Over on G+, Peter da Silva wrote: ‘I just typoed “goatee” as “gloatee” and now I’m wondering why it wasn’t always spelled that way.’ #evilviziersrepresent #muahaha The estimable Mr. da Silva is sadly in error. I played the evil vizier in the first run of the Arabian Nights LARP back in 1987. No goatee, and… Continue reading Evil viziers represent!
Cryptotheories and cognition
One of the things I most enjoy doing is spotting holes in linguistic maps – places where people habitually circumlocute their way around a word – or, more properly, an important bundle of concepts tagged by a word – that they don’t know they’re missing. Sometimes, filling one of these holes can shake up everyone’s… Continue reading Cryptotheories and cognition
Autism, genius, and the power of obliviousness
There’s a link between autism and genius says a popular-press summary of recent research. If you follow this sort of thing (and I do) most of what follows doesn’t come as much of a surprise. We get the usual thumbnail case studies about autistic savants. There’s an interesting thread about how child prodigies who are… Continue reading Autism, genius, and the power of obliviousness
Bravery and biology
I just read a very well-intentioned, heartwarming talk about girls who code that, sadly, I think, is missing the biological forest for the cultural trees. It’s this: Teach girls bravery, not perfection. Read it, It’s short I like the woman who voiced those thoughts in that way. Well, except for the part about growing up… Continue reading Bravery and biology
In defense of calendrical irregularity
I’ve been getting deeper into timekeeping and calendar-related software the last few years. Besides my work on GPSD, I’m now the tech lead of NTPsec. Accordingly, I have learned a great deal about time mensuration and the many odd problems that beset calendricists. I could tell you more about the flakiness of timezones, leap seconds,… Continue reading In defense of calendrical irregularity
Practical Python Porting for systems programmers
Last week I decided the time had come to bite the bullet and systematically port the fairly large volume of Python code I maintain from Python 2 to Python 3. I straightaway ran into a problem, which is that for my purposes the Web resources on on how to do this are pretty awful. And… Continue reading Practical Python Porting for systems programmers
Automatons, judgment amplifiers, and DSLs
Do we make too many of our software tools automatons when they should be judgment amplifiers? And why don’t we write more DSLs? Back in the Renaissance there was a literary tradition of explaining natural philosophy via conversations among imaginary characters. I’m going to revive that this evening because I had an IRC conversation this… Continue reading Automatons, judgment amplifiers, and DSLs
Brute force beats premature optimization
I made a really common and insidious programming mistake recently. I’m going to explain it in detail because every programmer in the world needs the reminder not to do this, and I hope confessing that even “ESR” falls into such a trap will make the less experienced properly wary of it. Our sutra for today… Continue reading Brute force beats premature optimization
Symbols in SRC-SCCS
The SCCS back end to SRC doesn’t support named symbolic references to numbered revisions, because SCCS masters don’t include a symbol table. This is one of the things RCS added. Goddess help me, I’ve figured out how to shoehorn in this feature. And probably should not do it.
SRC users: check in, please?
I just released version 1.7 of SRC, Simple Revision Control. For those of you late to the party, SRC is a simple version control system for directories full of small standalone files like FAQs, scripts in your ~/bin, dotfiles, and so forth – cases where you don’t want multi-file changesets. It’s actually a Python wrapper… Continue reading SRC users: check in, please?
SRC goes SCCS
I needed a break from serious work yesterday, so SRC now speaks SCCS as well as RCS. This wasn’t difficult, I had SRC carefully factored in anticipation from when I originally wrote it. I can’t say I think this feature will be actually useful; SCCS is pretty primitive, and the SRC support has some annoying… Continue reading SRC goes SCCS
Wicked River: the movie
Some years ago I happened across a fascinating book titled Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild. If you have any fondness for Mark Twain (as I do – I own and have read the complete works), you need to read this book. The book is an extended argument that Twain’s late-Victorian portraits… Continue reading Wicked River: the movie
SRC 1.0 is released
If you were reading A&D a year ago, you may recall that I invented a new version-control system to occupy an odd little niche that none of the exiting ones serve very well. Well, actually, it’s a shell around a very old version-control system that makes a reasonable fast version-storage manager but has a crappy… Continue reading SRC 1.0 is released
The silent trade: universal objective ethics in action
Once upon a time, back during the Age of Exploration, there was a marvellous practice called the “silent trade”. It was a solution to a serious coordination problem between groups who had no languages in common, or distrusted each other so much that they refused to come within range of each others’ weapons. What makes… Continue reading The silent trade: universal objective ethics in action
Announcing sshexport
I struck a small blow for better security today. It started last night on an IRC channel with A&D regular Susan Sons admonishing the regulars to rotate their ssh keys regularly – that is, generate and export new key pairs so that is someone cracks the crypto on one out of your sight it won’t… Continue reading Announcing sshexport
What Amending the Constitution Cannot Do
An underappreciated fact about U.S. Constitutional law is that it recognizes sources of authority prior to the U.S. Constitution itself. It is settled law that the Bill of Rights, in particular, does not confer rights, it only recognizes “natural rights” which pre-exist the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and which – this is the… Continue reading What Amending the Constitution Cannot Do
What killed the duel?
A&D regulars will probably not be much surprised to learn that I’m something of a topic expert on the history of the duel of honor. This came up over on Slate Star Codex recently when I answered a question about the historical relationship of the duel or honor with street violence. I’ve read all the… Continue reading What killed the duel?
Cometary Contributors
I released reposurgeon 3.30 today. It has been five years and a month since the first public release. In those five years, the design concept seems to have proved out very well, finding use in many repository conversions. But the project exhibits an unusual sociology; I don’t get lots of casual contributors, only a few… Continue reading Cometary Contributors
Why I joined the NRA
After 20 years of evading joining the NRA, I finally did it last week. I’ve never been a huge fan of the NRA because, despite the fearsome extremist image the mainstream media tries to hang on it, the NRA is actually rather squishy about gun rights. A major symptom of this is its lack of… Continue reading Why I joined the NRA
Beehive huts to the stars!
None of the things I expected from seeing The Force Awakens was to recognize the location where the last scene was filmed, because I’ve been there myself. I’m being careful not to utter spoilers here…but I’ve been to the western coast of Ireland, in County Kerry, in a place called Fahan. And in that place,… Continue reading Beehive huts to the stars!