Author Archives: jcs

The Virtue of Practice

Posted on 2014-09-26 by jcs

Via Jean-Philippe Paradis: What enlightenment feels like: RT @katrinolina: We’re eternal students. pic.twitter.com/pNuGEB3SAV — Footnote (@FootnoteMedia) August 8, 2014 I love this. It represents the attitude of a master who is forever striving to improve.

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Privacy for the Rest of Us

Posted on 2014-09-26 by jcs

A recurrent theme around here has been the need to give crypto-enabled apps a user interface that is transparent to Aunt Millie. This is important because no matter how well-protected the geeks make themselves, no one is truly safe until … Continue reading →

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The Java Virtual Machine Tax

Posted on 2014-09-25 by jcs

Via Wilfred Hughes Much-needed straight talk about the "JVM tax" in Clojure and Scala, among other new language issues. RT @AidyLewis https://t.co/OpS1kuafTa — Alex Chamberlain (@dodgethestmrlr) September 23, 2014 I’ve often been tempted by Clojure but the JVM tax that … Continue reading →

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Spring Fall Cleaning

Posted on 2014-09-25 by jcs

In a comment to my Mathematics in a Blog Post post, Grant Rettke asked what versions of WordPress and org2blog/wp I was using. It turned out I had a pretty old version of org2blog/wp installed so I decided to upgrade. … Continue reading →

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Rock & Roll and a Rare Personal Item

Posted on 2014-09-24 by jcs

I don’t often write about myself on Irreal because, really, who cares? I’m going to make a rare exception and share something about myself: I am a HUGE Pink Floyd fan and consider them the best Rock and Roll band … Continue reading →

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Sorting in Dired

Posted on 2014-09-24 by jcs

Xah Lee just taught me something new about dired sorting. I mostly just sort the list by name but occasionally I want to see the newer entries so I toggle the sorting to “date” by typing 【s】. It turns out, … Continue reading →

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Correct Quotation Marks

Posted on 2014-09-23 by jcs

There are few things as ugly, typographically speaking, as the straight quotation marks that are the default in most fonts. When you’re writing something that’s going to be rendered with proportional fonts, it’s easy to do the right thing and … Continue reading →

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An Update to Mathematics in a Blog Post

Posted on 2014-09-22 by jcs

Given that there was a bit more interest than usual in my Mathematics in a Blog Post post, I want to update it with a couple of things I’ve learned in the mean time. This only applies to those using … Continue reading →

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Another 12 Great Programmers

Posted on 2014-09-21 by jcs

Here’s another list of the 12 greatest programmers of all time. As I’ve said before, these list all always silly but a lot of fun to talk and argue about. This list’s greatest programmers are: Dennis Ritchie Linus Torvolds Bjarne … Continue reading →

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A Math & Lisp Blog

Posted on 2014-09-20 by jcs

If, like me, you’re interested in Mathematics and Lisp and like doing math experiments on a computer, you should check out Atabey Kaygun’s Blog. Kaygun is a Mathematician at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul. On his blog he considers various problems … Continue reading →

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