I had a great time at Penguicon 2016, including face time with a lot of the people who help out on my various projects. There are a couple of thoughts that kept coming back to me during these conversations. One is “It is good, having so many impressively competent friends.” The other is that without… Continue reading With a little help from my friends
Results for "great beast"
The Rule of Names
This is an entirely silly post about the way I name the machines in my house, shared for the amusement of my regulars.
The midrange computer dies
About five years ago I reacted to a lot of hype about the impending death of the personal computer with an observation and a prediction. The observation was that some components of a computer have to be the size they are because they’re scaled to human dimensions – notably screens, keyboards, and pointing devices. Wander… Continue reading The midrange computer dies
I have a Patreon page
I created a Patreon page just before leaving for vacation on 2 Aug. The background to this is that while I’m now getting some regular bucks for working on NTPsec, it’s not a lot. Royalties from my books have been dwindling and my wife Cathy isn’t making all that much from legal contract gigs that… Continue reading I have a Patreon page
Penguicon 2015!
I’ve been sent my panel schedule for Penguicon 2015. Building the “Great Beast of Malvern” – Saturday 5:00 pm One of us needed a new computer. One of us kicked off the campaign to fund it. One of us assembled the massive system. One of us installed the software. We were never all in the… Continue reading Penguicon 2015!
Beware cut-price Korean monitors!
There have been a flood of big, cheap monitors (2560×1440 and up) becoming available on TigerDirect and other similar sites recently. But I’m here to tell you that these should come with warning labels, and explain why. I’ve had some dolorous experiences with the no-name pair of big flatscreens I bought back in 2013 –… Continue reading Beware cut-price Korean monitors!
Designed for the job
Every once in a while I have an experience that causes me to meditate on the question of how much variation in human behavior is genetically driven. I’ve written before about my gradually increasing awareness that I am genetically designed to enjoy combat. I had another experience something like this last night in a completely… Continue reading Designed for the job
Fear the software guy with the soldering iron
Today, for the first time ever in my life, I used a soldering iron. Remarkably, I neither conflagrated my house nor inflicted horrible burns on sensitive portions of my anatomy. Cat and wife are looking visibly relieved at this. As well they might.
Self-sacrifice as hacker-culture glue
I’ve just had an insight I find a bit disturbing. Though perhaps I shouldn’t. Occasionally I visit Scott Alexander’s excellent and thoughtful blog, Slate Star Codex. Today’s entry reminded me of Laurence Iannaccone’s research on Sacrifice and Stigma, which argues that onerous religious requirements are effective ways of building in-group trust because they are commitment… Continue reading Self-sacrifice as hacker-culture glue
Progress towards the extinction of CVS
The Great Beast, designed for converting large CVS repos, is now in full production. It hasn’t killed off any specimens in the wild yet (and I’ll explain why in a bit), but it’s doing spectacularly well on our test repositories. As a representative large example, the entire Emacs CVS history, 1985-2009, 113309 CVS commits, lifts… Continue reading Progress towards the extinction of CVS
A low-performance mystery: the adventure continues
The mystery I described two posts back has actually been mostly solved (I think) but I’m having a great deal of fun trying to make cvs-fast-export run even faster, and my regulars are not only kibitzing with glee but have even thrown money at me so I can upgrade my PC and run tests on… Continue reading A low-performance mystery: the adventure continues
Hacking and Refactoring
In 2001, there was a history-making conference of software-engineering thinkers in Snowbird, Colorado. The product of that meeting was a remarkable document called the Agile Manifesto, a call to overturn many of the assumptions of traditional software development. I was invited to be at Snowbird, but couldn’t make it. Ever since, though, I’ve been sensing… Continue reading Hacking and Refactoring
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)
Substantive changes from version 1 to 2 are marked in red; changes from 2 to 3 are marked in blue. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 3)
Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 2)
Substantive changes from version 1 are marked in red. I think the changes largely speak for themselves. I will say that I think some of the criticisms I received reflect a conservative bias in the blogosphere population, and that for appeal to a wider audience it is necessary to excoriate the Right a little harder… Continue reading Draft for an Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (version 2)