Coming back to the blog after long break. Today, almost by accident I found how logical operators work with None in Python. The result is surprising, because it is not […]

I have a very nicely built 12 year old Dell tower, that I inherited from some startup, which I use as a home server running Ubuntu. I also have a […]

Python has two ways to convert an object to a string: str(x) and repr(x). str is supposed to be user-readable, and repr is more technical, e.g. for debugging purposes. To […]

In bash it is possible to test whether one file is older or newer than the other: if [ file1 -nt file2 ]; then # do something fi if [ […]

When a host directory is mounted into a docker container, how are file permissions handled? Docker copies files permissions from the host to the container verbatim, inluding numeric user ids. […]

I have a MacBook Pro now, courtesy of my new employer, but it only has four USB-C ports and nothing else, so none of my existing hardware could connect to […]

I have moved my blog to DigitalOcean platform: they provide a decent virtual server for $5/month, with static IP address to boot. It’s all highly scientific now: I have moved […]

I am moving my web site to docker, and I need to be able to send emails using a GMail account. GMail is limited to 500 emails a day, but […]

A docker containing not running anything particular in the foreground will exit immediately after start. Specifying /bin/sh as the startup command does not help. Some Internet sources suggest tail -f […]