Imagine yourself in 1985, whether you were alive at the time or not. You know nothing about computers, but somehow find yourself at a DOS or UNIX command prompt, staring at cryptic characters in an oddly angular font, glowing white against the flat, featureless black of the screen. Let’s imagine that you are used to […]
A Few Thoughts on the New Programming
I remember one of the first programs I wrote, when everything about programming, the web, and the world of computing was new to me, which was a simple implementation of Conway’s Game of Life using an HTML table for the grid. Nothing fancy, nothing that hasn’t been done a million times before, just a fun […]
Commented Out 2026
The years start coming and they don’t stop coming, once said a wise man, and sure enough here we are in a new year. Twenty Twenty-Six, they’re calling it. An apt name. And it’s supposed to be a big year for AI. That is practically all anyone is talking about. Well, I’m nobody special, so […]
The Anthropomorphic Interface
Well, here we are, the future has arrived. We are living in the age of AI, our heads spinning with the possibilities and dangers, trying to understand what it all means for art, society, our jobs, our lives. These are big questions, and this is a humble programming blog (at least it was originally intended […]
A Lisp Interlude
I came across the programming language, or family of languages, called Lisp early in my programming journey, when I first realized that computing technology was an area I wanted to explore, but without having much direction other then my own curiosity and what came up in web searches. In one of these searches I discovered […]
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 […]