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Christopher De Vries

@unnecessary.tech
154 followers 264 following 450 posts

maker of unnecessary technology maintainer of @auroraalert.bsky.social he/him unnecessary.tech

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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 07/09/2026
It’s ok, I fixed it.
It’s like Trump meets Spaceballs. A little facism and a little dark helmet.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 25/08/2026
Rainbow over Fryeburg
Rainbow in a blue grey sky touching down over the Fryeburg post office. Two postal vehicles are in the foreground and a streetlamp. To the right in the distance are road signs indicating the intersection of 113 and 302.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 04/08/2026
Happy William Rowan Hamilton day to all those who celebrate!
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 25/07/2026
Today I got to take part in the convention which nominated Troy Jackson to run for U.S. Senate.
Troy Jackson makes his case for why he should be the next Senator from Maine at the Maine Democrats senate nomination convention in Bangor.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 09/07/2026
Best way to have a transparent process is to start with a closed meeting. I worry things may get even more tumultuous as we near the deadline to nominate a replacement.
Extract from article:

"We look forward to coming together and harnessing that energy around our new nominee as we work to defeat Susan Collins in November"

The party also pledged transparency in the selection process going forward, though the meeting Wednesday was not open to the media.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 21/06/2026
What I imagine when Trump says there’s an issue with Vandals at the reflection pool.
AI generated depiction of the ancient Germanic Vandals sacking the reflecting pool. There are men on horseback galloping through the reflecting pool and fires all around. The dawn is just baking behind the Washington Monument. Men with spears, swords, and spears surround the pool.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 20/06/2026
I liked the one for the Maine Democratic gubernatorial ranked choice runoff so much I made one for the House District Democratic rank choice runoff.
Sankey diagram showing 3 rounds of runoff in the Maine House district 2 runoff. In round one Baldacci has 24,966 votes, Dunlap 22,933, Wood 22,714, and Loud 8,194. In round 2 Baldacci has 25,923, Dunlap has 25,681, and Wood had 25,377. In round 3 Baldacci has 32,555 and Dunlap has 35,924 making Dunlap the winner.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 09/06/2026
Ugh, so frustrating that the Kamala Harris’s deputy campaign manager is a “low information voter.” Take some responsibility to educate yourself before Election Day. Rather than focusing on getting out the vote we should have focused on teaching people to be informed voters.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 06/06/2026
I’ve been replying to automated messages from candidates like they’re personal messages and I finally got a reply!
Photo of text message exchange:

Sender: Please get out and vote in person and rank me first. Check out my website to learn more, and make your plan to vote this Tuesday right now! https://loudforcongress.com

Recipient: No problem, I’ve got you ranked first.

Sender: Thank you! Have a great weekend!
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 30/05/2026
Note the new location! Tomorrow morning at 9am in Fryeburg, Maine meet your democratic candidates.
Coffee & Candidates
Saturday
May 30, 2026, 9-11 am
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church
857 Main Street
Fryeburg, ME

US Senate
• David Costello
• Andrea Laflamme

Governor
• Troy Jackson
• Angus King III
• Hannah Pingree
• Dr. Nirav Shah

Maine Senate
• Beth Bosworth - SD18
• Peter Southam - SD19

Maine House
• Chris Lewey - HD82
• Chris Easton - HD81

Oxford County Treasurer
• Savannah Sessions

Oxford County Sheriff
• Timothy Holland

MSAD 72 School Board
• Kim De Vries - Fryeburg
• Pamela Marshall - Denmark

Fryeburg Selectboard
• Dan Kaschub

Hosted by the Oxford Democrats
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 29/05/2026
Meet your democratic candidates tomorrow at the American Legion Hall in Fryeburg.
Coffee & Candidates
Saturday
May 30, 2026, 9-11 am
American Legion
Bradley Street
Fryeburg, ME

