Blog Title

I Ran Mothership and Survived the Experience (And So Did My Players)

2026-04-26T00:00:00Z

It's been a long time since i ran a table top role playing game. Several years in fact. And it was a basic homebrew Dungeons and Dragons 5E adventure i made myself. The group only got a couple of sessions in before falling apart. That was the sum experience of running a table i had before deciding to run a Mothership one shot for my current gaming group.

Mothership is a sci-fi horror RPG. Players are teamsters, lab rats, grunts, working class types under a system of oppressive corporations with all the money and power. Space is dark and mysterious and full of horrors that want to kill you, and your death is just a number in the actuarial tables of The Company, a rounding error on the P&L charts. The game does not have a canonical setting, there's no world-building in the rule books, it's more about creating the vibe, allowing you to create your own world.

This opens it up to being the kind of space game you want to run, whether you want to do spooky space western, outer rim cyberpunk, starship heists, or full on cosmological horror. All this and more is already available too, in the extensive set of modules created. Modules are available as zines, hardcover collections, or can be as small as a tri-fold brochure, all with a maximalist space-punk design ethos. i love the aesthetic of the game which is why i've already picked up a fair number of these modules.

Because this was our first time playing Mothership, i selected The Iron Coffin, a pamphlet-sized starting adventure designed with new players (and wardens) in mind.

You're the crew of the Iron Coffin. You've been hired to smuggle a mysterious package across the system. Your employer was... short on details. Just get it there. Don't ask questions. And for God's sake, don't open the box.

I made some minor modifications to the game, in part because it was our first time playing Mothership (and we even had someone at our table who had never played a ttrpg before!), and in part because i forgot some things and had to think on my feet. This luckily led to some really good results. For example i forgot to bring up that the crew has a robot helper at the start, so when i brought Clang in later he was introduced as having been sent from The Company. Because Clang came as a surprise this built some paranoia among the players, and wonderfully misdirected them to believing Clang was the cause of the ship's malfunctions and not The Horror.

Overall we had a good time though, and delightfully our Marine failed multiple panic checks and will forever be haunted in and out of his dreams by the metallic stomping of the now deactivated Clang's feet. My only regret was that we didn't get to break out Mothership's wonderful death save mechanic, wherein nobody knows the result of the die roll, not even the dying player, until someone checks the body. All in all i look forward to running Mothership again.

Book Report 2023, pt 2: Comic Books

2024-01-25T17:35:26Z

After reading a ton of books in prior years I fell off doing a lot of reading in 2022, so for 2023 I made it a priority to read more again, and as part of that I began tracking my reading. Because I wanted to keep it simple, and I sort of strongly dislike using sites like Goodreads, I made myself a spreadsheet with three tabs to track my reading; the first tab tracking the book-books I read this year, the second tab tracking single issue comic books (“floppies”), and the third tab tracking comic collections, trades paperback, omnibuses, graphic novels, etc.

Comic books by the numbers for the past year: I read 273 floppies, and 55 collections last year (I did not bother to keep track of how many single issues were in each trade/omnibus, because I am lazy). Marvel was far and away the publisher I read the most, which should shock no one who knows me, but I did start reading a lot more DC books in the past year, and there’s a loooooooong tail of Indies that I read, in part thanks to my love of long box diving, and in part because I love supporting people who make cool stuff. I even started dabbling in some manga last year, reading the Akira series, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, both of which were excellent in different ways.

Some of my favorite series that were published last year, that were consistently putting out top notch issues, included Ryan North’s Fantastic Four, Tom King’s Human Target, Kyle Higgins’ and Joe Clark’s Deep Cuts, and Cullen Bunn’s Door to Door Night by Night.

I also did a lot of long box diving last year, picking up 50¢ issues of books I’ve never heard of from the 80s and early 90s, most of them from long defunct small presses. Did you know they made comics from Sliders and Alien Nation? I also found titles that were clear Ninja Turtles rip-offs, comics that ended up being Australian softcore trucker pornography, a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Christian allegory “Pilgrims Progress, and Batman fighting the spirit of jazz. Longboxes are truly a land of contrasts.

If you’re curious about the rest of the comics I read, you can view the Book Tracker spreadsheet on the web.

