I get that wearing your N95 mask under your chin keeps your neckbeard from getting COVID but what’s the deal with the women doing it? … I am sure your dog is awesome and I’d love to hang out but not inside the restaurant …
Author Archives: pirateguillermo
What If Tulips, But…
In the early 90s, you could patent anything if you took an existing product and appended, “…but on a computer.” By the late 90s, you could sell anything to the public at large, claiming that it was a disruptive business that would change the way every human on the planet did the thing they’ve beenContinue reading “What If Tulips, But…”
Sturgeon’s Law
My Audible subscription just renewed and I got all enthusiastic. Back when Netflix was DVD only, we had a, “go ahead and try it,” policy: stick whatever recommendations in the queue, and when they showed up, pop ’em in and hit play. If the movie wasn’t compelling after the first 15 minutes, we’d put itContinue reading “Sturgeon’s Law”
Daily News
Once upon a time, before the death of irony (what do you think, did irony really die in 2001? I feel like it’s sort of still around) there was a link soup column called, “Suck.” The format was a short essay written in a glib, cynical voice (I just typoed that as, “void,” and that’sContinue reading “Daily News”
Put a Bird on It
I have been nerdsniped by the dratted Russian hackers. Those darned “hackers”, causing trouble and getting people all excited about security. So now I’ve got to deal with thoughts and suggestions in my peripheral awareness, and remind myself that I’ve already done the work of threat modeling and risk analysis for my data and forContinue reading “Put a Bird on It”
Open Letter to the FSF
I have been professionally active in software development for 27 years and I have used and even contributed to Free Software. While Richard Stallman has played a critical role in the development of Free Software, he has also contributed to a toxic atmosphere of male entitlement – a sense that rules only apply to otherContinue reading “Open Letter to the FSF”
App Clip
So, when I saw the bit about App Clips at WWDC last year, I wasn’t terribly excited. After all, QR codes have been around for ages; the fact that Apple ignored them until they could figure out a proprietary version struck me as par for the course. Even the example use case they gave (stillContinue reading “App Clip”
How to Make a Library with Xcode
A few months ago, I asked a question on Hacking with Swift about how to extract code from an existing project into a library. This is a thing that, over the course of many years of developing Java applications, I find myself doing often. I solve a problem for one project, then get to anotherContinue reading “How to Make a Library with Xcode”
A New Project
For the past several months, I’ve been following along with Paul Hudson‘s quite excellent series of tutorials. The focus of this series is to develop a portfolio application, demonstrating knowledge of iOS and SwiftUI, as well as good development practices (testing, architecture, etc.). At first, there were a couple of videos per week, but itContinue reading “A New Project”
Insightful Or Obvious?
A friend just passed this interview along, and it got me thinking. Every so often, this sort of thing pops up on my radar: lone individual / tiny group doing things on their own rather than using the commonly available mass-produced thing, and they’re doing it for Reasons. I find something seductive in these stories.Continue reading “Insightful Or Obvious?”