I started using Linux back in 1997 when a buddy and I put Slackware, floppy by floppy, onto a Pentium 133.  I didn’t start using it full time until a couple years later, when Microsoft started requiring online registration with product keys.  Since then, I’ve used Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, Arch and Ubuntu.  I abandoned [...]

With a title like that, it’s not really clear where I intend to go with this post, but bear with me for a moment. A couple of years ago, I got into functional programming, initially with Common Lisp (only a tiny bit), and then Scheme and Scala, a pinch of OCaml, and finally Clojure.  One [...]

I was reading a really interesting blog post on copyrights, and this amazing paradox about copyright struck me. Right now, the internet is changing the way text, music and video are distributed.  Part of that change is the ease with which data can be copied.  If you look at what the U.S. supreme court said [...]

TL;DR version: Modern browsers need to learn a lesson from Emacs and keyboard launchers and provide an interface for tab-switching that is keyboard search-as-you-type based.  Firefox is the best browser to implement this on, since it is very extensible. The Extensibility of Firefox Mozilla recently hosted a Summer Design Challenge for 2009 that focused on [...]

There’s something about our experience that defines us.  You meet someone new, and if they’ve had the same frustration at the checkout counter at the supermarket, or had the same sense of wonder standing and looking at the wake of a ship stretch to the horizon, a momentary spark forms, and a connection is made.  [...]

Here’s the thing about using commercial (proprietary) software: you are not buying software, or even software-as-a-service.  You’re buying into an ecosystem.  Let me quickly provide examples, rather than pontificating endlessly. Take the iPhone.  I really like the iPhone.  A good friend of mine just bought a shiny new iPhone 3G S.  She was moving from [...]

Introduction When I program, I sometimes am fortunate enough to see beauty emerge from what I do. I love programming because of this, but, enthusiastic as I am about it, I find that it is very hard to convey the essence of what I see to others, which often means that they cannot understand what [...]

Though perputually on the verge of total disorganization in the physical realm, I try to keep my digital world very organized.  Because of this, I habitually try to move more and more of my life into a digital representation, which allows easy backup, searching and reorganization.  Although I have tried many free and proprietary software [...]

It can be really difficult to tell the difference between a skillful troll and someone who really is that clueless.  For that matter, it can be really difficult to tell the difference between parody and reality, especially when one predicts the other. That said, I honestly have a really hard time figuring out whether the [...]

Just ran across (via Proggit) an interesting blog post about Core War, a game I played a bit with on Linux a few years back in which programs compete for dominance inside a virtual machine.  Very neat idea – you program an agent that will go and fight for you in a virtual world.  Cool. [...]