Book Report 2023, pt 1: Book-Books

2024-01-04T21:25:58Z

Some basic numbers: I started 25 book-books in the past year; I finished all but one of them. I didn’t keep track of genres but for the most part it is a mix of science fiction, detective novels, and science and history non-fiction. All but two of the books were first-time reads for me. The publication years, when averaged, comes out to 2000, so it was a mix of contemporary books and books published latter half of the 20th century. Once I finished a book, I gave it a basic 1-5 star rating, mostly a sentiment of how much I enjoyed reading the book vs a reflection of the book’s quality itself. The ratings for the year average out to 3.25 stars, which isn’t bad on the whole.

Towards the end of the year work got busier and the days got shorter and I did admittedly lose steam, but I ended up turning that around somewhat by working my way through a back log of Star Trek novels that I purchase digitally for a $1 through the publisher’s deals page (updated monthly with new cheap Star Trek books [not an affiliate link]), and to my slight annoyance I ended up burning through those at a decent pace.

The one I did not finish, a book about encroaching surveillance, was not particularly bad; it was a book I had purchased some time ago and sat on my shelf. I think at the time I had purchased it I was under the impression that it was more about general surveillance in society rather than specifically military drone surveillance which as a subject is less interesting to me and why I fell off reading it.

I had four 5 Star books this year, which as you will see had shared some themes, which may not be surprising.

The first was Encounters with the Arch Druid, by John McPhee. Published in 1971, it’s a narrative non-fiction book wherein McPhee invites arch-environmentalist David Brower and some of his ideological enemies (a mineral engineer, a real estate developer, and Floyd Dominy, whose career at the Bureau of Land Management was responsible for so many major dam projects in the United States) to go on camping trips, and let them argue and get to know each other on a personal level. The book employees a narrative style that nowadays I think you only see in magazines’ boring celebrity profiles (think “I spent a week traveling with George Clooney on GQ’s bill”-type long-form articles) but back then I think people were better at this sort of writing.

The next two books were Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and its sequel, Parable of the Talents (1993 and 1998 respectively). These were at the time near-future post-climate collapse novels. 30 years on the themes of the books do not seem far off from what we’re facing now; in the first book the protagonists deal with collapse of the energy grid and food safety net, and in the second book far right religious authoritarianism and police state get added into the mix. They are masterfully written but definitely hit a little too close to home now.

The final book was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry of the Future (2020). It’s another near-future book about climate change, in which many parts of the world face even more heightened extremes of weather than what we’re seeing now. The book’s primary protagonist is an agent of the UN responsible for seeking solutions, and for much of the book she faces a real lack of political will to make changes, at least until people start taking more guerrilla tactics to change the minds of the powerful.

Curious about the rest of the books I read? View the Book Tracker spreadsheet on the web.

Film366

2023-12-23T02:56:44Z

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine set out to watch 52 new-to-him movies in one year. Not to be outdone, last year, i made a goal to watch 366 new-to-me films, one for each day of the year (it was a leap year). It was a lofty goal, but on weekends where i didn’t have a lot going on, i figured i could watch a bunch of movies, to cache up for days where i couldn’t.

My parameters were that the movie had to be one that i had never seen before, it had to be of sufficient length that it could be generously considered “feature length” (i settled on around 75 minutes for that), and documentaries would count so long as they met the length requirement. After each film, i wrote down a few paragraphs of review in a Field Notes notebook, gave the movie a rating, and recorded it in my spreadsheet.

For the first couple months, i did really well; i had ended up banking a good 20 or 30 movies ahead. However, sometime around April, i landed a big project at work that frequently kept me late. When May came around i was able to pick up steam again, but after a few weeks, i found i was getting burnt out on watching movies altogether. It was hard to muster the attention span. Sadly, this was when the whole project fell apart. I started slipping behind, going an entire week without watching anything. Not even an episode of a television show. I It’s sad when your goals die.

But, some stats: The first movie of the year was fun spy romp Burn After Reading, on January first. The last recorded movie of the year was the biopic about Mexican rock singer Gloria Trevi, Gloria, which i watched on September 25th. I know i had seen a few more movies after that point (both a Star Wars movie and a Harry Potter film came out that autumn afterall) but by this point i apparently had given up on notating what i had seen.

The 146 recorded films combined totaled 10 days, 19 hours, and 47 minutes. The average movie i watched was made in 2004. The average rating was 3.28 stars out of 5. There were nine movies that i gave 5 stars: The Enemy Below, Diplomacy, Mad Max: Fury Road, Othello, War of the Buttons, Closer to the Moon, The Conversation, Amadeus, and Look Who’s Back. I only had two 1 star movies: Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning and Bad Ass 3: Bad Asses on the Bayou. I would not recommend either of these two films.

