Monthly Archives: June 2011

Better Passwords

Posted on 2011-06-30 by jcs

Over at the AgileBits Blog (the makers of 1Password) Jeff has a nice discussion of picking secure passwords. His discussion is in the context of picking a master password for 1Password but it applies more generally. Much of the really … Continue reading →

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A Parable About Git

Posted on 2011-06-29 by jcs

A Couple of days ago I wrote about Tom Preston-Werner‘s talk on Git and how he approached the subject matter in a particularly effective way. Today, I was trawling through his Web site and found a longish post entitle The … Continue reading →

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The Security Hall of Shame

Posted on 2011-06-28 by jcs

Two more inductees into the Security Hall of Shame. Honestly, I could devote a whole blog to this sort of thing. Perhaps we should start a Security Hall of Shame blog similar to Steve Friedl’s No Dashes or Spaces Hall … Continue reading →

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An Interesting Talk On Git

Posted on 2011-06-27 by jcs

Over at Ontwik, Tom Preston-Werner has a nice (video) talk on Git. I like it because instead of focusing on the mechanics of using Git, Preston-Werner shows you what Git is doing internally at each stage of the process. I … Continue reading →

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Using Org Modes’s Date Routines In Any Buffer

Posted on 2011-06-26 by jcs

I really like Org Mode’s method for inserting time/date stamps into an Org file. Org Mode has two types of dates, active and inactive, that differ in how Org Mode treats them but we needn’t worry about that here. In … Continue reading →

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Lessons From Dropbox

Posted on 2011-06-25 by jcs

I’ve written before about Dropbox and their supposed scandal regarding the perfectly obvious fact that they could, in fact, read users’ files stored on the site. Despite the lamentations of the aggrieved and even the filing of a complaint with … Continue reading →

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Hackers Redux

Posted on 2011-06-24 by jcs

Yesterday I wrote about Steven Levy’s Hackers. Today, serendipitously, I happened across a Wired article from last year that I’d filed away intending to read and then forgotten. In it Levy revisits Hackers and catches us up on what his … Continue reading →

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The Last Hacker

Posted on 2011-06-23 by jcs

A few weeks ago someone posted a link to Richard Stallman’s Speech at the 2002 International Lisp Conference. It’s an interesting read that, among other things, recounts the story told in the Epilogue to Steven Levy’s Hackers about RMS single … Continue reading →

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Scrolling Emacs by Line

Posted on 2011-06-22 by jcs

The other day, I stumbled across this post over at Anything goes about scrolling up and down by line in Emacs. The poster gives two simple functions and some key bindings to scroll a window up or down a line. … Continue reading →

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The Common Lisp Loop Macro

Posted on 2011-06-21 by jcs

I don’t like the CL Loop macro. I’m not alone on that; Paul Graham isn’t a fan either. On the other hand, Peter Seibel has a more positive view of them. That two accomplished and intelligent Lispers can disagree on … Continue reading →

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