Tag Archives: Tech

Shannon’s Six Steps to Problem Solving

Posted on 2017-08-29 by jcs

I’ve written a couple of posts about Rob Goodman’s and Jimmy Soni’s book on Claude Shannon [1, 2]. If you haven’t read the articles that those posts link to, I urge you to do so. Shannon was a fascinating man … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday Linux

Posted on 2017-08-25 by jcs

Linux is 26 today. What started as a little hobby project that even Linus didn’t expect to amount to much has grown into one of the most important operating systems in use today and arguably of all time. Our world1 … Continue reading →

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Apple’s Open Office

Posted on 2017-08-18 by jcs

Managers and bean counters tell themselves all sorts of pretty lies to justify open office plans. It will increase collaboration, they say. Employees will know what the rest of the team is doing and be better able to solve problems, … Continue reading →

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WeChat

Posted on 2017-08-14 by jcs

Those of you who been following Irreal lately know of my fascination with the WeChat mobile app and its use in China where it serves as a wallet and messaging service. Chinese users pay for practically everything with it, use … Continue reading →

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Tips for Writing LaTeX documents

Posted on 2017-08-11 by jcs

Speaking of \(\LaTeX\) —as we were yesterday—Diomidis Spinellis, who’s the Editor and Chief and IEEE Software and who has written hundreds and papers and books in \(\LaTeX\) has a nice set of tips for writing LaTeX documents. He has the … Continue reading →

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Claude Shannon Redux

Posted on 2017-08-05 by jcs

Recently, I wrote about the IEEE Spectrum’s article on Claude Shannon by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. If you haven’t already read their article, I urge you to do so. Shannon was a fascinating man and a genius virtually unknown … Continue reading →

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Hosting Your Own Contacts and Calendar

Posted on 2017-07-28 by jcs

Those of you who have been around for a while, know that I live in the Apple ecosystem. I like having all my devices synced up automatically and Apple does that pretty seamlessly and, I believe, reasonably securely. Still, I … Continue reading →

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Collapsing Empty Directories in Zsh

Posted on 2017-07-27 by jcs

Earlier this month, I wrote about Fuco1’s package to collapse empty directories in dired listings. That’s a handy thing that lets you avoid clicking through a series of empty directories1 to reach the file or directory you really want. The … Continue reading →

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Cash and Smart Phones in China

Posted on 2017-07-23 by jcs

Back in May, I wrote about the central role that Smart Phones play in the day-to-day life of those in mainland China. In particular, you are considered odd if you try to pay for just about anything with cash. Now, … Continue reading →

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Claude Shannon

Posted on 2017-07-16 by jcs

Like most tech people, I know of Claude Shannon but not much about him. We all know he is the father of Information Theory but how many know anything about the man himself? Jimmy Soni and Rod Goodman have written … Continue reading →

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