themoep

we regret to inform you uv is joining the torment nexus

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two weeks ago the creators of uv, Astral, posted a blag titled “Astral to join OpenAI”.

sigh.

Maybe this would be the place and time to collect my thoughts on the current state of tech, but let’s be real: I can’t write about this without writing about much bigger topics, and I have a dissertation to finish. So instead I want to condense my neboulous thoughts to what’s on my mind this very moment. The promise of “progress” of tech. The tech of the day that is pushed heavily (today it’s AI) promises to save money and time. But this promise has been a lie for much longer than the current hype cycle. We’ve had heaps of breakthroughs and yet we still have 40 hour weeks, wage gaps are widening, and life feels more stressed than ever.

uv is ultra very nice

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve written about how I like pyenv for managing python environments and Python versions. What I omitted was how I set up pyenv to automatically load the local version in the shell, how I also used pipx to install some tools globally, and my avoidance of using poetry. Now uv claims to replace “pip, [..], pipx, poetry, pyenv, [..], virtualenv, and more.” and that’s exactly what it did for me.

Managing Python Versions

uv supports installing different Python versions with uv python install 3.12. The complete list is visible with uv python list --all-versions and includes pypy. However, pyenv has a slightly larger selection of versions. For example, if you need Python 2.7 for some unholy reason, uv won’t help you with that.

Pyenv Is Pretty Cool

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I like pyenv to deal with weird projects having weird requirements and keeping everything tidy, so here’s a short writeup of how I use it on linux.

What is pyenv and what is it good for?

If you use python on a regular basis you might have run into the problem that different projects depend on the same library, but require different versions. To manage this, virtual environments are used to seperate these dependencies, but what about python versions itself? Pyenv is a way to manage multiple versions of pythons on the same system. I use it to get various research code running on my machine – without dealing with docker or virtual machines. If one tool requires python3.6 and another python3.11 I can install both and use them seperately without worrying of messing up my system. Pyenv also provides convenience to deal with virtual environments to keep those dependencies seperated for the same python version. It keeps those environments central, so you can re-use them for multiple projects. (E.g. one virtualenv for pelican to manage multiple websites in different folders). For a more detailed description of how it works, read the How it works section in their README, here I will just describe the most common commands.

About

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

yeah, I’m Jakob

security scholar, conjurer of pretty pixels, wiggles air into sound, he/him

While this is my place in cyberspace, I’m also more-or-less active on some other sites:

fediverse/mastodon: ät-themoep-ät-themoep-dot-at points to where I’m active
ice^Wcodeberg
this blew up here’s my soundcloud
RIP videomeo, looking for alternatives
RIP the githoob, sometimes, I can still hear their voice
RIP soup-dot-io, I miss you
RIP tweeter-dot-com, I don’t really miss you

You can get in touch via hello-ät-this-domain ~~and optionally use my openpgp key~~(don’t). For encrypted messages use my signal handle: replace .at in this domain with .01.

Festl is '23 summer

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 20:03:00 +0200

Two weeks ago I was asked by DJ lavish if I’d like to provide some visuals for a party he’d play at. Which was an excuse to finally blurt out that sound analyzer I had in my head for a while. Not having much time to prepare, most of it was livecoded at the party itself and I forgot to bring a soundcard to get a clean signal. In the end I made it work with the microphone and it turned out quite nice. Below is a sample.

Numerical Grading is not Good

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Numerical Grading is not Good

I give it a 3/10.

But why?

– some people, probably.

*ba dum tss*

At some point I’ll write more on teaching, but for a tiny first post this has to suffice.

Research

Sat, 14 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Publications:

Theater der Jugend - Die großen Abenteuer der kleinen Sara Crewe

Tue, 15 May 2018 18:00:00 +0200

For a stageplay in Vienna I created video projections. There are pictures on the official website, but I’ll add some making-of here eventually.

Color of the Internet

Sun, 21 Feb 2016 18:00:00 +0200

Playing around with the servers I set up for my bachelor thesis, I visited the Alexa-Top-1000 websites and made screenshots. Of those, I calculated the average pixel color. It was #d2d3d4 at the time.

Kinect Tunnel

Sat, 03 Oct 2015 18:00:00 +0200

Learning about the Bring Your Own Beamer exhibition format made me really happy. Seeing just a week later that there was one planned just an hour away from where I was at the time, I jumped in excitement! This was done in just over 5h for BYOB 15 and was an interesting study in interaction with such a diverse, interesting and interested crowd.

There’s also a timelapse of the creation.

Traces of Flocks

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 18:00:00 +0200

Being asked on short notice to do the visuals for a party of the fsinf, I was happy to oblige and present something new after hacking together the prototype of this in just a little over 8 hours. It is based on the Random Walkers. Very unhappy about how the details turned out, this will be under further development.

Random Walkers

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 18:00:00 +0200

One day watching randomness playing pokemon, I wondered how it looks like walking around aimlessly: A virtual agent is placed on a plane and walks randomly up, right, down or left. As it makes its way, the places it visited slowly fade, leaving tracks. Later this idea was expanded to the third dimension on the same principle and is now under development as Traces of Flocks

Flowing Stripes

Sun, 01 Jun 2014 18:00:00 +0200

Joined the kinect party with these colours happily crawling over someone dancing in front of the 3D camera. It was intended to face the crowd, but experimenting at various events, it became evident that it’s not as intuitive as I assumed. It works great for live performances though, last exhibited at the First Viennese Music Experiments in 2014.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

teaching

I like teaching a lot.

testimonials

“Ich bin dankbar dafür, dass er in Foundations of System and Application Security zu tiefe Topics so anschaulich zu verstehen gegeben hat.”

“Man kann den Eindruck nicht loswerden, dass die IT-Security seine wahre Leidenschaft ist, über die er seinen Studierenden wahrlich jedes Detail erzählen möchte.”

“The course with Jakob was awesome! Jakob tried to answer all questions and transformed what could have been a lecture into more or less an immersive and lively discussion.”