Category Archives: Software
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
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
Was Fink, now MacPorts
I started using Apple’s OS X full time quite a while ago, back in the 10.1 days. So long ago that I don’t remember what its codename was, maybe Puma? (I suppose I could look it up.) Anyway, as a … Continue reading
Trey’s programming blog
My friend Trey started a new programming blog with weekly Emacs tips. Awesome! I recently read (and promptly re-read) Steve Yegge’s emacs tips, which is full of good info. I use Emacs all the time when I’m on Linux, but … Continue reading
Yet another way to shoot yourself in the foot with C++
Found during pair programming (yes, I do it sometimes): class Foo { public: Foo(bool in); … }; … Foo f = new Foo(true); … Yikes. Didn’t expect that to get by the compiler. But it did. Without even a warning. … Continue reading
Web site updates from subversion
It’s not rocket science, but it surprised me just how painlessly I could set up automatic web site updates from my subversion repository. It’s all documented out there on the net, but this is my chance to record how I … Continue reading