Tag Archives: Tech

Spaces After Periods

Posted on 2018-05-12 by jcs

I feel almost like a troll writing about this. The controversy as to whether there should be one space or two after a period is surely one of the most pointless of holy wars. Yet holy war it is. For … Continue reading →

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SSH Tips

Posted on 2018-05-10 by jcs

If you’re reading Irreal, the chances are that you’re also a frequent SSH user. Very often it’s because you have to log into servers or development boxes at work. I use it even at home to log into remote or … Continue reading →

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File Name Conventions and Tagging Trees

Posted on 2018-04-30 by jcs

A couple of days ago, Karl Voit gave a really great talk at Grazer Linuxtage 2018. It was entitled The Advantages of File Name Conventions and Tagging, which is pretty much self-explanatory except for the tagging part. The first part … Continue reading →

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Programs that Program

Posted on 2018-04-25 by jcs

I’ve written before about Eric Raymond’s (esr) UPSide project that aims to build an open source UPS that has reasonable performance and sensible operation. Esr’s latest post is especially interesting to me because it uses one of my favorite techniques: … Continue reading →

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Enough With Smartphone Addiction Already

Posted on 2018-04-24 by jcs

The new luddites are ever with us, of course, but I must say that the constant harping on smartphone addiction is becoming tiresome. Actually, it became tiresome some time ago; now it’s infuriating. I was saddened to see that Tony … Continue reading →

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Sed

Posted on 2018-04-20 by jcs

In the days before GUIs, Unix users depended on a suite of command line tools to do their text manipulation. One of those tools, sed, is still used and useful today but many younger engineers are unfamiliar with it. The … Continue reading →

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The Job from Hell

Posted on 2018-04-17 by jcs

Imagine it’s Friday afternoon and you’re sitting in the local bar with a bunch of other developers bitching about how your company and its management is the worst ever. Then the guy from Project Failures stands up and says, “Hold … Continue reading →

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Mike Zamansky

Posted on 2018-04-12 by jcs

Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Mike Zamansky and his Using Emacs Series of videos. If you’ve watched those videos carefully or follow his blog, you know he’s a professor at Hunter College’s School of Education where … Continue reading →

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Open Source Tools

Posted on 2018-04-06 by jcs

I prefer open source software but I’m not an absolutist. I no longer have much interest in patching my OS, for example, so I feel comfortable using macOS because the eco-system—or walled garden, if you prefer—allows me to integrate my … Continue reading →

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Niklaus Wirth and Compiler Construction

Posted on 2018-04-05 by jcs

Many years ago, I did a stint as a compiler writer. I don’t do that anymore but I’ve continued practicing what I learned by implementing several little languages for various tasks. Mostly, I’ve leveraged lex and yacc for those chores … Continue reading →

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