I thought I would do a brain-dump about something in the computing world that has interested me for a long time: the Lisp programming language, or family of languages. Lisp, in it’s various forms, is known as a language with a passionate but small following, which has never reached the level of industry adoption of […]
The Album and the Stream
The other day I visited a hole-in-the-wall music store in my area, just an upstairs bedroom or office that was converted into a music store by stuffing it wall-to-wall with crates of vinyl and racks of CD’s, with barely enough room in the isles for two people to pass without getting physically intimate. Although it […]
Game Review: The Witness
While I do enjoy video games, and many happy hours of my youth were spent with my eyes glued to the TV, absorbed in the attempt to run, jump and shoot my way through one NES game or another, being the responsible adult I am today means that my game time is limited. Occasionally I’ll […]
Book Review: Writing With a Word Processor by William Zinsser
Author William Zinsser is known for his book on writing well, On Writing Well, still a popular work on the subject almost half a century after its original publication. Less well known but still worth a read is his Writing to Learn. This is another book of writing advice, but in this case he is […]
A Few Words About Cartoons
I like cartoons. My appreciation for them started young. I watched Sunday morning cartoons back when that was a thing; Transformers, He-Man and the other animated toy advertisements of the 80’s. In the 90’s my family had a weekly ritual of gathering around the TV to watch the Simpsons. Later on I was at just […]
RIP Dr. Michael Sugrue
At some point in my life, before I really got into computers and technology, I figured out how to download things with a Bittorrent client. While I am all for supporting artists whose work you enjoy by shelling out the cash to buy what they make, this was around the time when I was in […]
On Mechanical Keyboards
A new year is coming, time to clean some things up, take some things out to the trash, and of course, get a bunch of new stuff. For me this year, that meant getting a Mac Mini to replace my 2014 Macbook Pro. The Mini is a small, sleek, silver technological lozenge that doesn’t take […]
The Web Is Worse Is Better
Recently, on a whim, I bought Hypertext and Hypermedia (1990), by Jakob Nielsen, the author of a number of books on user interface and web design. The contents are just what the title indicates, but what interested me is that this is a book about hypertext published before the web existed. It does not even […]
Hackers & English Majors
Like many software developers, I occasionally take a peek at Hacker News and look for the odd headline that catches my eye. Like many people my age, I spent a lot of time playing text-based and point-and-click adventure games on a PC in the 90’s. Recently, there was a serendipitous collision between these interests when […]
Don’t Panic!
I occasionally like to dip my toes into the world of productivity techniques, something I think worth doing while keeping in mind that you can spend all day researching productivity while getting nothing done. I’ve found that there is a very useful productivity program that comes as part of my favorite programming text editor, that […]