3001
Taking command of the Context Menu in macOS
Yesterday on Twitter the inimitable Morten Just posted a preview of a tool he’s created that wrap ffmpeg to allow movies, such screen recordings but pretty m...
3002
The secret lives of snowblowers
Yes, they throw snow. But the mechanical design of residential snowblowers is more interesting than it seems.
3003
MiniJinja: Learnings from Building a Template Engine in Rust
Learnings from building MiniJinja, a template engine in Rust
3004
VMware outsourcing their support
By Ruben Schade in Eora/Sydney, Australia.
3005
Borrow checking without lifetimes
This blog post explores an alternative formulation of Rust’s type system that eschews lifetimes in favor of places . The TL;DR is that instead of having 'a represent a lifetime in the code, it can represent a set of loans , like shared(a.b.c) or mut(x) . If this sounds familiar, it should, it’s the basis for polonius…
3006
When power cycling your (x86) server isn't enough to recover it
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
3007
Make a "Magic Eye" image using Excel
I’ve been on a weird kick lately making images using Excel. [Here’s one post. I hope to post more soon.] If you add a background color to each cell in a spreadsheet and resize the cell …
3008
The emotional trial of clinical trials: like online dating with death risk
Part 1 is mostly about what happened as Bess and I raced against tumor growth to find a new clinical trial that might keep me alive. Part 2 is here, and it is mostly about how this process feels an…
3009
Now is a good time to start a service business
Now is a good time to start a service business. Maybe you should try it! A service business is one where your company sells its work output directly instead of selling a product. Dentists, plumbers, design agencies, pool cleaner, consultants: these are all service businesses. The opposite of a service business is a…
3010
3011
More info about synonyms at Google (2010)
Steve Baker, an engineer in the search quality group at Google, just did a nice post about synonyms on the Google blog. A lot of people seem to think that Google only does simple-minded matching of…
3012
Deep dive: the instability of op-amps
A closer look at op-amp feedback loops and the stability criteria for circuits that use them.
3013
Turing Machines
An interactive introduction to Turing machines, the theoretical foundation of modern computing.
3014
Lessons from Ancient File Systems
In my previous post , I mentioned that I found a number of oddities when digging through the details of various Atari 8-bit file systems. I...
3015
What is the best pointer tagging method?
In this post, we are going to take a deep dive into pointer tagging, where metadata is encoded into a word-sized pointer. Doing so allows us to keep a compact representation that can be passed around in machine registers. This is very common in implementing dynamic programming languages, but can really be used…
3016
Making my bookshelves clickable
You can make regions of an image clickable with a number of techniques, from overlaying an SVG that contains onclick JavaScript handlers all the way to using image maps. I love this idea. I started to think about how I could create an image of my bookshelves that you could click to learn more about each book I am…
3017
3018
Exponential Rate Limiting
Following my previous post on rate limiting with GCRA, leaky buckets without the buckets , I reviewed my old notes on rate limiting for Exim . I thought I should do a new write-up of the ideas that I hope will be more broadly interesting.
3019
I Added SVG Maps to My Travel Posts
Quick overview of a new blog feature.
3020
Twitter and the spread of academic knowledge
Serendipity without physical proximity? Maybe, maybe not.
3021
Open source tools to query OpenStreetMap
Exploring different ways to make sense of OpenStreetMap data.
3022
Recursion, continuations and trampolines (2017)
How is tail recursion different from regular recursion? What do continuations have to do with this, what is CPS, and how do trampolines help? This article provides an introduction, with code samples in Python and Clojure.
3023
Linear Algebra of Types (2019)
It gives my brain a pleasant thrum to learn new mathematics which mimics the algebra I learned in middle school. Basically this means that the new system has operations with properties that match those of regular numbers as much as possible. Two pretty important operations are addition and multiplication with the…
3024
Programmer in Berlin: Culture
This is part 4 of a 5-part series detailing what I wish I had known as an American programmer moving to Berlin. This page details cultural differences and things I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on them. Politics One thing about Germany, and Europe in general, is that it’s relatively left-wing when compared to the…
3025
Understanding React Compiler
Cache all the things. How React Compiler works under-the-hood.
3026
How GCC and Clang handle statically known undefined behaviour
Recently, we had a discussion in our team about undefined behaviour (UB) in C. For those unfamiliar: We say that a program has undefined behaviour when we write code where the language specification doesn't define what should happen during execution. That means compilers can do whatever they like if they encounter…
3027
Apple vs. the "Free Market"
Every artist, performer and creator on Patreon is about to get screwed out of 30% of their gross revenue, which will be diverted to Apple, the most valuable company on the planet. Apple contributes nothing to their work, but it will get to steal a third of their wages:
3028
The Power Mac 4400
In November 1996, Apple released the Power Macintosh 4400 with a starting price of $1,725. Also sold as the Power Macintosh 7220, it’d be easy to write this machine off as just another grain of sand on the beige beach that was Apple’s product line in the 1990s. I mean, just look at this thing, pictured here with an…
3029
3030
Non-PC compatible x86 computers (2007)
This is, so far, the only article of mine that's been completely deleted from Wikipedia. I've salvaged a copy of it from Search.com , since it's gone from the site's history now, and am putting it here until I decide what else to do with it. Non-PC compatible x86 computers For much of the time that…