Tag Archives: Tech

Old-time Irrealers and alert newcomers know that I’m a big fan of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Indeed, this blog is named after one of his ideas from the novel Excession: the Irreal. I mention Banks because I was reading … Continue reading →

The Verge has a story that is at once hilarious, infuriating, and deeply disturbing. In this time of COVID-19 much education has moved online. Except for scale, this isn’t really new. It’s been possible for many years for children to … Continue reading →

Apologies to those of you who aren’t members of the cult but this is another post on Apple products. For the last year or so I’ve been using a wireless charger for my iPhone. I like it because it’s easy … Continue reading →

One of my favorite development strategies is using finite state machines. They’re not right for every type of problem but they have greater applicability than you might think. I’ve written several FSM-based applications almost always in C. C isn’t the … Continue reading →

A surprising number of people hate Amazon. I say “surprising” because I don’t understand their animus. Sure, they send us a huge amount of what amounts to spam, have an unfriendly attitude towards organized labor—at least as concerns their own … Continue reading →

If you’re a developer, Steve Yegge has some advice: learn to type. Yegge’s posts are always amusing and instructive so if you haven’t already seen his rant on developers who don’t touch type, be sure to take a look. But, … Continue reading →

The Nielsen Norman Group has an interesting article on PDFs and the Web and why they should never be read online. The article says that the group first reported this conclusion 20 years ago and nothing that’s happened in the … Continue reading →

As we’re learning, COVID-19 is causing profound changes in the way we live and causing us to question many long-held assumptions about how things work, indeed, how they must work. I’ve written about some of those things previously. Today’s example … Continue reading →