Sean Coates
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sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Sean Coates
@sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
12 followers 0 following 360 posts
Tricking software into working since the 1980s.

I do all kinds of tech things. Here you'll find: rants, ops/devops, web, iOS, microcontrollers, electronics, food, beer […]

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://scoat.es/@sean, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
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sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
My dog, Stanley is pretty smart.

He has "speech" buttons that he can press to "say" words (it plays an audio recording of a word like “outside" or "water”).

He'll press the "food" button before we'll feed him dinner, and he presses "outside" most mornings as apart […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
November 16, 2025 at 4:18 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Calling it. 😢
Same thyme plant, barely poking through the snow.
November 15, 2025 at 8:59 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Last night I saw a couple bands you've probably never heard of.

Because they're trendy and cool and I'm trendy and cool? Nope.

"Probably" because, statistically, you're not a Canadian of a certain age interested in music from 1990-something.

I Mother Earth was […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
The stage scene at Metropolis (officially “MTelus”) in Montreal, with I Mother Earth playing. The same scene, but later, with different lighting; and Matthew Good and his Band.
November 12, 2025 at 3:40 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
You can do it, little thyme plant.

I’m not ready for actual snow season to start in #montreal quite yet.
The late autumn remains of my outdoor thyme bush, clearly marked “winter thyme” but also surrounded by this morning’s snowfall and some stray fallen tree leaves.
November 9, 2025 at 6:35 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Christmas tree topper firmware ported from MicroPython (that was a huge pain to get an old version running last year) to #embedded #swift (that was an even bigger pain to get built, this year—but I finally did it).

But pretty nice to have an ESP32 Embedded Swift […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
Last year’s panel (MicroPython) with this year’s prototype panel (Swift). These are 16x16 LED panels. One of them will go on top of our Christmas tree in a little more than a month.
October 31, 2025 at 1:22 AM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
No. Do not send the signal that this is okay. We paid $3 each for our slightly smaller pumpkins.
October 26, 2025 at 8:08 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
@pluralistic Overflow crowd. Amazing turnout.
Standing room only at the event.
October 24, 2025 at 10:56 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
We’re all old enough to get the emoji joke here (when code formatting is not compliant and needs to have the formatter run).

This isn’t a privilege I’ve always had at work.
A message from our bot Stu saying: “💾❌ Job Format failure”
October 15, 2025 at 2:54 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Meme template for “Marked Safe From” and “Stellantis’s hilariously incompetent update deployment practices (for now)”
October 12, 2025 at 4:09 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
If you see me at @swiftserverconf this week, and especially if you've worked on a #swift package that we use, hit me up for some maple syrup straight from the tree—I’m bringing a few to give to new friends.
A small 100ml bottle marked 2025 with a maple leaf.
September 29, 2025 at 6:36 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Quebec wines. IYKYK.

