1
Just don’t
Sometimes it’s wrong to begin a phrase with the word “just”. I offer as evidence two such situations. I think there’s a common thread to be drawn.
Tim Bray
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2
Graying Out
For many years I’ve interacted with my fellow humans, I think perhaps more than any other way, via the medium of Internet chat. But in my chat window, they’re fading, one by one. This problem is technical and personal and I felt it ought not to go unrecognized.
3
Parable of the Sofa
When Lauren was pregnant with a child who’s now turning 25, we purchased a comfy dark-brown leather sofa which fits our living room nicely. What with kids and relatives and employees and cats and Standards Comittees and friends and book clubs and socials, the butt-support cushions had, a quarter century later, worn…
4
Old Geek
I’m one. We’re not exactly common on the ground; my profession, apparently not content with having excluded a whole gender, is mostly doing without the services of a couple of generations.
5
Won’t Subscribe
Since I’m lightly employed these days, I enjoy keeping up with the news. In recent weeks, I’ve been blocked by the paywalls of the Wall Street Journal , Globe & Mail (closest thing Canada has to a national newspaper), the Times/Sunday Times (of London), the Telegraph (also UK), Business Insider , and Bloomberg …
6
Dangerous Gift
A friend of mine pinged me online, said “Hey, remember that thing we were talking about doing a couple years ago? I still have one of the domain names, gonna let it go unless you want it.”
7
Modern Mono
I’ve just finished setting up a new Mac (14" MBP, M2 Pro, 32G, 4T). It dawned on me that most of my really intense interactions with this thing involve looking at “monospace” (i.e. fixed-width) text; in Emacs where I write this blog, in my IDE, and in my terminal. The ones that came with the machine by default are…
8
Worst Case
Suppose you’re running your organization’s crucial apps in the cloud. Specifically, suppose you’re running them them on AWS, and in particular in the “us-east-1” region? Could us-east-1 go away? What might you do about it? Let’s catastrophize!
9
Geek Career Paths
Suppose you’re doing technology, and like doing technology, and your career’s going well, and you find yourself wondering what you’re going to be doing in twenty years. I’ve been down several of the roads you might decide to take, and it occurs to me that talking them over might amuse and inform.
10
2017 Camera News
Herewith some reportage on the most interesting cameras in the world, with opinions to provoke er entertain people who are up on this stuff, and a basic survey of the landscape for people who like pictures and wonder about cameras.
11
No More Fear
Here’s the country I want to be a citizen of: the one that decides to buy comfort and convenience by deploying courage.
12
Driving 1725km in an electric car in 2 days
At 6:30 PM on Wednesday August 4 th my 15-year-old daughter and I pulled up the Jaguar I-Pace electric car in front of my 91-year-old Mom’s place in Regina, Saskatchewan. I was tired and achey because I’d just finished driving 1,725km (1,072 miles) across two days to see her for the first time since Covid started. I…
13
Hydrofoiling
I was standing on a floating dock on a Pacific-ocean inlet, a place where it’s obvious why motorboats are such an environmental disaster. Fortunately lots of other people have noticed too and it looks increasingly that more people will be able to enjoy Messing About In Boats without feeling like they’re making Greta…
14
Why host and write a blog?
Jon Udell is blogging less . Gosh, so am I . There are loads of ways to talk to the world, new alternatives every day it seems. Is this thing, you know, over?
15
If Your Job’s Just a Job
Well then, you’ll probably really love The 4-Hour Workweek , a 2007 book by Timothy Ferriss . On the other hand, if you love your job and wish you could do more of it, there’s not much here for you but a few handy email-management hints.