.dev/knight-spira...
heathhenley.dev
knight_game
120
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 30/05/2026
Just updated a django project to python 3.14...man pep758 is really confusing the agents (allows except expressions without parentheses) peps.python.org/pep-0758/
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 28/05/2026
There are a lot of valid criticisms of LLMs with what’s going on the world right now and how they’re being sold. That said, I read posts dunking on them with the counting letters as an advertisement that you have not looked into how they work at all.
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/05/2026
That’s one way to lighten up text book a bit…
Screenshot from math textbook, with inset quote from the opening paragraph of Alice’s Adventures  in wonderland: “…what is the use of a book…without pictures or conversation”
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 24/05/2026
here's the numberphile video www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiX4...
youtube.com
Red & Black Knights (extraordinary result) - Numberphile
YouTube video by Numberphile
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 24/05/2026
If you've seen the Numberphile video about the red/black knight game on the spiral board making cool patterns (like the pic below) I made a little tool to explore them: heathhenley.dev/knight-spira...
An image made by places red / blue knights on a spiral grid. Each knight is placed in turn on the lowest spiral index available to it (not being attacked by the opposite color)
100
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 22/05/2026
I guess I never took time to appreciate it before. In typical eng fasion, was only interested to learn what was needed for eng applications / applied research... It's been really cool to see how the structures are starting to fit together and build on each other from just a few properties
020
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 22/05/2026
I started to study some real (heh) math for funsies… realizing that despite a PhD in engineering and years working in a tech co... I don’t actually know math lol Only very beginning stuff, building the reals from rationals, proving a bunch of stuff taken for granted my whole life, etc But... 🧵
120
Reposted by Heath
Ben Orchard @raehik.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
me if i was a tree
cropped screenshot from Explaining Binomial Heaps (1999)

(diagram of a binary tree)
(b) topped loser tree
1203
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 12/05/2026
anyone else worried that *we* might be “just a bunch of matrix multiplications”?
000
Reposted by Heath
Annie Sexton @anniesexton.com · 11/05/2026
For anyone else who feels conflicted about AI and afraid to talk about it: I wrote this for you. Obviously these are just my opinions, but I hope this helps at least one person. annies-brain.offprint.app/a/3ml6zdf5f5...
annies-brain.offprint.app
Stuck in the middle: Being an engineer & artist in the AI era | Annie Sexton | Offprint
I'm an AI skeptic, through and through. But I also voluntarily use AI nearly every day. So naturally, you might be asking: what the heck?
2315632
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 30/04/2026
one should not feel bad about obtaining pdfs of scientific papers by sketchy means --> that system is broken af one should feel bad about obtaining books by sketchy means though --> shame
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/04/2026
I heard 3blue1brown call activation functions “squishification functions” years ago and since I’ve never been able to stop calling them that in my head
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/04/2026
Don’t get me wrong - tech debt pay downs, refactors, and new features that were out of reach are now in play, and that’s all cool as hell… just feels strange and I guess I decided today was the day to rant about it to the void
110
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/04/2026
I also think the “run 8 agents all the time” ai br@s are full of it. I still need to basically work on a few things MAX at once to have any confidence in what I’m shipping. Maybe I just can’t let go enough to make the cost of context switching worth paying
200
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/04/2026
Not that I was even good at “writing elegant code”, but the act of trying to, fixing it, figuring out the right abstractions, etc - all kind of gone or less relevant / de-emphasized There are still challenges of course - I guess they are mostly at a higher level now, just feels … idk like emptier
100
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 25/04/2026
using LLMs in software starves one part of me; feeds another - weird feeling I’m objectively more valuable / productive now - the “builder” in me loves this, it’s like a drug almost on the other hand, it’s kind of empty feeling - and something I cared about a lot doesn’t really matter any more
110
Reposted by Heath
Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
The peril of laziness lost bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/t...
bcantrill.dtrace.org
The peril of laziness lost | The Observation Deck
427887
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 06/04/2026
Just booted up and old desktop - it’s running Ubuntu 14 and chrome 46 😬, got some upgrading to do I guess…
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 14/03/2026
honestly same for C++ lol
120
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 13/03/2026
“Moving weird” is very risky after age 30
001
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 16/02/2026
valgrind is another one I wish had a real windows equivalent
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 12/02/2026
There is no cow level!
