Author Archives: jcs

Pharen

Posted on 2011-06-02 by jcs

I don’t know what to think of Pharen. It’s a little compiler that compiles a Lisp-like language into PHP. PHP seems to be almost as universally reviled as it is universally used, so perhaps this is a useful thing as … Continue reading →

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Magic Trackpad

Posted on 2011-06-01 by jcs

My main machine, at the moment, is a 27 inch iMac. It came with the Magic Mouse, which is an optical mouse that has a multi-touch surface on its top shell. It’s a great mouse and I really like it … Continue reading →

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As I Was Saying

Posted on 2011-05-31 by jcs

No sooner had I pushed my Bad Passwords post than I stumbled on this post by Marc Bevand over at Zorinaq. Bevand reports that VISA’s Verified by VISA authentication system forces users to select weak passwords (this may not be … Continue reading →

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Bad Passwords

Posted on 2011-05-31 by jcs

Alternative title: Good Grief. It’s absolutely incredible how clueless people still are about password security. You would think that anyone using the Web today would be aware of the numerous compromises that involve weak passwords. Apparently not. Over at Naked … Continue reading →

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Sorting With Emacs

Posted on 2011-05-30 by jcs

Mickey over at Mastering Emacs has a great post on sorting in Emacs. Did you know you can sort by regular expressions? I didn’t. Get over there and read the post; it’s well worth your time. In fact, you might … Continue reading →

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The Future of Books

Posted on 2011-05-29 by jcs

Over at Blog Kindle, Matthew has a post that asks if the Kindle is destroying the publishing industry. Matthew’s main point is that books have always been evolving and are continuing to evolve today. The most significant aspect of the … Continue reading →

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Living the Digital Life

Posted on 2011-05-28 by jcs

A year or two ago I almost completely abandoned paper, pencils, and pens. I made a point of taking all my notes on one of my computers or my iPhone. I removed all the note pads and writing instruments from … Continue reading →

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Emacs for Prose

Posted on 2011-05-27 by jcs

Urpo Lankinen over at the Avarthrel Blog has a post about coming home to Emacs for writing prose—specifically novels. Although he’s a longtime Emacs user, he’s long been wandering in the wilderness looking for a good writer’s editor. Emacs was … Continue reading →

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Another Emacs Trick

Posted on 2011-05-26 by jcs

I just stumbled across another feature of Emacs that is new to me. If you save files by typing C-x s, then for each dirty buffer Emacs will ask if you want to save it. By answering d Emacs will … Continue reading →

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A Practical Application of Gray Codes

Posted on 2011-05-25 by jcs

Gray codes are a way of encoding a a sequence of integers {0, 1, 2, …, n} so that the binary representation of adjacent integers differs by only 1 bit. For example, the1 Gray encoding for the sequence {0, 1, … Continue reading →

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