It seems to me that I’ve been seeing lots and lots of social media posts which assert that [artist | intellectual] predicted [dystopian future that looks just like one aspect of today’s world] and did it [years ago]. I have to wonder what that’s in aid of. I mean, the second half of the 20th centuryContinue reading “Credit Where Credit Is Due”
Author Archives: pirateguillermo
Why Crypto?
I know a few people who are concerned about their online privacy, but who don’t have a good handle on what to do about it. There is always some story about some company leaking private data, or some government spying on people, or some “hackers” stealing information for nefarious purposes. So people are worried, butContinue reading “Why Crypto?”
Engage
I got totally burned out on social media by the U.S. election. Rather than textual posts with partisan argumentation (that’s how you spell, “civil discourse,”) Twitter and Facebook were awash in nasty memes. A month later it feels kind of like the morning after a killer party: I’m slowly looking around for cat videos andContinue reading “Engage”
Distortion
Back when Dubya was president, I read Slashdot every day. My wife worked as a journalist and then as a technical writer in the semiconductor industry and she mocked me when I told her about some cool thing I’d seen: either the “news” was like six months old or the story had misrepresented whatever theContinue reading “Distortion”
How to Draw a Line
I became a bit intimidated and frustrated with my simulation framework so I set it aside for a while. I played a lot of video games and I practiced my piping. I’m bored with the video games, though, and last night I came back to the sim. I’ve got some ideas for making the problemsContinue reading “How to Draw a Line”
It’s Alive!
So, I’ve been fooling around with Java FX for the past month or so, poking at a toy project just to see how the system works. And now I’ve built a discrete event simulation environment that lets me drop graphical components down onto a workspace and let them pass messages to each other. I’m prettyContinue reading “It’s Alive!”
Followup
From the javadoc comments in Math.java: “If the argument is NaN or an infinity or positive zero or negative zero, then the result is the same as the argument.” Let me just point out that Java thinks that NaN (Not a Number), positive zero, negative zero, or either positive or negative infinity are different values, andContinue reading “Followup”
Order Matters
I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program recently and using the MechJeb plugin. Some people criticise that plugin – “You can do anything that MechJeb does, and if you spend a little time, you can probably do it better” – and they’re right, for some values of right. And yet, “execute next node,” is blessedly useful. ItContinue reading “Order Matters”
Ars Gratia Artis
So, I came out of retirement to work on a neato project. I’m doing a lot of programming, architecture, release management, project management, and, um, reporting. So, that’s why I’m not doing a whole lot of bagpiping or anything. Because this is fun and important. But nobody cares about that. The interesting thing here isContinue reading “Ars Gratia Artis”
Building Everything from Scratch
You know what I love about programming? The part where I get to solve interesting problems. You know what isn’t interesting? solving the same problem over and over again. Even less interesting is having to solve a problem that I know someone else has solved but where I can’t copy the answer. That’s not onlyContinue reading “Building Everything from Scratch”