Monthly Archives: June 2011

The History of UTF-8

Posted on 2011-06-06 by jcs

Via the Programming subredit I was led this History of UTF-8 by Rob Pike. I already knew some of that history (such as Ken Thompson and Rob Pike designing UTF-8 on a paper placemat at a diner) but much of … Continue reading →

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Two Interviews

Posted on 2011-06-05 by jcs

Recently Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie sat down for interviews: Thompson with Dr. Dobb’s and Ritchie with IEEE Spectrum. Ritchie talks mostly about he and Ken inventing Unix—the occasion for both interviews was Thompson and Ritchie winning the Japan Prize … Continue reading →

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Scrolling The Other Window

Posted on 2011-06-04 by jcs

Trawling through the old Emacs COTWD twitter entries I came across something I didn’t know. In some situations, such as help screens, Emacs will open another window but keep the focus in the current window. When this happens, Emacs will … Continue reading →

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The Hits Keep On Coming

Posted on 2011-06-03 by jcs

It appears that kicking the hornet’s nest worked out better for Lisbeth Salander than it has for Sony. The “hacker group” LulzSec has again embarrassed Sony by compromising SonyPictures.com and exposing user data for over one million users. Fortunately for … Continue reading →

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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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