So, Iran has reconnected to the Internet, and there’s this quote way down in the Washington Post article about it: “Why did (the Americans) get angry after we cut off the internet? Because the internet is the channel through which Americans wanted to perform their evil and vicious acts,” Fadavi said. I’d say that this,Continue reading “Well, duh”
Author Archives: pirateguillermo
Regression
I’ve been ignoring Facebook for a few months, now, and my engagement with Twitter has mostly been retweets and likes. Yesterday, a friend who takes what other people say more seriously than I do decided he needed to back way off and go back to writing blog posts instead of tweets. Frankly, I would way ratherContinue reading “Regression”
Why Monoculture
At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, I told my family that since I didn’t use Windows in a professional capacity and I didn’t use it personally, there was no way I was going to go to the effort of becoming and staying smart about Windows, and if they wanted me to do techContinue reading “Why Monoculture”
Great Man Theory
Historians seem not to like the great man story of history nowadays, preferring to talk about how the actions of lots of people wind up being at least as important as the actions of a single leader. And that makes a lot of sense, really. So why are the papers and the politicians all aboutContinue reading “Great Man Theory”
Next Project
So, I’m writing a pantry inventory app.
Announcing DMS Calc
A few years back, I was playing Kerbal Space Program and had the need to convert back and forth between decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds. I found some online tools to do it, but they were naive and forgot that floating point numbers are still kind of tricky on a computer. I wrote a post aboutContinue reading “Announcing DMS Calc”
I Wrote A Thing
Hey, I wrote an app and got it published on the App Store! It’s free and it only does one thing: it lets you slide a selector back and forth and show the equivalent temperature readings in Fahrenheit and Celsius. So, if that’s a thing that you want on your phone, go check it out!Continue reading “I Wrote A Thing”
Sounds Like a Job for Perl
In which I write a continuous build system for bagpipe music using Perl and a Makefile. The problem: the band has sheet music that everyone is supposed to memorize, the membership is geographically dispersed and not everyone can make it to every practice, and during practices and workshops and after competitions the music can getContinue reading “Sounds Like a Job for Perl”
Programming for the Ages
So this feels like the most Silicon Valley thing I’ve said in a few years, but the thing I’m working on right now is basically the same parts and programming language I was working on as a hobby back in 1997. Yes, the machine is in someone else’s data center, yes, the services it’s interactingContinue reading “Programming for the Ages”
Missed Opportunities
I have had the same email address since 1995. I have been buying things online since that was available. These facts mean that my email address is on every spam list in the world, and that every merchant I’ve ever bought anything from as well as all the spammers and scammers send me at leastContinue reading “Missed Opportunities”