Or more like If TQS aired in your market when you were a teenager YK.
Two bottles of wine from Pinard et Filles. 2020 Pornfelder on the left, 2023 Bleu Nuit on the right.
September 26, 2025 at 10:06 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Also, this is an amazing search result.
Screen shot of a search result showing the Wikipedia Idiocracy article as a main hit and “List of federal judges appointed by Donald …” as a related article.
September 22, 2025 at 3:55 AM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Still going strong. Epic #tomato year, 2025.
A BLT with the ripest of tomatoes.
September 20, 2025 at 4:58 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
I’ve sent this email to the MP Secretary of State (formerly the role of Travel Minister). I sincerely hope for a response, but I am not confident I will receive an adequate one.
Screen shot of email; text: Hello, Honourable Representative Valdez. I am contacting you under your role as Secretary of State (Small Business and Tourism). Yesterday (September 19th, 2025), there was a security issue with https://travel.gc.ca/ . It was either a breach or an access policy issue. For a period of time around 13:45-14:35 EDT, a non-existent country was added to the travel advisories at: https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/zzcountry-zzpays Below, I’ve attached a screen shot I captured at around 14:30 EDT. I haven’t seen any reporting on this, so if there is an existing published statement, please point me to that. It appears that someone was able to change the content of this site without approval (or the approval checks were bypassed). It is extremely disappointing and additionally concerning that someone was (and maybe still is?) able to make this kind of change without appropriate checks in place to prevent it. We are supposed to be able to trust government outlets like this web site, and clearly we cannot with the current (as of yesterday, at least) policies in place. What happened here, and what is being done about it? Are the other entries in this list correct? When were they last audited? In this age of documented foreign interference, it’s completely unacceptable to allow this kind of security breach. I’m CCing my MP but the last two times I contacted her office, I did not receive a response. Sean Coates (Dorval, QC; H9S)
September 20, 2025 at 3:39 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
For posterity:
Screen shot of the Government of Canada’s official travel advisory for ZZCountry (which doesn’t exist), showing “Risk level” of “kjfkdjlkjdlkfjsdlk”. Sorry that was probably annoying in your screen reader, but that’s what it says.
September 19, 2025 at 6:32 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
A lot of things have changed in the 7 years since I took this video on a perfectly still lake in Eden Vermont.

Back then, I’d take a September solo trip to pick up a friend’s Collected Works allotment at Hill Farmstead. That programme doesn’t exist anymore, and […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
September 15, 2025 at 2:47 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
It’s a very short season when I think raw tomatoes are actually good and right now is it. This one was great. (Grainy brioche bread, butter toasted on the inside only, kewpie mayo, market heirloom tomato.)
Mentioned delicious tomato sandwich, sliced diagonally, on a plate.
September 7, 2025 at 5:19 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Probably the last of the local strawberries until 2026. 😢
A bowl of strawberry shortcake (sweet biscuit, strawberries, whipped cream)
September 7, 2025 at 12:23 AM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
The constant “you must want AI so bad that we’re forcing it on you” hubris is really wearing me out.

GitHub’s current suggestions when clicking the “Assignees” dialogue—for me, on our main repo/project with over a thousand issues/PRs—pre-fills with `scoates` (me) […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
The “assignees” dialog I mentioned with just me and Copilot. Plenty of room for 3 more.
September 3, 2025 at 6:53 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Elote chicken caesar salad. Kind of a weird fusion with chorizo and avocado, too. Tasty, though.

Almost doesn’t qualify for #weeknighting if you notice the jalepeno poppers in the background.

The feeling of running low on outdoor dining opportunities is heavy.
The mentioned salad with the mentioned bacon-wrapped, cream-cheese-stuffed jalepenos in the background.
August 25, 2025 at 10:52 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Otherwise invisible when it’s this dark.
August 4, 2025 at 2:46 AM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Looks like someone's been 🎵vibe coding🎶.
Screen shot from OpenAI’s status page. ChatGPT has a hilariously large number of outages.
July 30, 2025 at 7:36 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Oh, it’s going to be one of THOSE Mondays?
AWS Console showing an error “Something went wrong” “Please try again in some time.”
July 28, 2025 at 2:06 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Truly saddened that McAuslan has replaced their only world-class #beer (St-Ambroise Oatmeal Stout) with an extremely dumbed down Irish stout with nearly no roast character, and a much thinner body.

I totally get that it wasn’t selling as well as Guinness, but […]

[Original post on scoat.es]
A glass of Irish Stout at Terrasse St. Ambroise.
July 20, 2025 at 11:15 PM
sean.scoat.es.ap.brid.gy
Also, directly related: when you let AI do “design” work like this, you really look like a complete amateur to anyone with half a clue. A good designer/human wouldn’t let you break words in such an idiotic way—it makes this text hard for *humans* to read.

Don’t “AI-ify” like this. Do better.
Screenshot of text that reads “Transform your business with AI-driven solutions” but “business” is broken across lines as “busi” and “ness” and “solutions” as “so” and “lutions”.
July 20, 2025 at 2:43 PM