Hacker News: banjomonster

New comment by banjomonster in "Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode"

banjomonster — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:47:53 +0000

I’ve been using gptel, I’ll have it generate org babel blocks I can tangle (write to files) or have it use tools to write and edit files in the project I’m working in, and then review with magit.

New comment by banjomonster in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

banjomonster — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 03:14:43 +0000

What recommendations do you have for AI artists doing genuinely interesting work, or good places to find them?

New comment by banjomonster in "Claude Code IDE integration for Emacs"

banjomonster — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:58:18 +0000

Try gptel-mode - your chats are in org buffers, and you can save/restore sessions easily. Also plays nicely with mcp.el for more tooling access.

New comment by banjomonster in "Liquid Bewitchment: Gin Drinking in England, 1700–1850"

banjomonster — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 13:49:02 +0000

Maybe this from Clay Shirkey: https://livinginliminality.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/gin.p...

New comment by banjomonster in "The KLF: Chaos, magic and the band who burned £1M"

banjomonster — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 03:58:40 +0000

I’d be interested to hear your opinion after reading the book, he covered a lot of what you mention. The burning is covered, but then it goes back and goes over everything leading up to that to frame it and put the act in context, and IIRC talks a bit about things after.

New comment by banjomonster in "Bundle Phobia: find the cost of adding an npm package to your bundle"

banjomonster — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 18:17:54 +0000

Array.isArray is available in the runtime, but it was a later addition so folks may be downloading it for compatibility. There is a LOT of that in the javascript ecosystem.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Ornette Coleman Has Died

banjomonster — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 05:25:32 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/arts/music/ornette-coleman-jazz-saxophonist-dies-at-85-obituary.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9704220

Points: 119

# Comments: 22

New comment by banjomonster in "Ending the open office epidemic"

banjomonster — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:47:36 +0000

85-90dB seems to be the where the concerns for hearing damage start, if sustained for 8+ hours.

Some useful (official) tables and charts: https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/noise/standards_more.html https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/new_noise/images/fig3.gif

And this has a nice listing of levels/safe listening times: http://www.dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-cente...

New comment by banjomonster in "Master Emacs in one year"

banjomonster — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 19:04:30 +0000

vi: runs everywhere, installed by default on most linux distributions.

emacs: incredibly customizable, you can re-write the way your editor works. Some features that I find important: editing files remotely over SSH, running a shell inside the editor (so the same editing commands work in the shell), easy to write custom file finding functions for searching different parts of a codebase, git integration (a semi-GUI interface to git), and if another editor has a feature, someone has probably created a package that adds that functionality to emacs. Also has tetris and pong.

New comment by banjomonster in "Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice"

banjomonster — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 00:06:14 +0000

In an audition, musicians are usually asked to play a mix of prepared and sight-read pieces (though sometimes the sight reading is from standard repertoire, so they may have encountered before). Both are helpful in discerning how qualified the musician is. And sight-reading is incredibly important for most jobs musicians get hired for - in most freelance situations, they'd get a 3 hour rehearsal, or essentially a guided run through of the performance, then they play the gig. So that may not be an accurate analogy, given that writing on the fly isn't part of the programming repertoire - most programmers are allowed to think before they write anything down. Also musician's don't write - performing is very different than writing- so perhaps a composer would be a better analogy.

Maybe it would be a more accurate measure of ability to ask software engineering applicants to read code and explain what it does, or to judge them as you'd judge a composer, by their portfolio.

New comment by banjomonster in "Comcast turns 50,000 paying customer homes into public hotspots"

banjomonster — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:33:00 +0000

IANAL either, but easements[1] may apply here, depending on how broadband cable is classified.

And I'm not remembering the terms for this, but I've heard there are situations where your neighbor building his fence on your land and you not taking action within a certain amount of time would cede that part of your land to your neighbor.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement

New comment by banjomonster in "Ask HN: Which chair do you code in?"

banjomonster — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 19:42:33 +0000

I use that chair too (at home). Just about everyone who's visited and tried it said it was one of the most comfortable chairs they've used. Only disadvantage (for me at least) is that the arm rests aren't adjustable, but they are removable.

New comment by banjomonster in "What Really Happened in that Double-Blind Violin Sound Test"

banjomonster — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:48:27 +0000

They also mention in the post that the old violins were shipped, and no adjustments made, which means bridges could be improperly positioned, sound posts in poor positions... having these properly adjusted can make the difference between a great sounding instrument and a screech.

New comment by banjomonster in "2-Year-Olds Convert Binary To Hexadecimals In Game Experiment"

banjomonster — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:12:23 +0000

Try selecting the missiles so that they equal the number of the bug (missiles are binary, bug numbers are hex). The box on the lower right shows you what you've selected.

New comment by banjomonster in "Are Malls Over?"

banjomonster — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 20:56:12 +0000

There's also one inside Stonestown Mall: http://www.stonestowngalleria.com/search?search-query=apple

New comment by banjomonster in "Airbnb refuses to hand over users' data"

banjomonster — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 20:15:47 +0000

One benefit is that it allows rent control. Without this, the arguments in favor of rent control go out the window - if the tenant can make significantly more renting out the apartment than they are currently paying, there's no legitimate reason to force their landlord to charge below market rents.

New comment by banjomonster in "How to Design Programs, Second Edition"

banjomonster — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 15:04:58 +0000

Calibre does a decent job converting HTML into ePub, if you download all the pages, though sometimes the navigation on every page can get annoying.

New comment by banjomonster in "Google Chromebook Under $300 Defies PC Market With Growth"

banjomonster — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 18:56:04 +0000

I think he means this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_console

New comment by banjomonster in "Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation"

banjomonster — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:04:34 +0000

One advantage traditional notation has over this is that the modifiers are a lot larger and more visible. For sight reading, notation needs to be easily scannable and irregularities (like sharps and flats) need to be highly visible. Connecting the beams on eighth and sixteen notes also serves to group the notes according to beat, and that makes parsing a measure much easier (also easier to skip ahead when you mess up). Neat idea though.

New comment by banjomonster in "Ask HN: What music instrument do you play?"

banjomonster — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 06:03:52 +0000

Also for me (former jazz saxophonist), find a lot of similarities between using and transforming data structures and thinking about how chords are related and how they resolve and transform through a progression. If only jazz paid better...