iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/10/2026

Migrating data from Redis Cloud to a Render Valkey instance is far more difficult than you would ever guess. After like half a dozen false starts, I finally got it working with a program called RedisShake, which is only fully documented in Chinese.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 01/10/2026

If you want the user to define a program, use Lua. It's not my favorite language, but this is literally what it's for.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 01/10/2026

I just migrated our CI to CircleCI as part of a larger migration off Heroku and I must be emphatic: Stop using YAML for literally anything, but especially for defining what is essentially a program. It's awful, nobody likes this, just stop it. I feel the same way about Home Assistant.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 15/09/2026

Doing cool OTP stuff today. Feels good.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 28/08/2026

I have been working towards this all year ever since my successful pitch back in December. Tomorrow I will officially begin writing Elixir at work again, taking the first steps towards migrating our app completely off of Rails. #elixir-lang

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 22/08/2026

Elixir-themed Def Leppard cover band called Defrecord #elixir-lang

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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 · 02/08/2026

[to the tune of That's Amore] when your endofunctor is monoidal in shape that's a monad

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/08/2026

I've been away from Elixir for a while so I'm not sure when this was introduced.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/08/2026

I don't think I like the new pages for Elixir Forum that come up in search... It took me a while to figure out that they were hiding the actual threads behind an incomplete representation. Gotta scroll way down to for the link to the original. And no syntax highlighting in code blocks? #elixir-lang

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 01/08/2026

Ah this is cool. The macro I created last night was just a simple one to save a bit of boilerplate for my other thing to improve Req stub ergonomics (using a NimbleOwnership server to preserve async-friendliness). But Spark is really good to know about if I ever want to make a DSL

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 01/08/2026

I've thought about Ash for a while but have yet to land in the right project for it. I've watched Zach's presentations and he sells it well. And I've long desired solutions for e.g. repeated logic in database queries vs app code

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 01/08/2026

Wrote my first Elixir macro in a while. Love this language. You never have to put up with boilerplate if you don't want to. #elixir-lang

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 28/07/2026

Things that are correct about being better for you, though perhaps annoying at first in their correctness: - Going to bed early and waking up early - Getting regular exercise - Static typing

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 26/07/2026

If you don't have any unit tests in your NeoVim config, are you really even extending your editor at all? #neovim

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

Man, Bluesky image upload quality is atrocious sometimes. Really ought to get around to setting up my own PDS.

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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 · 23/07/2026

SQL and in particular PostgreSQL is such a grand achievement. The things you can just throw at it and it just works. I wonder how much ad hoc try-hard data processing scripting out in the world could have just been SQL queries.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 21/07/2026

Or maybe one could build an AT Proto alternative, and maybe an interface for interop with Matrix bridges... Bridges are a huge part of the appeal of Matrix for me, as I don't see a competing opening messaging platform working out without bridging in what people are already using.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 21/07/2026

Totally fair opinion. Wanting to see Matrix improve is part of what gets me thinking things like "what if there was a homeserver that didn't suck, and what if it were on the BEAM", for example.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 18/07/2026

I like mine to have other people on them which today unfortunately means neither of us are happy because we’re all on Discord

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 17/07/2026

Bluesky currently appears to be read-only

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 17/07/2026

I've long thought the BEAM would be a great way to build on AT Proto. On a similar token, when will Gleam community leads get nerdsniped by the Matrix messaging protocol?

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 17/07/2026

vdir-calendar-notifier 0.2.1 released, with a small fix to how boolean CLI options are parsed and merged with their equivalent config file options.

tangled.org

machinesareforpeople.com/vdir-calendar-notifier

Desktop notifications for calendar events stored in the Vdir Storage Format.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 16/07/2026

It is difficult to search for prior art on this due to the existence of Doom Emacs

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 16/07/2026

Musing that Vim macros are themselves Turing complete, leading to the horrifying possibility of porting Doom to Vim macros

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

I won't get over how cool it is to release some software with a flake.nix, then turn around and use that flake as an input in my dotfiles flake.nix to build, configure, and install it.

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

Adding that probably added about 30% to the overall development time. Totally worth it. NixOS users are real sickos.

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

A very cool thing that fell out of this that I will definitely reuse: the included Nix Home Manager module defines its options directly from the Clap/Serde config definition on the Rust side, with JSON Schema serving as an intermediary format. That includes documentation and examples, if given.

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

I have learned a lot, and there is much I would do differently were I to start from scratch. But this is working software, and I am ready to move on. Looking forward to my next Rust project, whatever that may end up being.

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

Barring patches for bug fixes, this is likely completed software. It has handily accomplished both goals: - A robust calendar event reminder daemon for my minimalist Linux desktop environment. - A small but nontrivial project to actually practice some real world Rust with.

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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 · 08/07/2026

Why don’t they just build the whole codebase out of the test suite material

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

Well, back to it. The sooner I get this done the closer I am to getting back to LiveView. I'm closing in on about a year of trying to hew closely to the Hotwire Way in this legacy app, and it feels good to finally identify one of the things about it that has been gnawing at me beneath the surface.

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

In LiveView a UI component is just a UI component. It's not tied to any publicly accessible routes, it's just a thing your app renders, with those other details concealed privately, as they should be.

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

Adding e.g. a small, reusable form to an app should not require first thinking through where it lives as an externally accessible resource, for all the various contexts in which it might appear. It gets even hairier with polymorphism, and adds a lot of friction to the inevitable refactors.

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

It exposes paths that a user would never navigate to directly, each such path bringing its own request/response overhead and concerns like authentication/authorization.

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

I have pinpointed I think one of my core frustrations with the Rails/Hotwire/Turbo approach: every stateful UI component wants its own set of routes. This demands a lot of up-front architecture work that you are likely to get wrong the first time and tightly couples your UI to your IA.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/07/2026

Turning it into a proper daemon could open a lot of avenues to make it even better, while still being a very, very simple bit of kit.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/07/2026

This is actually how this (in the quote) came to be. Next up, if I can find the time, would probably be my URL router, maybe. Basically click a link from within any app, and decide how to open it based on regex matching. I know similar things exist, but this one is mine.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 02/07/2026

I do a lot of cool shit in my NixOS config that maybe kind of should just be extracted into a daemon (built in Rust) and packaged that way. However I am glad that Nix is sophisticated enough to get me into this conundrum in the first place, without ever losing my work.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 24/06/2026

Would I prefer drilling down through type errors over relying on my beautifully conceived test suite, borne of a hard-won mastery that took decades to develop? Oh yes without question. But sometimes you're dealt a legacy Ruby codebase that can't retire just yet. Feels good to deal with it well.

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 24/06/2026

tfw you execute a breaking refactor and every single resulting failure in the test suite is directly relevant to the change you've made >>>>>>>>>>

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 23/06/2026

Don’t mind me, just containing multitudes over here

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 23/06/2026

That being said, when consuming a web API, I extremely favor a REST API oriented around resources!

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Chris Vincent @machinesareforpeople.com · 23/06/2026

The resource-oriented style pioneered by Rails can really hamstring you, especially recognizable when you’ve tried e.g. CQRS and event sourcing and the liberty to use data structures that make sense rather than what can be squished into database table rows

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