Hey friends!

I hope you had a good week! Mine was a satisfying one, we spent a lot of time at home just taking care of chores and being with each other, which was really nice. Let's learn!

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Web links of the week

TypeScript 7.0
Fixing full-bleed CSS
Obfuscated, self-evaluating bash script by CDN Akamai being supplied to consumers via retail stores
Write code like a human will maintain it
Getting Started with Anchor Positioning

Something that interested me this week

I got a fun little e-reader called the Xteink and played with it this week! It's been really cool to mess around with.

In general, I'm trying to read more and scroll less (aren't we all), and having a very easily accessible device like this is nice for that. Plus, the hardware is really quite good for something I got for 50 bucks. It's got WiFi, there's open source firmware that you can flash to it via the browser, it takes an SD card to hold custom splash screens and books, it's got a magnet on the back, and you can fully program it to do other things, too!

Rafal sent me this article too about other use cases (I saw someone using it as a writer deck too, so cool), and Remy sent this giant hub of even more resources!

This is very much not an ad, rather I'm just happy to find more open hardware in the world for people to make their own. We need more of that!

Sponsor

No sponsor this week!

SHILL TIME: Would you mind subscribing to my YouTube channel (where I do newsletter recaps every week in addition to technical videos and commentary) and letting me know the kinds of videos you'd like to see there?

Whether you respond to this issue here or in the YouTube comments, I'd really appreciate it. It's been a fun experiment getting into making longer-form videos, and I want to make sure they're valuable!

Interview question of the week

Last week, I had you get the impacted coordinates of a fireworks display! Boom boom Brad, Alex, Greg, Amine, Ege, Tatiana, Paul, Sergio, Ten, and the smarties in the Ruby Users Forum!

This week's question:
Write a function that takes a non-negative integer n and prints the numbers 0 through n in a clockwise spiral, starting at the top-left of a square grid. Hint: The grid size should be ceil(sqrt(n + 1)), and any unused cells should be blank.

Example:

> spiralGrid(99)
 0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 10
34 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 44 11
33 62 83 84 85 86 87 70 45 12
32 61 82 95 96 97 88 71 46 13
31 60 81 94 99 98 89 72 47 14
30 59 80 93 92 91 90 73 48 15
29 58 79 78 77 76 75 74 49 16
28 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 17
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18

> spiralGrid(30)
 0  1  2  3  4  5
19 20 21 22 23  6
18          24  7
17 30       25  8
16 29 28 27 26  9
15 14 13 12 11 10

(you can submit your answers by replying to this email with a link to your solution, or share on Bluesky, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Mastodon)

Cool things from around the internet

How The World’s Longest-Running Sardine Cannery Packs 60 Million Cans A Year (video)
ScottoBigum Handwired Macropad
NOMOS Glashütte: In House Or Nothing
Teaching Pop Music Analysis for Non-Majors

Joke

Leather is great for sneaking around... because it's made of hide!

That's all for now, folks! Have a great week. Be safe, make good choices, and learn someone else's perspective on something!

Special thanks to Ben, Kinetic Labs, and Marta for supporting my Patreon and this newsletter!

cassidoo

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