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David Ruffner has moved

@davidruffner@raphus.social

I have moved to masto.nyc to be on a more local instance. My new account is @davidruffner@masto.nyc. The profile page is @davidruffner@masto.nyc

I'm trying to make sense of my world and am interested in learning from others and sharing my two cents.

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19 Posts

Joined February 15, 2023

pronouns:

he/him

homepage:

https://davidbruffner.com/home/

Just my toots:

https://justmytoots.com/@davidruffner@raphus.social

Posts

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 19, 2026

Replying to @TheBulletin@social.techreclaimers.club

@TheBulletin@social.techreclaimers.club Local tech reclaimer clubs sound great. I am interested.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 07, 2026

I learned today from a coworker that in python you can use slice indexing to insert a list into another list. For example:
```
a = [0,1,2,3]
b = [8,9]
a[1:1] = b
print(a)
# [0, 8, 9, 1, 2, 3]
```
It works but seems strange to me. It makes sense that the index 1 position of the `a` list gets filled in with the first entry from the `b` list, but then this previously index 1 value is remembered and gets appended to the end of the `b` list. It's not obvious to me.

I intend to look into the implementation to see how it works under the hood.

#TIL
#python

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 06, 2026

Replying to @wim_v12e@scholar.social

@wim_v12e@scholar.social It really is! I ended up reading a good chunk of the book. It's cool to see what people were thinking back then. A lot of Jevons's ideas hold up pretty well.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 05, 2026

Replying to @jrbe@scholar.social

@jrbe@scholar.social Awesome! It's great getting a personal best.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 02, 2026

I rode my bike to the May Day rally and march in Newark today. Some good things:
- It felt great to have solidarity with other people determined to change the current situation.
- The weather was fantastic, blue sky, mild temps and sunny.
- I was able to make it despite an issue with my bike tire, my phone dying, and not initially finding the protest. As I was about ready to give up and head home, I found the group marching and joined right in.
- There were drums and lots of good chants. Lots of energy despite a small crowd.
- On the ride home, I saw a bald eagle soaring and being harassed by another good sized bird (maybe a hawk?).

#threeGoodThings (plus some extra)
#uspol
#MayDay

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · May 01, 2026

Replying to @cark@social.tchncs.de

@cark @kevin this is awesome, i had no idea you could do that, and it seems genuinely useful to me. Judging on the number of boosts, I think others find it useful/cool too. So I think it makes sense to multiply all the xkcd times by a big and growing factor. Thanks for sharing!

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 25, 2026

"Just as you shouldn't let others' judgements deter you, don't let them define your metrics of success. We can't control whether we live up to others' expectations, but we can control whether we live up to our own".

I was inspired by this article by Kelli Hendrickson. I definitely feel the pressure of other people's definition of success, as I navigate the next phase of my career. It's encouraging to see someone go their own way.

https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/02/leaving-mit

#careerShift

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 24, 2026

My coworker and I figured out a nasty bug in our own code yesterday. It was one of those "works on my machine" situations. We ended up using some of the strategies from @b0rk@social.jvns.ca 's zine, The Pocket Guide To Debugging, https://wizardzines.com/zines/debugging-guide/. We worked together, reproduced the bug, made a minimal example, identified and answered small questions, kept a log book, and analyzed the logs (a report from running the command). Eventually we solved it, and it was caused by a flawed assumption on our part.

Initially, the problem was daunting. It was involved with a tool, nuitka, that I'm not familiar with. It's a tool for compiling python applications into C and then makes a Windows exe file for running the application. It's somewhat niche, so I didn't find answers from web searches. I didn't know where to start, and things didn't make sense at all.

Having a set of strategies to fall back on was encouraging. It made the process a lot more fun too.

#debugging

social.jvns.ca

Julia Evans (@b0rk@jvns.ca) - Mastodon

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David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 20, 2026

The Hell Mary. A more aggressive name for the long pass that sometimes happens at the end of American football games.

The Diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid. A more graphic name for the well known kids book.

😄
#parenting

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 19, 2026

The azaleas in our yard are blooming! I love the abundance of flowers.
#bloomscrolling

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @jrbe@scholar.social

@jrbe Nice, I am impressed...although potentially worrisome for you. It sounds like he's well on his way to learning about plants! It can be a fun hobby/interest. A lot of wild plants are edible too. It definitely gives a richer perspective to know what plants taste like in addition to what they look like.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 17, 2026

Replying to @jrbe@scholar.social

@jrbe I like flatpak. It makes it easier to try applications because they generally just work. FlatHub is great for browsing open source applications too. It's important to me that flatpak is fully free and open source software too. I don't know all the details but I believe that some part of snap is not open source. I am not sure which things about snap are bad for you. Flatpak might have similar issues. For me two tricky things with flatpak are knowing where applications are installed and remembering to update the applications. I think both are solvable problems but I haven't mastered those skills yet.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @janeadams@datavis.social

@janeadams Wow! That's a nice spread of plants. Maybe you can become unreasonable, so you can keep on acquiring plants? 😃

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Apr 06, 2026

Three good things from today:
- I decided to sleep in (a little) today and the kids didn't wake me up, despite it being Easter.
- My friend reached out yesterday with a short video message just to say hi. 😊. We message d a little today and it was great to catch up.
- We visited my wife's family today and had a yummy meal together. Our kids and my brother-in-law's kids had a fun time playing together and doing an Easter egg hunt.

#threeGoodThings
#easter

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Mar 28, 2026

Replying to @PamelaBarroway@mstdn.social

Thanks @PamelaBarroway@mstdn.social ! I've been happy to what Mikie Sherrill has been doing so far.

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Mar 16, 2026

Replying to @tero@rukii.net

@tero it sounds interesting. Is there any more information about this position and about the organization?

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Nov 20, 2025

Replying to @raphus@raphus.social

@raphus@raphus.social Thanks for this work on raphus.social's infrastructure and resilience. I appreciate it!

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Oct 14, 2024

Replying to @Riedl@sigmoid.social

@Riedl that kind of thing definitely has happened to me. For me it is about reducing the frequency, but from time to time some big mixup will happen. I hope you were able to find lodging!

David Ruffner has moved @davidruffner@raphus.social · Sep 02, 2024

Replying to @daniel_collin@mastodon.gamedev.place

@daniel_collin@mastodon.gamedev.place Wow! Beautiful shot! I looked up the articles about Sheetal Devi and found this one that gives some of her backstory, https://samarth.ndtv.com/meet-16-year-old-sheetal-devi-worlds-first-armless-woman-archer-51/ Her favorite activity as a child was climbing trees. I appreciate her story, it is a reminder to me to question the impossible.

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