Ones and Zeros

ILSpy decompiler quirks    ((Type)(ref x)) is invalid pseudo-syntax it emits when a struct's readonly method is called by reference; the fix is just to call the method directly on the variable.  

New Claude Code Skills   Overall there are 4 skills: Lightsail, Docker, Powershell, and  ILSpy . You need to put these skills into the user-level C:\Users\USERNAME\.claude\skills\ directory. Remember that there be a folder with the skill name and inside it will be skill.md and an optional reference.md . ============================================== Lightsail Skill.Md: --- name: aws-lightsail-container-deploy description: Hard-won operational knowledge for deploying multi-container apps to AWS Lightsail Container Service — container naming rules, image versioning, the real create-container-service-deployment API shape, pod-style shared networking, the deployment state model, and log-based debugging. Use when running `aws lightsail` container-service commands, deploying or redeploying to Lightsail, editing a Lightsail containers.json/public-endpoint.json, or debugging a Lightsail container-service error. --- # AWS Lightsail Container Service Deploy Load this before writing any...

JWT Gotchas        JSON Web Tokens:   You cannot just set any password value to Jwt__SigningKey, since HS256 signing needs at least 256 bits. To create a valid JWT key, open a Powershell window up and at the prompt enter the following command which will create a random 48-byte key encoded as base64: [System.Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Security.Cryptography.RandomNumberGenerator]::GetBytes(48))    

The Red Queen    It is amazing what one character from a writer has inspired.  The Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass talks about the paradox of constant change (as seen in the discussions of the chess promotion from pawn to queen).    In business, "Red Queen marketing" is launching new products to replace past failed launches while the overall brand sales is static or minimal.    Matt Ridley in his book, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, says, "One of the peculiar features of history is that time always erodes advantage. Every invention sooner or later leads to a counterinvention. Every success contains the seeds of its overthrow. Every hegemony comes to an end. Evolutionary history is no different…The faster you run, the more the world moves with you and the less progress you make. Life is a chess tournament in which if you win a game, you start the next game with the handicap of a missing pawn."   ...

EmDash  (WordPress successor) Free. Built by CloudFlare to be WordPress successor.  Applies sandboxing to plugins. https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash Uses Astro that is a JS web framework for content-driven websites.  https://astro.build/ Interesting that EmDash is so automated in its submission process: https://github.com/emdash-cms/emdash/pull/1312 They use Vite: https://vite.dev/ They built Vinext on top of Vite to replace Next.js.  Its main advantage is traffic-aware pre-rerendering via CloudFlare web page statistics.    https://blog.cloudflare.com/vinext/

 AWS Lightsail Managed Database  for MySql Limitations  Lightsail Managed DB only supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, not MS SQL Server. Steps 1) Create the Lightsail DB (I assume MySql) via: https://us-east-2.console.aws.amazon.com/lightsail/webapp/us-east-2/databases/   2) After creation, you will be told the endpoint and port number with public mode and data migration mode both disabled.  The public mode will need to temporarily be turned on so we can connect via our local box.  The keep the data migration mode off unless doing massive data sets. 3) Download the MySql Database Workbench (so we have a UI to connect) from: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/   4) Make sure you use Powershell instead of Cmd since cmd.exe's console does not correctly forward raw keystrokes through Docker's TTY allocation for a prompt that suppresses echo (which is exactly what a password prompt does). PowerShell and Windows Terminal use the newer C...