Use more WebP, I guess.

• Lossless PNG, 635 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot.png
  
• Lossless WebP, 469 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot.webp
  
• Lossy WebP, 110 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot%2Dlossy.webp
  
• Lossy JPEG, 110 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot%2Dlossy.jpg

In case you haven’t seen it yet:

https://movq.de/v/89c2e025ce/torvalds.mp4

Linus Torvalds about SLOC as a measurement of productivity. 😅

My current PC is from 2013, so I never even bothered to check, but as it turns out: My motherboard still has a serial port. 🤯 I thought these had long died out by then. To be honest, I didn’t have the need for one, either, not until recently … So I completely lost track if PCs have these things or not.

All I needed was one of those slot-cable-thingies. (And if the order of pins is correct, then it actually works. 🤦)

https://movq.de/v/89a67cf40f/slot.jpg

Cool! One less USB device. 😃

That would be my dream job: Weighing penguins. 😍

https://i.imgur.com/Wwyo7En.mp4

FWIW, day 03 and day 04 where solved on SuSE Linux 6.4:

https://movq.de/v/faaa3c9567/day03.jpg

https://movq.de/v/faaa3c9567/day04%2Dv3.jpg

Performance really is an issue. Anything is fast on a modern machine with modern Python. But that old stuff, oof, it takes a while … 😅

Should have used C or Java. 🤪 Well, maybe I do have to fall back on that for later puzzles. We’ll see.

Day 2 was pretty tough on my old hardware. Part 1 originally took 16 minutes, then I got it down to 9 seconds – only to realize later that my solution abused some properties of my particular input. A correct solution will probably take about 30 seconds. 🫤

Part 2 took 29 minutes this morning. I wrote an optimized version but haven’t tested it yet. I hope it’ll be under a minute.

Python 1 feels really slow, even compared to Java 1. And these first puzzles weren’t even computationally intensive. We’ll see how far I’ll make it …

https://movq.de/v/f831d98103/day02.jpg

Day 1 was surprisingly finnicky. A lot of people got it wrong, apparently. Me too. 🤣

https://movq.de/v/488136b4ae/day01%2Dblurred.jpg

Advent of Code 2025 starts tomorrow. 🥳🎄

This year, I’m going to use Python 1 on SuSE Linux 6.4, writing the code on my trusty old Pentium 133 with its 64 MB of RAM. No idea if that old version of Python will be fast enough for later puzzles. We’ll see.

Image

@bender@twtxt.net Hmm, something’s weird with that post:

https://movq.de/v/cf64f3a625/s.png

😅

I was having a stroll and heard this weird crackling noise. Took me a moment to realize that it’s coming from the tree above me. I looked up and didn’t see anything at first, because of the bad light. And then I saw it: About 10 parrots (alexandrine parakeets or rose-ringed parakeets) were sitting up there, heaving a feast. 😅

https://movq.de/v/3527326471/parrots.mp4

(Video isn’t great, because this is my smartphone and the light was bad.)