So what did i learn? There were a lot of good movies that i had missed growing up. There were a lot of bad movies that i ended up enjoying despite their badness. And there were a lot of really amazing movies made over the years. I regret not seeing it out, but that’s a lot of movies to watch, and i honestly made it further than i thought i would.

The Movies

Movie	Year Released	Length	Date Watched	Rating
Burn After Reading	2008	96m	2016-01-01	2/5
Howard the Duck	1986	111m	2016-01-02	2/5
The Enemy Below	1957	98m	2016-01-03	5/5
In Bruges	2008	107m	2016-01-03	4/5
Blade Runner	1982	117m	2016-01-04	4/5
The Station Agent	2003	89m	2016-01-06	3/5
Star Wreck	2005	103m	2016-01-07	1/5
Diplomacy	2014	88m	2016-01-07	5/5
Stop or My Mom Will Shoot	1992	87m	2016-01-09	2/5
Zero Motivation	2014	100m	2016-01-09	4/5
This Must Be the Place	2011	118m	2016-01-09	3/5
Blade	1998	120m	2016-01-10	3/5
If Looks Could Kill	1991	88m	2016-01-10	2/5
The Propaganda Game	2015	75m	2016-01-10	3/5
Sisters	2015	118m	2016-01-12	3/5
The War Room	1993	96m	2016-01-13	4/5
General Idi Amin Dada	1975	90m	2016-01-13	3/5
Quigley Down Under	1990	119m	2016-01-14	3/5
The Revenant	2015	156m	2016-01-15	4/5
The Special Relationship	2010	93m	2016-01-16	3/5
Demolition Man	1993	115m	2016-01-17	3/5
The Death of Superman Lives	2015	104m	2016-01-17	3/5
Mad Max Fury Road	2015	120m	2016-01-17	5/5
Bad Asses on the Bayou	2015	85m	2016-01-18	1/5
Lost in La Mancha	2002	93m	2016-01-20	3/5
Dune	1984	137m	2016-01-21	3/5
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy	2011	137m	2016-01-22	4/5
11:14	2003	85m	2016-01-23	3/5
Bad Words	2014	89m	2016-01-23	4/5
Kelly’s Heroes	1970	144m	2016-01-23	4/5
The Warriors	1979	92m	2016-01-23	4/5
Viva La Libertà	2013	94m	2016-01-24	3/5
Meet the Patels	2015	88m	2016-01-24	3/5
Django Unchained	2012	185m	2016-01-24	3/5
The Numbers Station	2013	89m	2016-01-27	2/5
Jodorowsky’s Dune	2014	88m	2016-01-28	4/5
Wetlands	2013	109m	2016-01-29	3/5
Hyde Park on Hudson	2012	94m	2016-01-30	4/5
House	1977	88m	2016-01-30	2/5
The French Minister	2013	113m	2016-02-02	3/5
The Punisher	2004	123m	2016-02-03	3/5
A Band Called Death	2013	96m	2016-02-04	4/5
Alien	1979	117m	2016-02-05	4/5
Othello	1995	123m	2016-02-06	5/5
Hackers	1995	107m	2016-02-06	3/5
The Dungeon Masters	2008	87m	2016-02-07	3/5
This Ain’t California	2012	100m	2016-02-07	4/5
War of the Buttons	2011	100m	2016-02-09	5/5
The Princess and the Frog	2009	97m	2016-02-10	4/5
Deadpool	2016	106m	2016-02-11	4/5
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang	2005	103m	2016-02-13	3/5
I Am Yours	2013	100m	2016-02-13	3/5
The Wolf of Wall Street	2013	180m	2016-02-13	4/5
Closer to the Moon	2014	112m	2016-02-14	5/5
The Conversation	1974	113m	2016-02-14	5/5
The Castle	1997	85m	2016-02-15	3/5
Northern Soul	2014	102m	2016-02-16	3/5
Hail Caesar	2016	106m	2016-02-18	4/5
Saving Grace	2000	94m	2016-02-18	3/5
They Live	1988	93m	2016-02-19	4/5
Evolution	2001	101m	2016-02-20	2/5
We Need to Talk About Kevin	2011	112m	2016-02-21	3/5
The Signal	2014	97m	2016-02-22	4/5
Captain America: The Winter Soldier	2014	136m	2016-02-24	4/5
Wagon’s East	1994	107m	2016-02-27	2/5
A Picture of You	2014	83m	2016-02-28	4/5
Piku	2015	122m	2016-02-29	3/5
Highlander	1986	116m	2016-03-02	2/5
