Valentin Jacquemin

Hello, I'm Valentin, a programmer. I live with Nicole my wife in a village close to Bern, Switzerland.

This is my personal website where I post my articles notes photos and reviews. I like to write about my running adventures too, it's in french over runboyrun.ch .

09 Nov 26

On a recent day off, we took the opportunity to use a day pass we still had to explore the charming city of St. Gallen.

As you arrive there and leave the train station, what strikes you at first is how old this is. You definitely get a feel of history all around you. No surprise as the abbey in its center was built in the 8th century.

Not old as in stinky and useless though, rather as in traditionally quaint. Lovely boutiques, alleys and homes. We got to lunch in a restaurant that is all sloping, a lovely St. Galler wurst by the way.

Before heading back home, we did not miss to give a tour to the Stiftsbezirk. Its library is one of the richest and oldest of the world, part Unesco Heritage since 2009. We got to see a large globe picturing both some of our world and the stary heavens too. One of the current exhibitions is about women in the Middle Age. I’ve read about another Keller in this section, namely Regula Keller who stood out during the times of the Reformation.
02 Nov 26

I’ve heard recently of Helen Keller. Her story contradicts the idea that circumstances define your life. She lost sight and hearing at the age of 2. And yet, this woman brought courage to thousands. She’s been the first deafblind to earn a college diploma, wrote 14 books and hundreds of speeches and essays. She lived 87 years.

A lesson of hope.

🔗 Wikipedia Article
26 Oct 26

19 Oct 26

This one too will come handy: trigger a lambda function on the basis of a schedule expression.

The only requirement is to have a completed AWS CLI setup.

With this minimal folder:

.
├── lambda
│   ├── index.js
│   ├── lambda.zip
│   └── package.json
├── schedule.tf

With ~50 lines of infrastructure description in schedule.tf:

module "eventbridge" {
  source  = "terraform-aws-modules/eventbridge/aws"
  create_bus = false # bus not needed in this case, will otherwise trigger an error: 
                     # invalid value for name (cannot be 'default')
                     
  # ensures the cron is authorized to call the lambda                     
  attach_lambda_policy = true
  lambda_target_arns   = [aws_lambda_function.lambda-func.arn]

  schedules = {
    lambda-cron = {
      description         = "Trigger for a Lambda"
      # at, cron and rate functions available to define the schedule
      schedule_expression = "rate(5 minutes)"
      arn                 = aws_lambda_function.lambda-func.arn
      input               = jsonencode({ "job" : "cron-by-rate" })
    }
  }
}

data "archive_file" "lambda" {
  type        = "zip"
  source_file = "${path.module}/lambda/index.js"
  output_path = "${path.module}/lambda/lambda.zip"
}

resource "aws_lambda_function" "lambda-func" {
  filename      = data.archive_file.consolidate_lambda.output_path
  function_name = "func"
  role          = aws_iam_role.iam_for_lambda.arn
  handler       = "index.handler"
  runtime       = "nodejs24.x"
  code_sha256   = data.archive_file.lambda.output_base64sha256
}

resource "aws_iam_role" "iam_for_lambda" {
  name               = "iam_for_lambda"
  assume_role_policy = data.aws_iam_policy_document.assume_role.json
}

data "aws_iam_policy_document" "assume_role" {
  statement {
    effect = "Allow"

    principals {
      type        = "Service"
      identifiers = ["lambda.amazonaws.com"]
    }

    actions = [
      "sts:AssumeRole"
    ]
  }
}

For the lambda itself, the one-liner listed on Terraform recipe: S3 Bucket with notification to Lambda Function will do it.

12 Oct 26

One year into reviving this website, I think it’s time for a short State of Affairs.

In Hiatus Terminus I wrote that I was excited to reclaim my space and to focus more on my journey rather than passively consume what others are doing. I’m happy to say that I’m still excited and that having a space to focus on me and my journey feels like a good thing.

Oh there’s plenty I whish would be different on my personal website. No backlog is linkable though, it lies entirely in my mind. I wish I had a search function, a slicker design, a more effective navigation, a few meta pages and on and on. But that’s okay, it’s good that these unchecked todos do not stop me from publishing and that I actually keep my own digital space alive. I think I can be proud of that.
05 Oct 26

This is the end result I’m the happiest with so far when it comes to the looks. I’ve resumed my baking habit and that makes me so happy. It does not take much time and the reward is immense.

On the taste front, I must say it’s consistently good. So far I’d say, the nut variant is my number one. The one I could eat in unreasonable quantity.

I’ve been documentating each bread that I’m baking since I’ve resumed. This week I try to replicate what we got on that week of June.
28 Sep 26
21 Sep 26

Two posts I wanted to connect together because, links! Links are one of the foundational tenets of the World Wide Web, they are what keep us from spending our online life in silos. I love links.

First is the August edition of Tom MacWright’s Recently which is a monthly listing of his personal wanderings. There he wrote:

I won’t add those to the pile because I don’t want that kind of content to dominate what I mention, even if it does dominate what I read.

I find this great. I wish more would do that.

🔗 Recently – published by Tom MacWright

Second is a sideline that caught my attention. A declaration of love for links!

and no, I’m not going to dignify them with links because links are my love language

🔗 Raycast’s confetti cannon – published by Marcin Wichary
14 Sep 26

A couple of quotes that I’ve enjoyed from this long form article celebrating BASIC. Other times.

First time I hear about http://www.quitebasic.com/ too. Look to the source, find the the relevant javascript source and you find a practical tokenizer and simple BASIC interpreter. Very cool!

When it comes to technology, I don’t feel like a grumpy old man. Nearly always, I believe that the best of times is now. But I don’t mind saying this: The world was a better place when almost everybody who used PCs at least dabbled in BASIC.

Today, Kurtz is blunt about criticism of the language he co-created as being insufficiently serious or a dangerous way to begin learning about computer programming. “It’s B.S.,” he says. “I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the degrading of BASIC by the professionals was just a little bit of jealousy–after all, it took years for us to develop our skill; how is it that complete idiots can write programs with just a few hours of skill?”

Famously, they wrote the first draft of Altair BASIC without having access to an Altair, using a simulator they ran on a Digital Equipment PDP-10 minicomputer. “Monte Davidoff, who helped me and Bill write BASIC for the Altair, once said programming was like writing a novel,” Allen says. “That’s how we approached BASIC. We started with a plot of sorts to know the general approach we were taking. We broke the big ideas into sections, or chapters, and then we’d edit and re-edit and keep editing until we had preserved the big picture and fixed all the bugs. It was the hardest but most enjoyable work I’ve ever done.”

These computers begged to be programmed in a way that their descendants do not.

🔗 A celebration of one of technology’s biggest, most underappreciated revolutions – published on TIME on Apr 29, 2014
07 Sep 26