US Senate
• David Costello

Governor
• Troy Jackson
• Angus King III
• Hannah Pingree

Maine Senate
• Beth Bosworth - SD18
• Peter Southam - SD19

Maine House
• Chris Lewey - HD82
• Chris Easton - HD81

Oxford County Treasurer
• Savannah Sessions

Oxford County Sheriff
• Timothy Holland

MSAD 72 School Board
• Kim De Vries - Fryeburg
• Pamela Marshall - Denmark

Fryeburg Select Board
• Dan kaschub
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 19/05/2026
This chair is no fun.
Safety information:
Sit in the center of the chair with your back to the backrest. Do not sit at the front edge of the chair. Do not stand on the chair. Do not use the chair with more than one person. Do not push the chair around when a person is sitting on it. Do not push down on the backrest when a person is reclined. Do not place all your weight on only the backrest.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 16/05/2026
Sorry you’re missing this.
Some bearded guy enjoying a wonderful day in Maine while lying in a hammock before the bugs all come out.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 22/03/2026
Was Meta’s metaverse just a poor clone of Second Life?
May 1, 2006 cover of Business Week magazine featuring the Second Life avatar Anshe Chung and the headline “Virtual World, Real Money” followed by the blurb: “She's fictional, Lives inside an online game, but eams thousands of actual dollars there. And she’s not alone.”
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 15/02/2026
A beautiful day for snowshoeing in Maine.
A pine forest with snow covered ground. A single track of s snowmobile heads off from the position of the photographer away into the distance. Where the sky peeks through the trees it is a deep blue. The center of of the snowmobile trail is covered in snowshoe tracks.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 02/01/2026
The cover of the book “Radiative Processes in Astrophysics” by George B. Rybicki and Alan P. Lightman. The black and white cover features an illustration of radiation (represented by squiggly arrows) emitting from a circumstellar disk.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 29/12/2025
After ripping apart his dog toy, we found the squeaker had a congratulatory message.
Yellow squeaker from inside a dog toy with the words “challenge complete. Please throw me away” embossed on it.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 10/12/2025
Sometimes I have trouble finding the words to describe it times. Luckily @michaelianblack.bsky.social finds the words.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 12/11/2025
Green northern lights behind a cloud taken from Fryeburg.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 04/11/2025
Its been hard to keep positive and not be overwhelmed by the cruelty in the world today. I try to remember there’s beauty in this world as well.
Mist rises over a lake before sunrise. There’s a island with pine trees poking out from the mist and some shoreline vegetation in the foreground. To the left is a small peninsula also covered in trees and reflected in the water below it.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 15/10/2025
Next time I attempt a multi day hike I’m going to do note practice hikes and pack a lot less. I was too worried about food and ended up eating only a fraction of what I brought. I also need to lighten my other equipment. I definitely have less carrying capacity than I did at 17.
A picture of part of the Appalachian Trail through Maine in the fall from the perspective of a hiker on the trail. The ground is covered in a dense carpet of leaves, but there are still a lot of green leaves in the saplings surrounding the trail. There is a tree trunk in the foreground and a felled trunk behind it.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 17/09/2025
I think I managed to parse those tzinfo files @lpil.uk . Still need a lot of cleanup and documentation.
verdandi:secunetics-code:time_now (main)> gleam run
   Compiled in 0.03s
    Running time_now.main
New York:  2025-09-16   22:12:21 EDT
Vevay:     2025-09-16   22:12:21 EDT
Phoenix:   2025-09-16   19:12:21 MST
Amsterdam: 2025-09-17    4:12:21 CEST
London:    2025-09-17    3:12:21 BST
Tokyo:     2025-09-17   11:12:21 JST
Auckland:  2025-09-17   14:12:21 NZST
Cairo:     2025-09-17    5:12:21 EEST
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 11/09/2025
I tried Gleam because it has a friendly community, and I really like the language.
The unofficial pine tree and star Maine flag showing the standard pine tree in the center and the star, replaced by Gleam's logo Lucy, which is a pink star with a smiley face on it.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 15/08/2025
I just want to rest in the hammock!
Emergency alert that says “ FROM EINDHAM POLICE Gunman at large in North Windham. Shelter indoors, lock doors. Report suspicious behavior to 911. Last seen Windham/Raymond line. Stay inside. Tune to local news or Windham PD for updates.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 14/07/2025
I, for one, welcome our new computational overlords.
Colossus data center from “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970)
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 26/06/2025
Smells like racism to me, but I’d really love it if any reporter could challenge him on what he means by “control.”
Tweet from Stephen Miller which says “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.”
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 03/06/2025
I am overjoyed to have received a call out for my minor contribution to gleam 1.11. If you deploy containers to services like Cloud Run or Azure Container Apps this change can make your containers more responsive to scale down events.
Playing nicely with POSIX

The Gleam build tool has a gleam export erlang-shipment command for compiling and preparing a project for deployment to a server or similar. It includes a script for starting the Erlang virtual machine and running the program, but unfortunately it was written in a way that meant that the program would not receive POSIX exit signals.