The Experimenter	2015	98m	2016-03-03	4/5
Everybody’s All-American	1988	127m	2016-03-06	3/5
State and Main	2000	105m	2016-03-06	4/5
Sweet Liberty	1986	106m	2016-03-06	2/5
Spy	2015	119m	2016-03-07	3/5
The World’s End	2013	109m	2016-03-08	4/5
Rescue Dawn	2007	120m	2016-03-10	4/5
He Never Died	2015	99m	2016-03-12	3/5
Quadrophenia	1979	117m	2016-03-12	3/5
Jubilee	1978	103m	2016-03-12	2/5
The Concert	2009	119m	2016-03-12	4/5
Quartet	2013	98m	2016-03-13	3/5
Watchmen	2009	162m	2016-03-18	4/5
Dope	2015	103m	2016-03-19	4/5
Murder of a President	2016	111m	2016-03-19	3/5
Best of Enemies	2015	87m	2016-03-20	4/5
Daddy’s Home	2015	96m	2016-03-27	2/5
The Berkley Marathons	2014	89m	2016-04-05	3/5
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind	2002	113m	2016-04-05	3/5
Other People’s Money	1991	103m	2016-04-06	2/5
No Robaras	2013	95m	2016-04-07	3/5
Mr. Kaplan	2014	98m	2016-04-09	4/5
A Hijacking	2012	103m	2016-04-12	4/5
Amadeus	1984	160m	2016-04-16	5/5
Outrage	2010	109m	2016-04-22	3/5
The Young Kieslowski	2014	94m	2016-04-22	3/5
Lars and the Real Girl	2007	106m	2016-04-23	4/5
San Andreas	2015	114m	2016-04-23	2/5
Look Who’s Back	2015	116m	2016-04-24	5/5
Exporting Raymond	2011	86m	2016-04-24	3/5
I Don’t Know Whether to Slit My Wrists or Leave Them Long	2013	103m	2016-04-25	4/5
Volando Bajo	2014	96m	2016-04-27	3/5
Don Verdean	2015	90m	2016-04-28	3/5
The Bank Job	2008	111m	2016-04-29	3/5
Happy-Go-Lucky	2008	118m	2016-04-29	2/5
Spy Game	2001	126m	2016-04-30	3/5
Mystery Team	2009	97m	2016-04-30	3/5
Moonwalkers	2015	107m	2016-04-30	4/5
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel	2015	122m	2016-05-01	4/5
Get Shorty	1995	105m	2016-05-01	3/5
The Dream Team	1989	113m	2016-05-01	2/5
Revolver Rani	2014	132m	2016-05-01	2/5
Special Correspondents	2016	100m	2016-05-02	2/5
3 Days in Havana	2013	83m	2016-05-02	3/5
Gold	2014	88m	2016-05-04	3/5
The Burbs	1989	101m	2016-05-04	4/5
Fantastic Four	2005	106m	2016-05-04	2/5
The Hoax	2007	116m	2016-05-05	4/5
The Great Gatsby	1974	144m	2016-05-05	4/5
Captain America: Civil War	2016	146m	2016-05-05	4/5
To Catch a Thief	1955	106m	2016-05-06	4/5
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.	2015	116m	2016-05-07	2/5
The War of the Buttons	1994	94m	2016-05-07	3/5
The Bonfire of the Vanities	1990	125m	2016-05-07	3/5
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine	2015	128m	2016-05-08	3/5
4th Man Out	2015	86m	2016-05-08	3/5
Twilight	1998	94m	2016-05-10	2/5
The Girl King	2015	106m	2016-05-12	4/5
Trainspotting	1996	94m	2016-05-12	4/5
Reel Injun	2009	86m	2016-05-14	3/5
Cairo Time	2009	90m	2016-05-14	3/5
Constantine	2005	121m	2016-05-14	3/5
The Snapper	1993	91m	2016-05-14	3/5
Lost Heroes	2014	108m	2016-05-15	3/5
Paraíso	2015	105m	2016-05-16	3/5
Fantastic Four	2015	100m	2016-05-17	3/5
St. Vincent	2014	102m	2016-05-19	4/5
Miss Representation	2011	85m	2016-05-21	3/5
Firewall	2006	105m	2016-05-21	2/5
Hellboy	2004	122m	2016-05-21	4/5
Vampire in Brooklyn	1995	102m	2016-05-22	2/5
X-Men: Age of Apocalpyse	2016	144m	2016-05-31	4/5
Ghostbusters	2016	118m	2016-07-15	4/5
The Killing Joke	2016	76m	2016-07-23	3/5
Star Trek Beyond	2016	122m	2016-07-28	3/5
The Big Short	2015	130m	2016-09-25	4/5
Gloria	2015	126m	2016-09-25	4/5