000
Reposted by Heath
Theo Sanderson @theo.io · 08/02/2026
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
bluesky-map.theo.io
Bluesky Map
Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.
66572502154
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 03/02/2026
As someone who listened to it, I liked it but agree the physical book is the way to go!
000
Reposted by Heath
Eric @esb.lol · 14/01/2026
as a lamp guy, big light people confound me
4572
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 07/01/2026
heathhenley.dev/index.xml
020
Reposted by Heath
Jen Gentleman @jenmsft.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
Oh, you like cloning? That makes two of us
1326338
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 03/01/2026
If you're into sci-fi short stories I definitely recommend it - planning to follow it up with a re-read of Exhalation (his more recent collection of stories).
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 03/01/2026
Just finished a re-read of "Story of Your Life and Others". One of my favorite short story collections ever, last read it probably about a decade ago and despite that, some parts of the stories stuck with me. It was cool to get to read them again given how I've changed and what I'd forgotten.
110
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 02/01/2026
first htmx dies, now opencode - when will it end?
020
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 01/01/2026
If you asked me to guess what my most productive day was in 2025 (in terms of commits) I would never have guessed Monday! 🤯 My year in: - Books: www.goodreads.com/user/year_in... - Code: git-wrapped.com/profiles/Hea... (source of this image) - Everything else: heathhenley.dev/posts/2025-s...
Summary of github stats for 2025
000
Reposted by Heath
David Buchanan @retr0.id · 28/12/2025
📎 it looks like you're challenging the status quo. have you considered that this will make the status quo very sad? look it's crying now
013713
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 24/12/2025
maybe @wagslane.bsky.social 🤷‍♂️? don’t know if he’s active on here though
000
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 24/12/2025
Thanks for making these Matt they are great, looked forward to catching them each day
010
Reposted by Heath
David Buchanan @retr0.id · 24/12/2025
there's vomit stderr already, claude's spaghetti he's nervous, but assures it's production ready
314011
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 23/12/2025
Here we go! Took a long break again, been mostly donating to the climbing gym every month - but definitely missed it.
Climbing shoes and chalk bag
030
Reposted by Heath
Matt Godbolt @matt.godbolt.org · 21/12/2025
Day 21: Summing integers? Compiler vectorises beautifully—8 at a time! Switch to floats? It refuses, doing each add individually. Same code, totally different output. Why? 🤔 xania.org/202512/21-ve... youtu.be/lUTvi_96-D8 #AoCO2025
xania.org
When SIMD Fails: Floating Point Associativity — Matt Godbolt’s blog
Why floating point maths doesn't vectorise like integers, and what to do about it
2223
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 20/12/2025
Here are some details: heathhenley.dev/posts/pg-tup...
heathhenley.dev
Simple query refactor - 100x faster
A simple refactor of a postgres pagination query improved performance significantly, this is an explanation of that update. The basic is that if you have a query like a < c or (a = c and b < d) - try...
010
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 20/12/2025
I recently speed up a cursor pagination query in postgres by 100x by switching the where clause from something like: where (a < c or (a = c and b < d)) to where (a, b) < (c, d) Maybe you db people are aware of this but something to keep in mind / check for when profiling and optimizing!
220
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 16/12/2025
Excuse me GitHub, your Microsoft is showing (charging for time on self hosted runners 🤯) resources.github.com/actions/2026...
010
Reposted by Heath
CBS News @cbsnews.com · 13/12/2025
An active shooter was reported near Brown University's campus in Rhode Island, the university said Saturday. The suspect is still at large, officials said.
cbsn.ws
Active shooter reported at Brown University in Rhode Island
An alert sent by Brown University told students to lock doors, silence phones and stay hidden until further notice.
055
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 12/12/2025
lol true I should have a said *another* Easter egg
120
Heath @heathhenley.dev · 12/12/2025
Ok at the risk of sounding like a crazy person...I feel like the input for day 12 of #AdventOfCode looks suspiciously like a hexdump, and the bytes mostly map to printable chars if you take them as hex values - but I wasn't able make anything of it I think there's an xmas easter egg in there maybe!
120