Author Archives: Dave
The History of the Space Shuttle (in photos)
Alan Taylor’s collection of iconic images from the era of the Space Shuttle era. NASA’s Space Shuttle program has seen moments of dizzying inspiration and of crushing disappointment. What I saw as a kid as the future of space is … Continue reading
Pushing out bits
Today at work was one of those days that feels like it’s all just busy work. I need to make a little change here, then make a build for someone to run. Oops, it didn’t quite work, so I’ve got … Continue reading
Bash expansions
I recently read an article by Phil Sung with some good tips about the keyboard shortcuts available in bash/readline. Trying to get these to work inspired me to investigate various dotfile configurations that weren’t quite working right. Phil links to … Continue reading
Catching up
It’s been a while since I’ve written here, but I’m resolving (at least for a couple weeks) to post something here or on the family blog. So, where am I now? I have a family (wife, 2 kids). I live … Continue reading
Email scams via snail mail
I received a snail mail Nigerian 419 scam with a stamp and postmark from Tanzania. I find it disappointing that it’s economically viable for someone to send real physical letters with such an obvious scam. It makes me wonder if … Continue reading
Water Droplet Bouncing on a Superhydrophobic Carbon Nanotube Array
Fascinating high framerate capture of water droplets on a superhydrophobic surface. (Runtime is about 3 minutes.) Every so often I get complacent about the speed of the computer I’m using. I mean its pretty fast. But we have a long … Continue reading
Pointer icon usability
Where do you think the hotspot for this mouse pointer icon is? Is it under one of the points, or maybe in the center of the icon? Nope, it’s in the top left corner. Let me repeat that. The hotspot … Continue reading
Testing for Infrastructure Changes
We’ve been going through a number of IT changes lately, server migration, consolidating authentication mechanisms, virtualization, etc. Some of these changes have been painful because they’ve caused breakage. Authentication has broken so developers can’t log into the build system. Other … Continue reading
Outsourced IT
The IT team at the company I work for is outsourced to another company that provides IT services. This post is brief analysis of the pros and cons that I’ve encountered. Outsourcing IT allows my company to get cost-efficient service … Continue reading