I've Finally Finished Assassins Creed Valhalla

2022-12-13T04:00:00Z

I spent a good long while playing Assassins Creed Valhalla and i’ve finally finished it, to the extent that these open world games can be considered ‘finished’ anyway. I did not ‘complete’ it; there was no 100%-ing here. There will be a few spoilers (including the ending) below.

I don’t have a long history with Assassins Creed; the first game turned me off by starting the story in modern day which was not what i came here for, so i never made it more than a few minutes into that one. But earlier this year a friend convinced me to give Odyssey a try, and it turns out i loved that game and played it obsessively. It helped that i found out most people just ignore the modern day story and rush through its scant scene. I then started Origins and made a little headway into it, but i decided Valhalla was more compelling to me, so i put Origins on pause and jumped a head (thanks PlayStation Plus).

The Good

Valhalla had a strong story. Eivor’s journey shifting from the exploration and conquering of England to the exploration of herself was good. I found myself avoiding walkthroughs as much as possible for this game, in large part because i wanted to avoid spoiling the story for myself; along the way i found myself developing theories about which characters might be up to what.

The story led me down quite a rabbit hole on Wikipedia reading about 9th century England and the Viking raids. It’s been a blind spot in my historical knowledge; unlike Odyssey where most of the famous that-guys from history were at least names i had heard of, most of the historical figures in Valhalla i was not at all familiar with. It lead me on quite a learning journey, and even inspired me to start planning a trip to England to visit the county which bears my name.

I expected to hate the quests taking me through Asgard but they were so key to the game’s story and didn’t overstay their welcome. The game managed to make Norse mythology compelling to me in a way that Marvel re-imaginations never were able to.

Th ending was far stronger than Odyssey’s. The end of Odyssey boiled down to having a dinner with my long lost mom, a-hole step brother, my step dad, and my feral sister. And then the game just… kept going. It didn’t feel like a true ending, just another event in a rich game, that didn’t give me the satisfaction of feeling like i was “done”. With Valhalla’s chapter organization, this was not the case. Fighting Fenrir, going to Valhalla with Sigurd, and the sacking of Hamtunscire all built up nicely, and then Gunnar’s wedding followed by The Last Chapter were a lovely denouement. Even though the game is still playable at this point (and i left a lot undone) i felt satisfaction at the end of the game, and ready to move on.

The Bad

As much as i loved the story, i felt it was very underserved by the gameplay. It is not nearly as much a sneaky stabby hide in the shadows game as its priors, which i adapted to, but it would have been nice to have more of that in there; the majority of the game i played as straight hack and slash.

The bigger problem however is that a lot of the time the game felt too big, both in sense of length, and in a more literal sense. There were so many periods where i had to go from one quest point to another traveling a long distance, with very little to do in-between. A lot of time was spent just running across the map with my controller in one hand and my phone in the other. Side quests were replaced by “world events” that for the most part only take a minute or two to complete and mostly stay contained within their little area, and big chunks of the map left these scarcely spaced out. Odyssey and Origins definitely did a better job of making the world seem full and active.

The other problem with the game’s bigness is its length. I wrapped up right at 100 hours, without bothering to purchase any of the game’s DLC. You get a lot of bang for your buck, but some of the story’s overarching themes get lost in that time. By the time we get to the big revelations regarding Eivor’s hugr, i had vaguely forgotten a lot of the background told through flashback and visions in the beginning of the game and had to jog my memory to see how the pieces fit together. The story taffy was pulled a little to thin across the expanse of the game i think.

The Miscellaneous

One of my least favorite parts of Fallout 4 was going to Far Harbor and, to unlock the origins of the mysterious synth DiMA, the game introduces a weird virtual reality platformer that the game’s engine couldn’t really support. Valhalla added this too with its Animus anomalies to explore as Layla, but larger, taller, and more annoying. They’re spread out all over the world but i think i only happened upon half of them; completing all of them unlocks a cutscene at the end that adds some clarity to the ending of the story. I only know this because i just looked it up right now to see what the point of them was and watched the cutscene on YouTube.

