Author Archives: jcs

Dijkstra

Posted on 2020-11-08 by jcs

Most Irreal readers probably know the name Dijkstra, if only from his famous letter to the ACM entitled “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” and his celebrated shortest path algorithm. In fact, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was a giant in the field … Continue reading →

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Unix As Literature

Posted on 2020-11-07 by jcs

Someone has reposted Thomas Scoville’s article from 1998 on Unix as Literature. The article’s premise is that Unix (and these days, Linux) users are different from the users of other systems. That seems like a low calorie assertion but it’s … Continue reading →

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Ball Point Pens

Posted on 2020-11-06 by jcs

What could you buy for the price of a ball point pen? No much. Not a newspaper, not a cup of coffee, and certainly not a hamburger. You can get one of the ubiquitous Bic pens for a little over … Continue reading →

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File and Directory Local Variables

Posted on 2020-11-05 by jcs

David Wilson over at the System Crafters Youtube channel has a useful video that discusses file and directory local variables. File local variables are Emacs variables that are specific to a particular file. A common use is to set the … Continue reading →

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Another Org Workflow

Posted on 2020-11-04 by jcs

Wai Hon has thought carefully about his workflow and how he can leverage Org-mode to make it as efficient and seamless as possible. He’s concerned mostly about task management so of course Org-mode is a perfect fit. He’s published a … Continue reading →

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Reproducibility

Posted on 2020-11-03 by jcs

I’ve written several times about the reroducibility crisis. That crisis is the fact that an astoundingly large percentage of scientific experiments can’t be reproduced by other researchers. That, of course, calls into question the validity of the original results. My … Continue reading →

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The Trial

Posted on 2020-11-02 by jcs

It’s like something out of Kafka. C. awoke one morning to find that after 15 years, all of his Google accounts were locked. He’d been accused of violating the terms of service. What violation? They wouldn’t tell him. He didn’t … Continue reading →

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Unix Pipes

Posted on 2020-11-01 by jcs

This post is a blast from the past \(\times 2\). One reason it’s a blast from the past is that it discusses the Unix V6 code. The other reason is that it discusses some of the code that first helped … Continue reading →

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James Bond

Posted on 2020-10-31 by jcs

In the end, there can be only one.

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The Map

Posted on 2020-10-31 by jcs

Although I’ve never lived in New York City, I love being there, have family who are lifetime New Yorkers, and visit regularly. One of the things I love about the city is that I can walk to most places I … Continue reading →

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