Tag Archives: Tech

VisiCalc Redux

Posted on 2019-07-07 by jcs

A month ago, I wrote about Dan Bricklin’s TED talk on VisiCalc. Bricklin’s talk was in honor of the 40th anniversary of the modern spreadsheet. The spreadsheet idea was an old one but it was so labor intensive that it … Continue reading →

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Light or Dark

Posted on 2019-06-24 by jcs

I’ve long been a member of the much maligned minority who strongly prefer a light theme for Emacs and, for that matter, everything else too. All the cool kids have dark themes, some even using grotesque combinations like blue on … Continue reading →

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Notion

Posted on 2019-06-03 by jcs

Ali Abdaal is a Junior Doctor (sort of like a Resident in the US) practicing in Cambridge, UK. He’s also a YouTuber producing videos on productivity, efficient study habits, tech reviews, and life as a Junior Doctor. I’ve been following … Continue reading →

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Cell Phones and the Crime Rate

Posted on 2019-06-01 by jcs

The New Luddites current favorite hobby horse is the evils of smart phones and all the myriad ways they are destroying civilization as we know it. These people are exceptionally tiresome but they never seem to tire of badgering us … Continue reading →

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The Story of VisiCalc

Posted on 2019-05-30 by jcs

Via Karl Voit I found this video of Dan Bricklin telling the story of how VisiCalc came to be. Many younger Irreal readers probably don’t remember Lotus 1-2-3 let alone VisiCalc so it’s worth mentioning that VisiCalc was the first … Continue reading →

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Some Useful Bash Variables

Posted on 2019-05-21 by jcs

In a computing world that often seems increasingly captured by the “point and click” mindset, it’s useful, now and then, to be reminded of the power and value of the command line. I’m not a “I do everything in the … Continue reading →

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Collaboration in ed(1)

Posted on 2019-05-19 by jcs

As some of you know, I satisfy my retro-computing itch by occasionally firing up ed for a simple editing task. In truth, I do it mainly to stay current with ed against the day that I need it. That and … Continue reading →

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A Nice AWK One-liner

Posted on 2019-05-18 by jcs

How would you solve this problem? Given a file of text lines, remove duplicate lines keeping the original order. The first thing that springs to mind is using sort | uniq or perhaps sort -u but these solutions fail to … Continue reading →

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Alzheimer’s and Gaming

Posted on 2019-05-09 by jcs

Years (and years) ago, the usual crazies were running around making dire predictions about Rock and Roll and how it was going to destroy young people. It seems pretty ludicrous now but these people were serious and generally made pests … Continue reading →

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Brian Kernighan & Ken Thompson Chat

Posted on 2019-05-07 by jcs

Last Saturday at the Vintage Computer Festival East, Brian Kernighan and Ken Thompson sat down and chatted about some Unix history and other interesting events in Thompson’s life. The chat was billed as “Kernighan interviewing Thompson” but it was really … Continue reading →

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