iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 11/08/2026

Today I found dbslice, an amazing tool for grabbing an anonymized slice of production data with referential integrity: github.com/nabroleonx/d... And here's a #Nix package for it you can throw into a devshell:

dbslice = pkgs.python3.pkgs.buildPythonApplication {
pname = "dbslice";
version = "1.0.1"; # Replace with the version you need
src = pkgs.python3.pkgs.fetchPypi {
pname = "dbslice";
version = "1.0.1";
sha256 = "sha256-gyvQT1UPK+ft8OTgQFTAb73RNP24YjQJxVXsBFCj2fM=";
};
doCheck = false;
pyproject = true;
build-system = [ pkgs.python3.pkgs.hatchling ];
dependencies = with pkgs.python3.pkgs; [
faker
psycopg2-binary
pyyaml
rich
typer
];
};

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 08/08/2026

My favorite little function I define in all of my Elixir projects. #elixir-lang

Elixir code:

def maybe(input, true, fun), do: fun.(input)
def maybe(input, false, fun), do: input

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 25/07/2026

Finally, I have blessed iex with sane keybinds, a problem that has bothered me for _years_. Now it behaves a bit more like most shells, for easier context switching. Just a dash of tmux config. #elixir-lang

$A bit of Nix extending some tmux config: hm.programs.tmux.extraConfig = '' set-option -g @iex_check \ "ps -o state= -o comm= -t '#{pane_tty}' | grep -iqE 'beam.smp'" bind-key -n C-d if-shell -F "#{E:@iex_check}" \ "send-keys C-c" \ "send-keys C-d" bind-key -n C-c if-shell -F "#{E:@iex_check}" \ "send-keys '#iex:break' ENTER" \ "send-keys C-c" '';$

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 13/07/2026

I have released vdir-calendar-notifier 0.2.0! - If a URL is parsed from the event, clicking the notification opens that URL - User-configurable snooze presets - Optional "Edit" button to open the iCalendar file in your default application - Refined relative time display tangled.org/machinesaref...

Example of a calendar event reminder notification.

An icon of a clock with an exclamation point.

Event is titled "test location", followed by https://asdf.com/ in the notification body, to test the event URL parsing.

The next line in the body is "in 57 seconds", indicating time remaining until the event start time.

Several possible notification actions are given:

- Snooze for 5 minutes
- Snooze for 10 minutes
- Snooze until 5 minutes before start
- Snooze until 10 minutes before start
- Edit

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 23/05/2026

This example is using jj.nvim to open a previous version of the file in the current buffer, optionally in a split, and optionally in diff mode with scrollbind. The fzf_file_change_ids is just a simple wrapper script that looks like this:

file="$1"
shift

jj log -r "files($file)" --color=always --ignore-working-copy -T fzf |
grep -v "(elided revisions)" |
fzf --ansi --height=~50% --delimiter='|' --with-nth='{1}' --accept-nth='{2}' "$@"

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 23/05/2026

An example of the picker in action. You just call it with a `cmd` that calls `fzf`, optionally some expected keys, and a callback that will be called with the selection and the key used, and will not be called at all if the picker was closed.

$vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader><c-a>", function() local path = vim.fn.expand("%") local key_to_split = { enter = "", ["ctrl-v"] = "wincmd v", ["ctrl-s"] = "wincmd s", ["ctrl-t"] = "tabnew %", ["alt-v"] = "wincmd v", ["alt-s"] = "wincmd s", ["alt-t"] = "tabnew %", } picker({ cmd = NixToNvim.jj.fzf_file_change_ids .. " " .. path, expected_keys = { "enter", "ctrl-v", "ctrl-s", "ctrl-t", "alt-v", "alt-s", "alt-t", }, callback = function(key, change_id) local diff = key:match("^alt-") ~= nil local setup_diff = function() if diff then vim.cmd.diffthis() vim.cmd("set scrollbind") end end vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("BufEnter", { pattern = path, once = true, callback = vim.schedule_wrap(function() setup_diff() vim.cmd(key_to_split[key]) file.open_target({ rev = change_id, path = path, }) -- Couldn't get an autocommand to trigger, but this works vim.defer_fn(setup_diff, 10) end), }) end, }) end)$

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