Tag Archives: Tech

The Longevity of CDs

Posted on 2017-12-30 by jcs

Just a few years ago, CDs were still ubiquitous and one of the things the Geekier elements worried about was that they would become unreadable over time. That was probably a reasonable concern, especially for CDs that the user burned … Continue reading →

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Remember This?

Posted on 2017-12-29 by jcs

Unless you are really young, you probably remember a spate of capacitor failures in electronic devices of all sorts including computer motherboards. This was around the turn of the century. One of my family members practically had a production line … Continue reading →

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Comments

Posted on 2017-12-22 by jcs

One of the perennial programmer arguments—not quite up there with Emacs v. Vim but enduring nonetheless—is whether or not we should comment our code and if so, how. some folks say that the need for comments is a code smell: … Continue reading →

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The Dream Achieved?

Posted on 2017-12-15 by jcs

Back in 2007, Mike Elgan wrote an article about The New Bedouins that really struck and excited me. In it he talked about a trend towards digital nomadism that was starting to take off. The “digital nomad” term was already … Continue reading →

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Programmer Wisdom

Posted on 2017-12-11 by jcs

Sometimes it seems more like 6 seconds, but yes: Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else. — Programming Wisdom (@CodeWisdom) December … Continue reading →

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After the Laptop

Posted on 2017-12-10 by jcs

John C. Dvorak, in a typical piece of clickbait for which he is famous, posits that Apple will soon abandon the Mac in favor of iPads and iPhones. His arguments are silly, of course, and are artfully demolished by the … Continue reading →

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Computer Languages as Weapons

Posted on 2017-11-27 by jcs

For those of you who like such things, here’s a list of popular languages and the weapons they correspond to. My go to languages are Lisp and C so I guess I’m crazy and dangerous but toting an old—if reliable—weapon. … Continue reading →

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Google Apps

Posted on 2017-11-23 by jcs

Regular Irreal readers know that I avoid Google and its applications as much as I can. I use DuckDuckGo for web searches, use Org mode for writing and publishing—and when I must, NeoOffice to interact with documents from the unenlightened—and … Continue reading →

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Keeping A Lab Notebook Webinar

Posted on 2017-11-20 by jcs

I came across a nice Webinar on keeping a laboratory notebook. It’s from the National Institute of Health and is therefore aimed at medical researchers and the type of labs they work in. Still, there are, I think, valuable lessons … Continue reading →

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More on ed

Posted on 2017-11-15 by jcs

Last month I wrote in amazement that there was someone who (still) liked using the ed editor. If you’re coming in late, ed is a line editor that was used extensively by the early Unix developers. That made a lot … Continue reading →

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