joelmccracken.bsky.social
@joelmccracken.bsky.social
My gut still tells me that if you're good enough at nix, you get the ability to do things that you can't really otherwise do, but I am certainly with you in that the typical nix story is really wildly off.

I love how vids will quote that pkgs are all so fresh, without the num that are broken!
November 3, 2025 at 4:53 PM
this was my common experience: I _had_ to upgrade nixpkgs to some more recent version for some reason, and some tool I relied upon was broken it it.

I ended up basically doing a thing where when i upgraded nixpkgs, i'd expect some brokenness, then switch to home manger to install that tool.
November 3, 2025 at 4:53 PM
things just break, all the time.

Most recently, I had a home manager config that set up emacs and just like 10 cli tools. I upgraded macos, and so *had* to upgrade nixpkgs, because you just, like, have to sometimes. Stable, heh, yeah right.

Anyway, suddenly bitwarden cli didn't work.
November 3, 2025 at 4:53 PM
I've used nix off and on for long, but this basically mirrors my experience. The whole thing is wacky. I do think part of it is that I've only really wanted to use it for the "harder" things it supposedly can do, and I've used it on macOS almost exclusively, but...
November 3, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Is there a chat or community for your podcast? I wanted to ask a question about one of the episodes
October 30, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Eventually it did fly away. I believe it happened when it was starting to warm up; in retrospect I think it originally got into the apartment looking for warmth in the late autumn.

A fond memory now. I think about it any time I see them now.
October 17, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Some time passed by. it hung out in there while we did any bathroom stuff. A few times it flew onto my chest while I was in the bath.
October 17, 2025 at 5:44 PM
So we looked around, eventually finding a starling missing some its tail feathers hiding in a cranny somewhere.

Took it into the bathroom and got some bird food etc for it, it lived in there for a while. Every once in a while we’d open the window so it could fly away if it wanted.
October 17, 2025 at 5:44 PM
They are very common in western Pennsylvania, and I have a story with a particular one.

Early in our marriage, we lived in a studio apartment; it was basically one big room and a separate bathroom.

We had gone out for a while, and when we got home found the cats were acting a bit weirdly.
October 17, 2025 at 5:44 PM