software, software accessories, math, nonsense, &c

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• No Timezones

  2022 february 22, 8:59p

  I often wish we just dropped time zones, and agreed to use UTC for everything. Or TAI, whichever.

• Dark Souls bosses, again

  2022 february 14, 8:48p

  So now that I’ve beaten the game, I don’t know, enough it feels like (5? times), I feel like I know the bosses a little bit better.

• My Best Wordle Pairings Yet

  2022 february 08, 8:07a

  I like thematic Wordle plays, where the first 2 or 3 guesses are thematically related. It certainly helps for the 2 words to be mostly-distinct, still, but I feel you can enjoy the math of the pattern matching along with a small bit of word play. Anyways:

• Benchmarking Docker on M1 and Ryzen

  2021 november 08, 5:21a

  I ran a 7-zip benchmark on my M1 MacBook and my Ryzen workstation. More specifically,

• Dark Souls Remastered bosses, ranked

  2021 june 14, 3:01p

  So I just finally beat Dark Souls Remastered on my PS4.

• Playing music via USB on a Toyota 4Runner

  2021 april 04, 2:06p

  I recently got myself a 4Runner! It’s very nice, but it doesn’t have a CD player. So, to play music, you have to load it onto a USB drive (or use your phone).

• Electric cars are kinda bizarre

  2021 march 02, 4:14p

  I’ve been thinking a lot about electric cars recently. They are simply not the same as gas cars with different engines. Diesel cars are pretty close, but electric cars are so different.

• Spaghetti as a science, 2

  2021 february 17, 3:55p

  So I just cooked / meal prep’d 6 servings of spaghetti & “meatballs”.

• Debian, Hyper-V

  2021 february 16, 1:29p

  So, progress on the Hyper-V front.

• My old MacBook Air SMART Info

  2021 february 16, 12:02p

  You know, I’ve never really paid much attention to the SMART info / diagnostic stats stored by my hard drive.

• Spaghetti as a Science

  2021 february 13, 3:09p

  I love making spaghetti. I like to think I can make it pretty well, but I’m getting better all the time.

• Ubuntu 20.04, Hyper-V, Windows 10 Pro

  2021 february 12, 7:51p

  Well, it all seems to be working again. After some/much frustration, my linux VM is back in prime condition.

• The Expanse

  2021 february 07, 6:37a

  Man, this show is so good. Watching it for the 2^nd time now.

• Function keys

  2021 january 17, 12:15p

  I wish there were standard function keys, like in every app. I figure this isn’t the current situation because nobody’s hit upon the clear best.

• Boolean table programming

  2021 january 16, 9:34a

  Here’s another take on if statements, though I’m quite partial to early return. It’s kind of a visual programming idea, it’s not real convenient to do this in plaintext.

• Steelcase Leap, Steelcase Gesture

  2021 january 14, 7:34p

  I got a Gesture today. If you don’t know of it, it’s a very nice chair.

• Buying a new monitor

  2021 january 10, 7:49p

  So it’s getting to be the time I need to buy a new monitor.

• How often do you need each number?

  2020 november 01, 8:54a

  Well, I’m buying house numbers, and I notice a really strange distribution to what they include in a pack, leaving me wondering how they reach their implicit conclusion:

• So long, MR2

  2020 october 24, 6:55p

  Well, I said goodbye to my lil’ MR2 recently.

• Prototype loops in Io

  2020 october 24, 6:44p

  The default nature of Io is that, if you follow the prototypes up from the Lobby, you come back to the Lobby.

• Economics of eating pasta

  2020 october 23, 6:51p

  I certainly have been eating a lot of pasta, so I wonder: is anything cheaper? Or is it expensive, or what?

• De Cecco pasta

  2020 october 20, 7:38p

  De Cecco pasta is surprisingly good, really good. I can’t remember a better pasta.

• Pasta shapes to try

  2020 october 18, 8:25p

  I like my penne and my linguine, but I wonder what other pastas I should try.

• Quartz wristwatch accuracy

  2020 october 18, 1:54p

  I have a quartz watch that I set in 2018 and just reset today, after 2 years of drift.

• Io in 10 minutes

  2020 october 18, 10:50a

  I try (not very well) to explain Io, a small language, a la X in Y minutes, as much as I know anyway

• Compact identification via timestamping

  2020 october 15, 7:52p

  If I really wanted to compact my standard yyyy-mm-dd file.avi notation / nomenclature, how might could I do it?

• Clock time calendar

  2020 october 14, 8:18p

  Why doesn’t anyone / has anyone used base-60 “clock time” beyond the 12/24-hour modulus we usually think about? 59:59:59:59 and so on.