Niflheim, the roguelike dungeon runner, added nothing to the game i feel like. I did one dungeon run after accidentally starting into the quest and was annoyed at the waste of time and didn’t revisit it again. There’s enough to do in the game already.

Basim’s brief heel turn at the end of the game threw me for a loop; it made sense in the story but after fighting him i did not feel that he had shaken off Loki in anyway and expected him to keep playing the villain, up through the point where he shows up in the modern day story, where i expected him to some how fuck things up for Layla and crew. The only reason i know he isn’t the villain is because i know he’s the protagonist in the forthcoming Mirage, but still it does not feel like he earned his redemption after that battle in Norway.

I tend to hate games-within-games, whether it’s Elder Scrolls Online’s Tales of Tribute or Horizon Forbidden West’s Strike, or even just plain ol poker in Red Dead Redemption. That said, i found myself enjoying Orlog enough that i would seek out the Orlog player in each town. I even thought about buying the IRL Orlog game they sell but that’s a bridge too far for me.

Music Recommendations for Eric

2018-07-13T03:47:00Z

Eric, formerly of Twitter, wanted some good music from the past decade. And boy did I have some. In no particular order other than in which it came to me.

John Knox Sex Club | Scottish shoe-gazey (bandcamp)
ULTRAS | Scottish alt rock (bandcamp)
Bob Mould | Formerly of Hüsker Dü (spotify)
Ken Stringfellow | From The Posies, REM, and Big Star; produces/performs on about a bajillion records a year (spotify)
Sloan | They’ve been around a couple decades now, but their new record is so danged good (bandcamp)
Jay Som | Good guitars, good vocals, good indie (bandcamp)
Sammus | Raw, honest hip hop (bandcamp)
Bomba Estereo | En español. Bouncy, round, con ritmo (spotify)
The Disciplines | One of the aforementioned Ken Stringfellow’s many bands. Norwegian/PNW garage rock (bandcamp)
John Grant | Raw and earnest, one of my favorite records of the past fifteen years (bandcamp)
Matt Berry | British comedian who in his spare time makes prog-folk music (bandcamp)
Maxwell | Slick smooth R&B (spotify)
Nujabes | Jazzed up hip hop beats (spotify)
Spoon | Popular indie band (spotify)
TEEN | I saw them live once not knowing who they were and they were so good i bought all their albums on my phone during the set (bandcamp)
Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly | A big collaboration album between indie rockers and one of my favorite modern composers. (spotify)
The National | Artfully designed indie rock (spotify)

Learning to Love Foreign Keys

2018-04-11T19:20:00Z

This was adapted from a piece i wrote for work, for co-workers

Putting the Relations in a Relational Database

A database is relational collection of data points. Data points that are conceptually linked are combined into a set that we call a record (or sometimes a set, or sometimes a tuple, if you are talking to the theory types). A record might be a single object such as a person (with data points such as name, address, and date of birth) or a charge on a ledger (with data points such as description, cost, and who to bill). These sets of data points we call records are combined into a bigger set we call a table. These tables are comined into an even bigger set we call a database. It’s sets all the way down. Without all this relational linking, you may as well just use a stupid spreadsheet or something.

![](https://causality.systems/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/always-sunny-charlie-conspiracy.gif)

So we have all these records in all these tables, how do we connect data from one table to another? You have your table of charges, but how do we know to whom each charge belongs? You can have a column in your `charge` table that says “yeah this charge belongs to derek” but how do you know which Derek? What if Derek changes their name? Before we solve this mystery together, let’s take a step back to talk about *keys*.

Keys

A primary key is a data point that is used to uniquely identify a record on a table. There are a few different ways to create a primary key. Firstly, there is a natural key. A natural key is a data point that is already used in the real world. A common example of this is a social security number; this is a unique number that identifies an individual; in your database your person record might have a field for an SSN, and this might seem like a natural fit for a primary key. There is also the surrogate key. This is a key that doesn’t have any actual meaning, outside of representing that row in the table. There are also composite keys, keys that are composed of multiple data points, for example, last name + SSN.

There’s a lot of debate out there as to which is best to use, natural or surrogate keys; all you need to know is that people who suggest that natural keys are best, are inherently wrong. Natural keys are created by humans, and humans are inevitably falliable. Names are not unique, and can change. Social Security Numbers are occasionally unintentionally non-unique, and only 4.48% of humans have one. Surrogate IDs, created automatically for the sole purpose of identifying a record, is the correct thing to use in your database.

