Darren Kirby
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dragonbyte.ca
Darren Kirby
@dragonbyte.ca
Rural Canadian. Formerly urban Canadian. Stuck in a pothole at the intersection of writing, photography, birds, bees, computer programming, and data science.
Or we could buy defective-by-design F35s with remote kill switches from fascists. I guess Carney will need to ponder the options a bit longer.
November 14, 2025 at 3:01 AM
Reposted by Darren Kirby
@davidebybc.bsky.social

We don’t want this coming through our province. This sounds a bit like Carney and Smith are going to walk all over BC.
November 7, 2025 at 8:34 PM
I've spent the last two days hunting down a bizarre bug in my C code. I finally found it, and it was caused by my own dumbassery. All I can say is:

When you re-write a section of code the correct way, make sure you remove the kludges you put in to make it work when you wrote it the incorrect way.
November 1, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Unlike so many other once great institutions, the PSF can't be bought by fascists.

It would be nice if some other governments kicked in some cash to make up the loss.
TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
🧵
The official home of the Python Programming Language
www.python.org
October 28, 2025 at 2:13 AM
Capitalism, whether motivated by pure greed or the hand of autocratic leaders, will claim every good thing, every human achievement, package it in an enshitified form shackled by artificial scarcity, and make it defective by design, simply to generate more capital.

pluralistic.net/2025/10/20/p...
Pluralistic: The mad king’s digital killswitch (20 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net
October 20, 2025 at 6:41 PM
So cool that you can be summarily executed by a foreign military for being 'suspected' of stuff. Stuff that doesn't even come with a death sentence when convicted in that foreign country.
U.S. Military Kills Another 6 People in 5th Caribbean Strike, Trump Says

In a social media post, the president said the people aboard a boat were "suspected of smuggling drugs for an unspecified group" his team had labeled "terrorists".
October 14, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Darren Kirby
Today's the day! Hope to see you at City Farmer in Vancouver this afternoon, October 4 from 1-3 pm. I'll bee selling books for $30 each and of course, I'd bee happy to sign them for you!
October 4, 2025 at 5:31 PM
You best start believing in dystopian futures, Miss Turner... you're in one!
a man in a pirate hat is holding a monkey on his shoulders .
Alt: A man in a pirate hat is holding a monkey on his shoulders . The man is Captain Barbossa from the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise.
media.tenor.com
September 29, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Six Mile Pub in Victoria just responded to a (complimentary) google review I left there about 8-9 years ago haha. Said they'd love to hear more about our experience. Honestly, other than eating there once, I don't recall much.
September 26, 2025 at 5:20 PM
I've been hacking on this fairly regular, and at 7000+ LoC it is turning from a toy-lisp into a full-blown R7RS Scheme implementation. It has garbage collection, full 'numeric tower' implementation, lists, vectors and bytevectors, partial Unicode support (chars but not yet strings).

#scheme #lisp
Yesterday morning I started writing a Scheme-flavoured Lisp implementation from scratch. Just now, after 1050 lines of cryptic C code (I never want to type 'l_val' again), I have a REPL that is able to correctly do basic arithmetic 😆
September 25, 2025 at 2:02 AM
🐝🐝🐝
Where do bumble bees build their homes? Where do they spend the winter? And how do you protect bumble bees if their nests * overwintering sites are almost impossible to find? Join us to get all the answers! 🐝
🗓️Oct 2 at 10am PT / 1pm ET
🔗Register for this free event: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
September 23, 2025 at 6:45 PM
To be historically accurate, that cassette needs to be an 8-track. And it's either Kenny Rogers/Dolly Parton duets or perhaps the Statler Brothers.
What is Dad playing?
September 19, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Guess where we are...
September 19, 2025 at 7:40 PM
Okanagan visitor hitting on that dank BC bud a bit too much...
September 19, 2025 at 2:16 AM
We stopped in at Prince of Wales for lunch. Lori said it was very 'Wes Anderson', and I can't disagree.
September 17, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Guess where we are?
September 17, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Darren Kirby
Your 55 seconds of the opposite of Zen. DOA at the Prospector Pub, Rock Creek BC, September 14, 2025.
September 15, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Your 55 seconds of the opposite of Zen. DOA at the Prospector Pub, Rock Creek BC, September 14, 2025.
September 15, 2025 at 6:16 AM
For some reason, DOA has decided to play the pub at the one-horse town I live in, and as an old-school punk, yeah, I'm going. This will be the first show I've seen in years. The last was Reverend Horton Heat in Edmonton, in spring of 2018? 2019?
September 11, 2025 at 10:21 PM
Reposted by Darren Kirby
"political violence is never acceptable," is a phrase you don't hear politicians say after cops beat the shit out of peaceful demonstrators
September 10, 2025 at 11:36 PM
A lot of you seem to like dunking on Doug Ford for being a 'hash dealer'. Let's be absolutely clear: Dealing hash is one of the least objectionable things he's done. The world, or at least Ontario, would be a far better place if he had remained a hash dealer.
September 10, 2025 at 3:00 AM
This may read as 'send me birthday greetings', but it was intended as 'if the fates could just be kind to me, this one day', y'know?
Please be nice to me, it's my birthday.
September 6, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Please be nice to me, it's my birthday.
September 6, 2025 at 2:18 PM
We've just set up at Monck Park just outside of Merritt, BC. The rubber rabbitbrush is in full bloom, and the bees are buzzing. If you're in or near town, make sure to drop by the library tomorrow at 11:00am for Lori's 'Bees, butterflies, and botany' talk. 🐝
September 5, 2025 at 11:42 PM