• Software versioning I like

  2020 october 13, 8:42p

  I like semi-annual release cycles. 2020a, 2020b. 2021a, 2021b. Nice, simple. Dates, too.

• Five new holidays

  2020 october 12, 4:17p

  We should get five more holidays.

• Pizza combinations

  2020 october 10, 6:42p

  Long live the 2-topping L / XL.

• More interactive compilers

  2020 october 10, 1:17p

  I sometimes wish software compilers wrote back significant info, directly into the file.

• Making sub-8:00

  2020 october 03, 4:33p

  I made it to sub-8:00! I have never been more proud of a 2 Km pull.

• Sustainable outcomes in identity theft

  2020 october 02, 4:59p

  So news comes out today saying hackers dump personal info on freaking high schoolers in Las Vegas who did nothing but live in a district whose online ops got hacked.

• Infix LISP

  2020 september 05, 9:12p

  Is it possible to have a LISP that doesn’t use strictly prefix (+ x y z) but sometimes (x choose y) infix-style expressions?

• Economics of a new credit card

  2020 september 05, 8:37p

  I got a new credit card offer in the mail today: should I sign up?

• Human 0-60

  2020 september 03, 7:40p

  What would it take for a human, like me, to accelerate oneself to 60 mph? AKA 88 feet per second?

• Io, a curious language

  2020 august 30, 10:57p

  I re-learned some Io this past weekend.

• 18 weeks, 1 Mm

  2020 august 30, 10:08p

  Well, I did it. I erg’d 1 Mm in 18 weeks.

• More metric unit sizes

  2020 august 16, 9:34p

  I still root for metric prefixes over language-based numbers (kilogram over one thousand grams, even megameter over one thousand kilometers).

• Jekyll bash script helper functions

  2020 august 14, 4:28p

  Same functions as before, but modified slightly.

• Bloodborne bosses, ranked

  2020 july 28, 11:11a

  I’ve now, years after starting, beaten most all of the bosses in Bloodborne.

• Replacing the receiver

  2020 july 26, 2:05p

  My receiver went out the other day. RIP my Pioneer. Seven years, almost.

• Fixing the laptop, cost estimates

  2020 july 25, 9:35a

  My laptop is in dire straits.

• 2 Mm

  2020 july 12, 3:47p

  I hit 2 Mm on the erg yesterday. 2,000 Km.

• Electric Mini

  2020 july 12, 11:32a

  Mini is releasing an all-electric car. Interesting.

• Upgrading the iPhone 7

  2020 july 11, 9:56p

  I think it may be time to upgrade my iPhone. The camera is starting to not work sometimes.

• Zig, cool stuff

  2020 june 24, 3:55p

  I watched a couple youtube videos on Zig and I am impressed.

• Safari & font-family

  2020 june 22, 7:18p

  I don’t quite know what’s changed in Safari since I last used it (Firefox works, well, great), but it doesn’t seem to render many fonts.

• Erg workouts, replanned

  2020 june 21, 10:28p

  I can definitely say I’m more comfortable erging longer pieces (“steady state”).

• Erging my first half-marathon

  2020 june 21, 6:19p

  I did it, yesterday. I erged 21.097 Km in 1:49:51. Woo hoo!

• Customizing Jekyll CSS Styling

  2020 june 18, 6:33p

  I’m not sure if I never knew this, or if I had just forgotten, but I re-learned how Jekyll sets up theme customization.

• More progress through volume

  2020 june 17, 8:34p

  I put down another personal best on the erg today.

• Progress through volume

  2020 june 13, 5:40p

  So I didn’t really mean to, but I set a new 5 Km personal best today.

• What even is PHP

  2020 june 10, 7:40p

  That’s what I’m wondering, these days.

• Setting up MediaWiki

  2020 june 07, 2:51p

  I set up MediaWiki yesterday: it was super easy and it seems super useful!

• Would it were so simple: web applications

  2020 may 30, 4:03p

  I miss the simplicity of web programming, back when performance was not king.

• Erg season 2020 ends

  2020 april 30, 3:37p

  Well, I did it.

• Bash tips for Jekyll blogging

  2020 april 26, 1:46p

  These bash functions are useful so you can just drop into a terminal and hit new-post and basically be off..

• $100 of groceries

  2020 april 24, 7:33p

  I went to Kroger today, and I spent almost exactly $100.

• Last week of erg season 2020

  2020 april 22, 7:25p

  Last full week of erg.

• End of erg season 2020

  2020 april 14, 6:41p

  Well, it’s mid-April. All this coronavirus shit is weirding up the whole universe in a horrible way, it would seem, but the erging continues.

• Hello World in x64 Assembler

  2020 january 03, 6:29p

  I should really brush up on this stuff.. this is some old junk I found laying around. I wish I could write assembler as well as I could in 2016. Maybe a resolution for 2020?

