Hacker News: valzevul

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:36:29 +0000

There are a few outdoor ranges around Edinburgh but they focus on clay shooting and shotguns. I think there are one or two rifle ranges in town but they only accept students.

The one I went to is indoors, although not a tunnel but a Nissen hut [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissen_hut

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:29:34 +0000

It's not about submillimetre precision (OP here), it's about knowing if you can shoot well. The most common deer stalking certification in the UK (DSC1) involves three shooting tests from 20, 70, and 100m - if I don't care about 8/10 vs 9/10 shots from 25 yards, there is no way I am putting a shot within a 4" circle from 100 metres.

> every minute spent perfecting this automation was not spent improving shooting skills by, you know, shooting

I mention in the post that I had access to the range only 1-2 evenings a week, so there was no way I could improve my skills outside of these few hours.

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:23:03 +0000

No, that's fair (OP here) - I went to the range to learn how to hold the rifle in the first place, but indoor shooting with .22 from 25 yards in a stiff shooting jacket is as far from shooting a deer with .243 as it gets, so I stayed for the fun of it and the community around it.

I would definitely get to the point of stalking deer faster if I were to book a few 1-1 sessions at an outdoor range instead, but "faster" was never the point.

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:25:09 +0000

Aye, I think most people use something like .243 for stalking, but the closest range was indoors, so I didn’t have much choice.

My goal was to get a deer stalking certificate (e.g DSC1), which includes a shooting test: 2 chest shots at 100m from prone, 2 chest shots at 70m from standing/kneeling/sitting, and 2 head shots from 10-20m standing (they use cardboard deer targets, so not far from training at a range).

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:46:52 +0000

With all due respect, driving past Dundee every time I fancy a wee pasty is a bit too much (and they don't do doughnuts).

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 01:10:53 +0000

I think it depends on the discipline, NSRA .22 in the post uses the outermost edge, but ISSF (Olympic rifle/pistol, for example) uses the innermost edge.

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:58:02 +0000

Wow, I had no idea. The ones we had at the range were 0.22LR and the boxes are marked 5.7 mm which is also not precisely 0.22".

New comment by valzevul in "My phone replaced a brass plug"

valzevul — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:01:10 +0000

Counting rings is easy indeed, but scoring borderline shots without a scoring gauge is not, because the visible bullet hole is often smaller than the bullet itself.

My phone replaced a brass plug

valzevul — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:27:07 +0000

Article URL: https://drobinin.com/posts/my-phone-replaced-a-brass-plug/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877715

Points: 184

# Comments: 57

New comment by valzevul in "A Brief History of Fish Sauce"

valzevul — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:11:11 +0000

On that note, the easiest way to get your hands on some protease is to buy digestive enzymes sold as food supplements (most often they're made out of dried pork pancreas).

You also don't need much equipment: scales and an immersion circulator should do the trick.

How We Got the Favicon

valzevul — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:06:09 +0000

Article URL: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/how-we-got-the-favicon/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828885

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by valzevul in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2026)"

valzevul — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:02:00 +0000

Location: Vancouver, Canada Remote: Yes (worldwide) Willing to relocate: Yes (within Canada) Technologies: iOS, Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, Swift Concurrency, TCA, Core ML/Vision, Metal, OWASP MASVS, watchOS, iPadOS

CV: https://drobinin.com/consulting

Email: hn@drobinin.com

Senior iOS engineer / consultant (12+ years). I build and fix iOS and Vision Pro apps from medical devices and high-traffic consumer apps to vibecoded startups struggling to pass App Store reviews.

Show HN: I built a release tracker for my indie apps

valzevul — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 15:11:34 +0000

Over the past year I shipped a bunch of iOS and visionOS apps, and the messy part was often not the code but everything around the release - future plans, bug and feature requests buried in reviews, App Store in-app events, featuring nominations, blog drafts, launch posts, and random ideas I got when scrolling HN.

I tried using general-purpose tools for this (Notes, Obsidian, Trello, and Jira to name a few), but they were either built around sprints, story points, team workflows, and tickets, or did only a part of what I needed well. What I actually wanted was a single place to track releases and all the admin/marketing/store work that comes with them.

I ended up building a wee app for that purpose specifically. Today it is mainly aimed at indie Apple-platform devs. It syncs with App Store Connect, pulls in apps, events and nominations, lets me track launch content alongside releases, and has a CLI/MCP server for terminal/AI-driven workflows. It runs natively on macOS, iOS and iPadOS.

It is still early and a bit mobile-dev-specific, but that focus is also the point - I wanted something that fits the way solo app shipping works rather than another generic project board, but I am open to making it more universal in the future.

Would love feedback, especially from people shipping their own apps.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47377486

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Cab-Rank Rule

valzevul — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 03:28:31 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab-rank_rule

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47213510

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Artichoke induces sweet taste (PubMed)

valzevul — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 03:28:29 +0000

Article URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5084667/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47203381

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Traffic Light Louvres

valzevul — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:31:57 +0000

Article URL: http://orindevon.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-best-angle-for-traffic-light-louvres.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47180893

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Tonka beans are illegal in the US

valzevul — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:28:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170620-the-delicious-flavour-with-a-toxic-secret

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47176523

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by valzevul in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2026)"

valzevul — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:01:13 +0000

Location: Montreal, Canada Remote: Yes (worldwide) Willing to relocate: Yes (within Canada) Technologies: iOS, Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, Swift Concurrency, TCA, Core ML/Vision, Metal, OWASP MASVS, watchOS, iPadOS

Résumé/CV: https://drobinin.com/consulting Email: hn@drobinin.com

Senior iOS engineer / consultant (12+ years). I build and rescue iOS and Vision Pro apps that have to work: medical devices, high-traffic consumer apps, and anything where your previous freelancer said “not possible”.

I am usually brought in for the awkward parts: background reliability, performance/crash triage, architecture refactors, and migrations (SwiftUI, TCA, Swift Concurrency).

Available for MVP builds, agency oversight, joining your team for a sprint or three, and due diligence (I read the codebase and tell you what’s solid, what’s duct tape, and what it’ll take to fix).

The Whole App is a Blob

valzevul — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 04:09:51 +0000

Article URL: https://drobinin.com/posts/the-whole-app-is-a-blob/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46270386

Points: 164

# Comments: 96

British Rail Sandwich (Wikipedia)

valzevul — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:07:51 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_sandwich

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268101

Points: 4

# Comments: 0