A relative achievement

Spencer Lehman. At age 75, a U.S. national champion pole-vaulter. My favorite uncle. Mother’s brother, for you Norwegian-speakers (update: I misremembered, it turns out to be Swedish that distinguishes ‘morbror’ from ‘farbror’). And you know that archetype of the Malibu-dwelling hippie stockbroker that shows up in comic novels about California? That would be him.

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Return of the reposturgeon!

reposurgeon 1.2 is shipped. This is the repository editor I wrote about back in 2010; description here, architectural lessons here. I did a conversion of the repo for the Roundup issue tracker, which had a messy history. It started out as CVS, got up-converted to Subversion, and I grabbed it with git-svn. Cleaning up the… Continue reading Return of the reposturgeon!

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Sugar’s not fading away, yet

Judging by comments, a surprisingly large number of my regulars are interested in the medical state of my house’s visible soul. If you’re not of them, go ahead and skip this blog entry.

There is exactly one good use for a toaster oven

The kitchen in my house has a toaster oven tucked into one corner just under the wall cabinets. It gathered dust unused for years, because toaster ovens were a silly 1970s fad that disintegrated in the face of inexpensive microwave ovens. But I’ve found exactly one use for it that a microwave doesn’t emulate well.

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For those who have met Sugar

I don’t often blog about strictly personal things here. Even when it may seem that I’m blogging about myself, my goal is normally to use my life as a lens to examine issues larger than any of my merely personal concerns. But occasionally, this has led me to blog about my cat Sugar, as when… Continue reading For those who have met Sugar

Night sounds, trains and timepieces

My house is located less than a hundred feet from the Main Line, the principal passenger-rail artery out of Philadelphia to the west – Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and ultimately Chicago and points west. Two dozen times a day passenger trains come bucketing by, but they’re barely a murmur through the dense secondary-growth woods between my back… Continue reading Night sounds, trains and timepieces

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Vanished Planet, Innovation, and the luck-swamping problem

From the gaming front, I report one nice surprise and a couple of disappointments. My interest in that old standby Puerto Rico was rekindled by the World Boardgaming Championships tournament a few weeks ago, in which I made quarter-finals only to wash out in a game with a mere 4-point spread. Friday night at our… Continue reading Vanished Planet, Innovation, and the luck-swamping problem

GPSD 3.0 finally ships. It’s been a long epic.

Protocol transitions are hard. Yeah, I know the experienced software developers reading that are thinking “Well, duh!“. Shut up already, I’m venting here. I’ve just spent the better part of two years – actually, if you include design time and false starts it could be closer to five years – designing a new application protocol… Continue reading GPSD 3.0 finally ships. It’s been a long epic.

I’ve joined Google+

Google+ is interesting. I was persuaded to try it by three things: (1) Circles, so I can structure my contacts rather than having an undifferentiated blob of “friends”, (2) I’m fairly confident that Google’s Data Liberation Front won’t let it turn into a jail, and (3) my best geeky friends seem to be joining en… Continue reading I’ve joined Google+

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Recreating the Nutty Buddy

This is a happy story about how, sometimes, you can go home again. When I was a small child (this would have been a good 45 years or so in the mid-1960s), there was a style of ice cream cone with a sort of top cap of solidified chocolate and chopped peanuts on it. They… Continue reading Recreating the Nutty Buddy

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Will software ever be engineering?

One of my commenters pointed me at an article by John Sonmez over at ElegantCode, Why Software Development Will Never be Engineering. The article makes one very shrewd, well-argued point, but then disappointingly fails to build on it. Read it and see if you spot the problem before I analyze.

Stolen jewels

Our cat, Sugar, is getting old. The final, swift decline one tends to see in aging cats is not yet upon her; she’s still the lovely creature we’ve known for nearly two decades – eyes bright, coat soft and glossy, purr ready and resonant. Our friends marvel at her apparent health at over 18 years…but… Continue reading Stolen jewels

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Armed & Dangerous has offspring, sort of

See Unarmed but still Dangerous. Well, he says he’s unarmed but dangerous, yet I’ve seen no mention of empty-hand skills at all! (That was a joke. You can chuckle now.)

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Lady Godiva (with apologies to the Beatles)

OK, to prepare for this read up on the legend of Lady Godiva, and then read the lyrics of the Beatles’ Lady Madonna. You might want to take the three minutes or so to watch it being performed. Now sing this to yourself:

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True Grit times two

I just got back from seeing the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. I had prepared by watching the classic 1969 John Wayne film. The similarities and contrasts have some interesting messages about how audience tastes and filmmaking styles have changed in the last 40 years.

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Dr. William Short’s “Icelanders in the Viking Age”: A Review

A little over a year ago I reviewed Dr. Wlliam Short’s Viking Weapons and Combat on this blog, finding it excellent on all levels. Now Dr. Short has given us a quasi-sequel, a sort of reader’s companion to Icelandic saga literature. While not quite as exciting as the earlier book, it is in many ways… Continue reading Dr. William Short’s “Icelanders in the Viking Age”: A Review

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Retired, Extremely Dangerous

It’s not giving much away to tell you that the title of the new action comedy “RED”, stands for “Retired – Extremely Dangerous”. My wife uttered the most succinct possible praise of this movie when she said, as we were leaving the theater, “This was the movie The Expendables should have been.” Indeed it was.… Continue reading Retired, Extremely Dangerous

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