Christopher De Vries has fixed this problem. Thank you Christopher!
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 20/05/2025
Disappoint!
Satya Nadella and Elon Musk shooting the shit at Microsoft Build.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 12/05/2025
Is this really from @golden.house.gov? 1 in 3 of your constituents is on Medicaid [citation needed] and you can’t figure out if you should try to protect it? If only there was an opposition party to republicans!
Text message that says “Hi, it's Rep. Jared Golden. One in three people in Maine's 2nd District use Medicaid for health care, but the House GOP tax plan could take Medicaid away from millions of Americans. Should Medicaid be protected? Let me know at [url]
Sources: KFF, CBO. STOP to optout
The sender is not in your contact list.”
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 22/02/2025
Literally every speaker at #CPAC.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 17/02/2025
Volodymyr Zelensky speaking in front of Ukrainian flags with the words, “ I’m here to chew bubblegum and keep Putin from gaining a foothold in Europe, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 17/02/2025
Age yourself with the first computer you used.
A photo of the Texas Instrument TI-99/4a computer.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 15/02/2025
A view from the Mountain Division Trail today.
A groomed snowmobile trail is shown going off into the distance ahead. To the left of the trail is a wooden fence and on both sides of the trail are trees. In the far distance in the direction in which the trail goes is a partially snow covered mountain. The sky is a blueish gray.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 25/01/2025
Nice end to a rough week.
A snow trail between pine trees. Snowmobile tracks are visible.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 22/01/2025
Everyone in the United States walking up today.
Couple in their pajamas with a toaster oven containing a block of evil.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 18/01/2025
People are out ice fishing on Lovewell Pond.
People in the distance with tents, ice houses, and four wheelers on a vast expanse of white. Behind them is the opposite bank of the pond and behind that the grey expense of the White Mountains. The sky is cloudy and darker than the snow covered pond.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 11/01/2025
Winter day in Fryeburg.
A snow covered fields in a New England intervale which is part of a small farm. In the distance are groups of trees and mountains. The solid gray of the sky gives way to the bare trees of the horizon below which can be seen the white snow-converted land. In the foreground is some brush surrounding a snowmobile trail.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 07/12/2024
I’m going to get the rust off these pieces of metal. Can anyone guess what they are from?
An assortment of rusty metal pieces in an aluminum bowl which includes a nut, a bolt, a washer, a round metal piece with a cylindrical pyramid protruding from it, a round metal piece with an upturned lip on one side, a piece shaped like a top hat with the top cut of, and a round piece with a large hole in it that has four spikes rising out of it forming what looks like a tiny bird cage with a hole in the bottom. At the top of the bird cage shaped one is a tube that is open on the and closed on the bottom.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 07/12/2024
Warning: Spoiler I think today's #AdventOfCode problem (day 7) really shows off both the beauty of the Gleam language as well as the power of pattern matching on lists.
// The following gleam code is in this image:

fn is_possible_part2(target: Int, values: List(Int)) -> Bool {
  case values {
    [] -> False
    [first, ..rest] -> is_possible_part2_acc(target, rest, first)
  }
}

fn is_possible_part2_acc(target: Int, values: List(Int), current: Int) -> Bool {
  case values {
    [] -> current == target
    _ if current > target -> False
    [first, ..rest] -> {
      is_possible_part2_acc(target, rest, concat(current, first))
      || is_possible_part2_acc(target, rest, current * first)
      || is_possible_part2_acc(target, rest, current + first)
    }
  }
}

fn concat(x: Int, y: Int) -> Int {
  let xs = int.to_string(x)
  let ys = int.to_string(y)

  let assert Ok(r) = int.parse(xs <> ys)
  r
}
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 28/11/2024
This is how the day started. Up before dawn getting the smoker ready. Around this time I wonder if it’s worth it, but after eating it I realize it is.
A smoker comprised of a large metal cylinder whose axis is aligned horizontally, and a smaller metal cylinder also aligned horizontally to the right and slightly lower than the first. Both cylinders have hatches open. In the smaller cylinder there is some charcoal smoking in a starting chimney, and thermometer sits in the second cylinder. Eventually a turkey will be in the larger cylinder while charcoal will burn in the smaller one. Smoke will travel from the later to the former smoking the Turkey. It is very dark out and the photo is illuminated by a headlamp.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 25/11/2024
It started sleeting a bit, so I cut my hike a bit short.
A view of a small clear path down a hill in New Hampshire. It is well into fall so all the leaves are brown and most have fallen from the deciduous trees, but there are some pines that remain green.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 23/11/2024
Cloudy afternoon in Maine, but not too cold.
The sun tries to peak through the clouds above a row of tall pines in front of a small mountain. In the foreground is tall dead grass and a few pine shrubs.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 12/11/2024
I put together a bot which should send out alerts when a geomagnetic storm kicks up and aurora borealis is likely to be visible. Follow @auroraalert.bsky.social to be updated.
Autora borealis seen in 2024 from Fryeburg Maine with some clouds in the lower left hand corner. The aurora is red in the upper part of the image and green in the lower part. There are also green streaks rising up into the red region in the middle of the image.
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Christopher De Vries @unnecessary.tech · 11/11/2024
When it comes to the sky it’s been a pretty amazing year.
Sunrise on a snowy day. A photo of the sun and onlookers during totality of a full eclipse. Sun setting over a pond in Maine. Northern lights with red above, green below, and streaks of white.
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