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. This one they’re calling Twenty Twenty-Six. An apt name. And it’s supposed to be a big year for AI. That is practically all anyone is talking about. And I’m nobody special, […]
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 […]
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 […]