So now with a brief exploration of keys out of the way, let’s get back to the matter of tying tables together. In our imaginary charge table, we need to know to which person the charge belongs. We could just have a column named person_id and plan on putting the appropriate id in there, but what if we put in the wrong number, or what if the person gets accidentally deleted, and now we have a charge record tied to nobody? Ideally, we would enforce some constraints to prevent these things from happening.

That’s where the foreign key comes in. We tell the database management system that this column in this table, its data points are going to explicitly refer to these corresponding data points in this other table, tying the two records together. In our example of the charge and person tables, with such a constraint in place, the charge table’s person_id column can only contain an person_id that exists in the person table’s person_id column, or, if allowed, a NULL value indicating that it is unknown to which person the charge belongs.

Putting It to Use

Let’s look at our example tables below, first the charge table and then the person table:

| charge\_id | description | cost | person\_id | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | fancy hat | $32 | 1 | | 2 | electric toothbrush | $12 | 3 | | 3 | saxophone | $179 | 4 |

| person\_id | first\_name | last\_name | |---|---|---| | 1 | Sylvia | Carter | | 2 | Tracey | Schroeder | | 3 | Rumika | Echi | | 4 | Edward | Jordan | If we were doing some basic data delving, we would start out getting a list of the items we’ve sold, with a `SELECT charge_id, description, cost, person_id FROM charge;`, and see our first result set. If we wanted to know who purchased that nice saxophone, well, we have their person\_id, and thanks to the constraint in place, we can be certain that barring any data entry errors on the behalf of our staff, we can find out who purchased it, with a simple `SELECT first_name, last_name FROM person WHERE person_id = 4;`, and we know that it was Edward Jordan who must be the aspiring jazz musician.

Of course, if you’ve already learned about the wonderful world of JOINs, you would know that we could find this information out with a single query, by entering SELECT charge_id, description, cost, first_name, last_name FROM charge JOIN person ON charge.person_id = person.person_id;.

Another benefit from this foreign key relationship is that someone would not be able to delete Sylvia’s person record accidentally, thus leaving the fancy hat order behind as an orphan; the database management system would prevent that with an error. You would have to first UPDATE or DELETE the record in the charge table, to remove Sylvia’s record in the person table.

How Do I Find Out What References My Column?

One last note; oftentimes when trying to remove a record in a table in a larger database, there can be a great number of things that reference that record, that need to be changed or removed prior to removing that record. The database management system maintains a live database of every database, table, and column it uses, called information_schema. In particular, the KEY_COLUMN_USAGE table in this database keeps track of every foreign key, and can be queried to discover what columns in other tables might contain foreign keys to your column in question. The TABLE_SCHEMA column will tell you which database a foreign key relationship is in, TABLE_NAME and COLUMN_NAME will tell you which table and column is doing the referring, and REFERENCED_TABLE_SCHEMA, REFERENCED_TABLE_NAME, and REFERENCED_COLUMN_NAME will tell you to which database’s table’s column is being referred. So, in my orders database above, if i wanted to know what all refers to my person table so that i can delete a record in that table, i couls query the information_schema database with SELECT TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME FROM KEY_COLUMN_USAGE WHERE REFERENCED_TABLE_NAME = 'person' AND REFERENCED_COLUMN_NAME = 'person_id' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'orders';. Very handy indeed!

I hope you enjoyed this exploration of foreign keys, and as always, feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

Making the Most of Terminal

2017-12-05T00:34:00Z

This is something i wrote for work but figure it could be pretty general purpose for folks getting just comfortable with command line on their Mac.

As a computer type person who uses the computer more than others, you might find yourself working Terminal. It’s a powerful tool to get stuff done. But can we make it more powerful? The answer is yes, yes we can. The purpose of this guide is not to tell you how to set up your Terminal (the correct way) but to show you that you can set up your Terminal and explore on your own.

Theming

Black on white is pretty boring, and probably leads to eye strain. Fortunately Terminal offers theming, accessible from Preferences > Profiles. There are a number of preset color themes for you to choose from that you can also modify. There is also the option to import themes. I use Dracula, which provides a nice dark theme that’s easy on the eyes.

Also of note: You can set your Terminal’s font family and size here. A monospaced font such as Menlo or Monaco is ideal, but knock yourself out. If you want to use Curlz MT, go for it. And down at the bottom there you can even adjust your cursor!

