It’s always one of the high points of my year when I get to go to Michigan and play with the sword geeks. This year my wife and I went out for Summer Weapons Retreat 3, run by our friends at the Polaris Fellowship of Weapons Study, with an unstructured several days afterwards for extra… Continue reading What I did on my 2011 summer vacation (part one)
Issue analysis of the G+ realnames policy
Here’s hoping I’ve figured out how to extract a public permalink this time. The issue analysis.
A modest proposal for Google+ handles.
Normally I post essay-length stuff here, but I’ve weighed in on a G+ policy dispute and thought this post should be there. Comments there too please.
The Smartphone Wars: Expectation and Surprise
If style is truly the contrast of expectation and surprise, it’s been a very stylin’ couple of weeks in the smartphone world while I’ve been on vacation.
Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions about Robert Heinlein, but not to their own facts. In a blog post on Heinlein’s novel Beyond This Horizon, David Brin advances a number of claims which are disputable, and one that is utterly bizarre. He alleges that the thought behind Heinlein’s famous quote “An armed society is… Continue reading Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong
Tau versus Pi
I’ve recently become aware of an entertaining controversy in the world of mathematics. It seems a dissident faction of mathematicians is advocating the replacement of the mathematical constant π with the related constant τ = 2π. T he self-described ‘Tauists’ are conducting their campaign with a form of ha-ha-only-serious dry humor that gently mocks the… Continue reading Tau versus Pi
Heads up: Google+ changes things
This is a heads-up for all fans of this blog. You probably want to get on Google+ ASAP, because in the future some content I would have shipped as short posts here will be Google+ shared text instead. Essay-length stuff will remain here with pointers from Google+ updates. Likely I will lock comments on the… Continue reading Heads up: Google+ changes things
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+
Yahtzee — In — Spaaace!
I’m just back from another session with the Friday night gaming crew, occupied this time with a new game called Alien Frontiers. Summary: It’s Yahtzee — in — spaaace!.
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
The Smartphone Wars: Not the expected surprise
I have plotted the May 2011 comScore data. There are two conspicuous things to notice about it. One is that recent rumors of an Android stallout seem utterly bogus, and the other is that Apple appears to be actually gaining some share rather than simply bouncing around 25% in a random way.
The Smartphone Wars: Rumors of demise
I’ve been chronicling RIM’s death spiral, and much more willing than most to call it as a straight-up suicide by bad planning and management, not just a “bad things happen to good companies” episode. Now comes an open letter from inside RIM describing the unforced errors in excruciating detail. In other news, the trade press… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Rumors of demise
Why the political class needs a Greek bailout
There’s been a lot of ink spilled lately on the likelihood that the nation of Greece will default on its public debt, and why it is utterly necessary for the European Union and the U.S. must ride the the rescue with some sort of fiddle involving a combination of (a) massive taxpayer-funded loans, (b) cramming… Continue reading Why the political class needs a Greek bailout
The Smartphone Wars: Nokia’s fallback?
Here’s an interesting news story alleging that Nokia has ported Android to the N9. There are pictures at engadget.
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.
The Smartphone Wars: Circling the RIM
It’s been a quiet week in the smartphone wars. The three most interesting developments are (a) stock analysts have begun hanging crepe for RIM’s funeral, (b) HP has priced its WebOS tablet to die, and (c) the iPhone 5 is now not expected in September, being constrained by iOS 5’s ship date.
World Without Web
Technological change has a tendency to look inevitable in retrospect – “It steam-engines when it’s steam-engine time.” Likely this is true in many cases, but I often think we underestimate the alarming degree of contingency lurking behind ‘inevitable’ developments. To illustrate this point, I’m going to sketch an all-too-plausible alternate history in which the World… Continue reading World Without Web
The “walled garden” becomes a prison for reality
A British tabloid revealed today that Apple has filed for a patent on a system for disabling the video camera on an iPhone or iPad when its user attempts to film a concert or other interdicted live event. This is a much more threatening development than most may realize.
The Smartphone Wars: The invasion begins
For months I’ve been predicting that a flood of ultra-cheap SoC-based Androids is coming at us from China, motivated by the prospect of Third World and BRIC sales volume in the billions and beginning in 3Q2011. The iCube announcement was one harbinger; today we have some others. It’s worth another look at what this trend… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: The invasion begins
Z-Man games is on a roll: two boardgame reviews
Two important qualities in a good boardgame are an interesting theme and good mechanics. Theme is the narrative of the game – what it’s supposed to be about. Mechanics is the game considered as a pure logic puzzle – what goes in there, what comes out here. A subtle but common failure in game design… Continue reading Z-Man games is on a roll: two boardgame reviews