Category Archives: Uncategorized

Oh dear. A horrible waste of time.

I just read that Mike Culbert, who was the chief technologist on the Apple Newton (and went on to do a lot of other neat stuff at Apple) has died of cancer. We’ve lost another really great engineer. Mike was … Continue reading →

There is a new Spacehog album: As It Is On Earth. I had no idea this was going to happen (as far as I knew they broke up years ago). Now all we need is for Mansun and Ambulance, Ltd … Continue reading →

When you wade into the ocean and a kid who’s six years old says, “Mister, you shouldn’t wear your glasses into the water,” just maybe you should listen. Because some six year old kids are smarter than you are. Within … Continue reading →

The precdence of ‘&’ in C/C++ just cost me another hour. It’s probably cost me a cumulative week of debugging time in the last quarter century. Remember to brush your teeth, bathe regularly, chew with your mouth closed, and parenthesize … Continue reading →

The current Time Machine Bucket List (If a working time machine falls into my lap, these are a few things I’d address…) Gary Kildall must understand to use linefeed as the line terminator in text files, and not carriage-return plus … Continue reading →

I just finished AntiChamber. I liked it. It will mess with your head, a lot. A few of the puzzles require careful timing (ugh), and one puzzle towards the end was not obvious at all, but on the whole I liked the … Continue reading →

We were at lunch, and I was bitching to my cow-orkers about the USB device I was trying to get running. “It’s flaky as hell,” I said.  “One moment it’s working, the next it’s in the weeds and not transferring … Continue reading →

I was just doing some soldering in the garage. I use a fine gauge solder for ICs and similar small connections (not the lead-free stuff, by the way), but I had to solder a number of larger components with much … Continue reading →

1. Ask for their name. 2. Use the person’s name a couple of times as you converse. 3. Repeat their name under your breath when you part. 4. When you meet the person again, simply say “I’m sorry, I’ve utterly … Continue reading →