• The Double Progress Bar

  2019 december 31, 6:57p

  You know what I miss?

• Mono CD ripping/burning in OS X

  2019 december 31, 2:27p

  I know this is The End Of CDs, but here’s a quick rundown on how to rip a CD in OS X, mix the stereo down to mono, then burn it back to a blank CD.

• The Absurdity of English Units

  2019 december 27, 7:04a

  I think it speaks for itself; some of these are now historical.

• I Hate Content Security Policy

  2019 december 26, 8:38a

  I’m trying to add MathJax to my site, either via CDN or dumping it in static/ or whatever.

• Unicode Fractions

  2019 december 25, 6:07p

  This is for my reference, helpful when writing down recipes in plain text.

• The Average Bundt Cake

  2019 december 25, 5:51p

  I’ve written down a few recipes for Bundt cakes recently, it’s something I want to try.

• Regarding Shoe Sizes

  2019 december 24, 11:33a

  I don’t really know what to believe when it comes to shoe sizes.

• MathJax is So Easy to Install

  2019 december 23, 10:12a

  (How Easy? So Easy)

• Web Fonts in 2019

  2019 december 22, 7:52p

  Web fonts are still the best fonts.

• Password Entropy, Part II

  2019 november 21, 3:56p

  Passwords are, generally speaking, expensive to crack.

• Programming the Erg

  2019 november 20, 5:17p

  This is a post about hitting the buttons on the erg according to certain “cheat codes” to start specific workouts. There’s not much to it.

• A Slightly Different Metric

  2019 november 18, 12:50p

  If we don’t use a metric system based on feet, kilofeet, millifeet, &c, then maybe we could use one based on miles, millimiles, .. ?

• Hello Syncthing

  2019 november 13, 9:28p

  I’m not sure what happened to BT Sync / Resilio Sync / &c, but it’s time for me to try something else. I just can’t get it working on Linux.

• Arms-Only Erg

  2019 november 06, 4:34p

  I ran an experiment, to prove something I’ve heard but never confirmed to what degree:

• Writing a GIF by Hand

  2019 october 30, 5:50p

  Suppose you’ve got a blog.

• Enter the Kemper

  2019 october 29, 6:32p

  I turned on my Kemper Head for the first time today.

• Actual Amps Used

  2019 october 26, 8:20p

  To the best of my knowledge, the following guitarists (all favorites..) used the following amps:

• A SQL Statement

  2019 october 16, 3:44p

  In essence, (and in order)

• Halfway to Metric

  2019 october 10, 10:18p

  I have an idea that will help transition America to the metric system.

• Counting in Postgresql

  2019 september 26, 4:01p

  I have a table numbers (n, ..) that I want to get the count of.

• Simple Password Entropy

  2019 september 22, 9:44p

  Passwords are easy to generate, easy to record.. but still nobody likes 45-character passwords!

• CSS Inlining vs Linking

  2019 september 19, 10:51p

  I like to serve this site in a fast way, not doing anything hugely dumb.

• Optimizing CSS readability versus size

  2019 september 18, 5:22p

  Editing minified source code sucks.

• Some Favorite Math Theorems

  2019 september 16, 8:58p

  These are just nice things to think about. I don’t know why, but some of them are just nice.

• Erg Splits Chart

  2019 august 26, 10:11a

  split	power	1 Km	2 Km	5 Km	6 Km	10 Km
  01:50/-	263.0 W	03:40	07:20	18:20	22:00	36:40
  01:52/-	249.1 W	03:44	07:28	18:40	22:24	37:20
  01:54/-	236.2 W	03:48	07:36	19:00	22:48	38:00
  01:56/-	224.2 W	03:52	07:44	19:20	23:12	38:40
  01:58/-	213.0 W	03:56	07:52	19:40	23:36	39:20
  02:00/-	202.5 W	04:00	08:00	20:00	24:00	40:00
  02:02/-	192.7 W	04:04	08:08	20:20	24:24	40:40
  02:04/-	183.6 W	04:08	08:16	20:40	24:48	41:20
  02:06/-	175.0 W	04:12	08:24	21:00	25:12	42:00
  02:08/-	166.9 W	04:16	08:32	21:20	25:36	42:40
  02:10/-	159.3 W	04:20	08:40	21:40	26:00	43:20
  02:12/-	152.2 W	04:24	08:48	22:00	26:24	44:00
  02:14/-	145.5 W	04:28	08:56	22:20	26:48	44:40
  02:16/-	139.1 W	04:32	09:04	22:40	27:12	45:20
  02:18/-	133.2 W	04:36	09:12	23:00	27:36	46:00
  02:20/-	127.6 W	04:40	09:20	23:20	28:00	46:40
  02:22/-	122.2 W	04:44	09:28	23:40	28:24	47:20
  02:24/-	117.2 W	04:48	09:36	24:00	28:48	48:00
  02:26/-	112.5 W	04:52	09:44	24:20	29:12	48:40
  02:28/-	108.0 W	04:56	09:52	24:40	29:36	49:20
  02:30/-	103.7 W	05:00	10:00	25:00	30:00	50:00
  02:32/-	99.7 W	05:04	10:08	25:20	30:24	50:40
  02:34/-	95.8 W	05:08	10:16	25:40	30:48	51:20
  02:36/-	92.2 W	05:12	10:24	26:00	31:12	52:00
  02:38/-	88.7 W	05:16	10:32	26:20	31:36	52:40
  02:40/-	85.4 W	05:20	10:40	26:40	32:00	53:20