On the Window tab you can set the title of the window, so you can alway see what the active process or path is at the top, and you can also set your default window size so you never have to make it bigger every time you open a new window. On the Shell tab i like to set the window to close when the shell exits cleanly, that way i can close the window just by using the exit command. Finally, on the Advanced tab, you can disable that audible bell. Go with the visual bell instead.

Once you’ve got your profile set up how you like, don’t forget to set it as default.

.bash_profile

Your .bash_profile is a file that lives in your home directory and gives instructions to your Terminal shell to set up the environment in which you work. Using this file, i can set up aliases for commands, set the appearance of the command line, and much much more. Using the alias command i can create shortcuts for longer commands that i wish to run later. And by including a series of aliases in my .bash_profile, i can have those shortcuts available every time i open a new Terminal window. alias ls="ls -alhG" sets my ls command to automatically include a number of useful flags. alias webserver="cd /Library/WebServer/Documents" creates a command that automatically moves me to the webserver’s document root. And alias jekdeploy="sudo cp -R /Users/joshua/Documents/code/illuminati-town/_site/* /Library/WebServer/Documents/" runs a command that automatically deploys the site files for this blog.

The export command sets useful environment variables. For example, export path will allow you to set a list of directories that contain command line programs, so that you do not have to type the full path of the command. Every time you run the command ls, you are actually running the command /bin/ls, but your Terminal’s export path is pre-set to know where to look for the ls command. Another useful change is export ps1 which changes our command prompt. I have mine set to export PS1="\\u@\h >>> " on all of my computers. The \u tells the prompt to show the user name, followed by an @, followed by the hostname of the computer, represented with the \h variable, followed by three angle brackets. This way i always know just from the prompt which machine i am i currently logged into. In the actual shell, it looks like joshua@joshua.lan >>>. This article, despite starting with a weird Angelina Jolie reference, has more things you can do to customize your command prompt.

Finally, if you want to go full bore with your .bash_profile you can even add functions. This is a function i recently discovered online, and have found to be useful.

pwdf ()
{
   currFolderPath=$( /usr/bin/osascript <<"   EOT"
       tell application "Finder"
           try
               set currFolder to (folder of the front window as alias)
           on error
               set currFolder to (path to desktop folder as alias)
           end try
           POSIX path of currFolder
       end tell
   EOT
   )
   echo "$currFolderPath"
}

This function, which incorporates some AppleScript, creates a command called pwdf that gets the full path of the front most Finder window. I can open a deeply buried directory in Finder, and in Terminal use this pwdf command to get the path of that directory. This can be incorporated into other commands, for example, cd pwdf``to move my Terminal session to that directory.

Why Use bash?

Lately i’ve started using fish. It does a lot of fantastic colorful syntax highlighting, straight out of the box, does wonderful autosuggestions for commands based on your history, has better tab completion than bash, and has a neat web-based configurator. There’s been a few minor things i’ve had to figure out how to do differently from bash (mainly creating aliases, which you do with a nifty built in function editor, rather setting them up in a file), but it’s definitely got some cool features over bash. It even has a expandability for package-managers to install new functions and themes, that i have yet to explore at all. Here is a quick guide to setting it up and getting started.

Homebrew

Homebrew is a super handy program that acts as a package manager for macOS. It’s a command line tool to download command line tools, basically. If i want to try out, say, the programming language Erlang, i could go to their website download the latest source code, and compile it myself. Or, i could use Homebrew, and simply use the command brew install erlang and have it download and build a complete Erlang environment for me. When a new version of Erlang is available, i simply have to run brew upgrade and all of my updates are done for me. There are a plethora of command line tools that can do just about anything you can imagine, all available through Homebrew. It’s a useful tool to have. A searchable database of brew packages is available at Braumeister.

Miscellaneous

You don’t need a caps lock key. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys, and remap your caps lock to ctrl. You’re better off and it’s much easier to reach your ctrl key that way.

Need to re-run a command? Bash keeps a history of every command you run. The up arrow will scroll you back through your Bash history. ctrl+r lets you search your history as well.

Want to jump to the beginning or end of a line? ctrl+a automatically jumps you to the beginning of a line, and ctrl+e takes you to the end. These commands work in lots of other macOS programs as well.

The tab key will auto-complete a path for you (or present a list of files and directories if there is more than one that match). You can type /Use and press tab, and it will auto-complete to /Users/.

Finally, don’t forget about manpages. Pretty much every command has a corresponding manpage with details about what the command is for and how it is used. Just enter man commandname for information about what it does.