• Ranking Erg Workouts in SQL

  2019 august 26, 8:20a

  I erg. Not competitively. I’m still kind of a noob.

• Books to Finish in 2019

  2019 august 22, 7:07p

  I’m a pretty bad book finisher!

• Thoughts on seximal vs dozenal

  2018 june 24, 11:51a

  I watched a video yesterday on base-6 aka seximal. It came up on HN.

• See Ecks Jay Ess (CxJS)

  2018 january 24, 3:00p

  I’ll be short. I recently stumbled upon a framework called CxJS.

  CxJS is a client-side application framework driven by a server-side endpoint of your choice.

• Daylight savings time v2.0

  2017 december 22, 3:00p

  It is ridiculous that time literally repeats itself every year here in America.

• Bamboo

  2017 december 08, 3:00p

  So I just found out that Atlassian makes this software thing called Bamboo.

• What ever happened to F1 .. F12 keys?

  2017 december 06, 3:00p

  RIP F keys. I never see applications use them any more.

• Go slices are three finger data structures

  2016 november 21, 3:00p

  What Go devs call slices are what I think of as a “three-finger data structure”.

• Extended globs in bash

  2016 february 02, 8:10p

  I learned about extended globbing today, in bash.

• Drinking more Elixir

  2016 january 17, 9:05p

  I’ve been reading & writing more Elixir; a few things caught my attention.

• Drinking some Elixir

  2016 january 02, 8:15p

  I got an Elixir book for Christmas, the one by Dave Thomas.

• Filenames suck

  2015 december 01, 6:25p

  I really like bash scripts. Who doesn’t, right? But as the saying goes, a man’s got to know his limitations. One thing I’ve never liked is how you have to handle filenames on the shell.

• Fun with localStorage

  2015 november 22, 12:26a

  I’ve been reading through the source of SC4, a self-contained crypto web application. It’s like PGP in a .html file.

• A body-recursive chunks

  2015 november 14, 8:02p

  As it turns out, Erlang supports at least one kind of efficient recursion other than tail recursion.

• Body & tail recursion in Erlang

  2015 november 12, 8:12p

  Old habits die hard. Some things can suprise you.

• Simple profiling in Erlang

  2015 november 09, 6:00p

  Over the weekend, I was looking around the lists module for a function that could group a list into pairs or triplets. Either a pairs, triplets, group_by, or chunks function, basically.

• Bit twiddling in Erlang

  2015 november 07, 7:38p

  It’s been a long few months. Lots of traveling, interviewing, moving, & working. Stressful. I’ve been busy, to say the least.

• Fooling around in dozenal

  2015 june 11, 7:49p

  I wrote a couple small modules for fun recently and wanted to mention them here briefly. I wrote one to calculate ranges of numbers and the other to convert numbers to dozenal, or duodecimal (base-12).

• SForest, another random access list

  2015 may 25, 3:57p

  In a recent post, I discussed the mechanics underlying skew-binary random access lists. In this post, I’ll walk through some code I’ve written to bring the ideas to life with JavaScript.

• Skew-binary random access lists

  2015 may 19, 7:26p

  This is another post on another data structure, the skew-binary random access list. This is perhaps my favorite data structure; I just think it’s ingenious.

• Understanding Metalsmith

  2015 may 16, 11:40p

  Today, I learned a lot more about alternatives to Jekyll. A local developer (thanks, Chris!) pointed me towards assemble.io, an all-Javascript solution. On the other hand, I found Metalsmith.

• BForest, a binary random access list

  2015 may 14, 9:23p

  This is a post on a data structure, the binary random access list. Not the best data structure in the world, but close to one of my favorites.

• Ad block, minus minus

  2015 may 12, 6:49p

  Recently, I updated my /etc/hosts file. I don’t currently use any ad blocking software aside from that.

• Long live the shell

  2015 may 11, 6:30p

  There are few things in this world you can count on like bash.

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