I’ve just spent the morning reading through some documentation and tutorials for nix, trying to figure out what it is, whether it’s cool, and whether I should be using it. Also, trying to figure out what this lix thing is. And of course, this is a dependency chain — I started out at the lastContinue reading “nix, lix, and Reproducibility”
Category Archives: Intellectual Curiosity
Experimenting With Federation
Generally, I reserve this blog for, you know, blog stuff. Long form, where I ramble about things and post code snippets and multiple links to things I’m thinking about. For quite a while, now, I’ve had the ActivityPub plugin enabled on this site, as I tried to figure out how to engage with the FediverseContinue reading “Experimenting With Federation”
Just Say No to AR
I’m seeing a lot of people being excited, today, about putting in their orders for the first visionOS devices. Although it would be easy to dismiss this as simple Apple fan dribbling, their excitement is sort of hyperbolic. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” says one person, talking about how now is theContinue reading “Just Say No to AR”
Note Application Obsidian
There’s one person I know of who is an enthusiastic user of Obsidian. After seeing them fanboy about it for, like, a year, I finally thought I’d take a look at what it is. It’s a note app. There are some cool affordances it offers, like built-in synchronization between devices, but fundamentally it’s all aboutContinue reading “Note Application Obsidian”
Pigs in Space
The other day I saw a lecture on space travel technology. The speaker was talking about how fast various kinds of propulsion systems (existing and potentially possible within the next 30-50 years) could get a vessel going, and how long that vessel would take to get to the nearby stars. That got me thinking aboutContinue reading “Pigs in Space”
Thug History
I’ve been listening to a lot of history books, courses, and podcasts and here’s what I have learned about the Roman state, both republic and empire: it was run purely on the basis of raw power. That’s a nice family you have there — yeah, I’ll take it. Whatever I can do is what isContinue reading “Thug History”
Data Representation
I’m currently working on a suite of programs (which sounds a hell of a lot fancier than, “a couple of apps and a database,” — word to the wise, &c.) that deals with people. A person record has, as an option, a birthdate. You never know, someone, somewhere, might like to commemorate great-great-great-uncle Ralph’s birthdayContinue reading “Data Representation”
Type Safety
If you don’t care about programming languages, feel free to skip this entry.
Vacation Nerdsnipe
We bought into Disney Vacation Club some years ago, because having a timeshare would mean we’d have this incentive to take vacations. We are bad at taking vacations. There’s always stuff to be doing, after all. But if you don’t use your timeshare, that’s effectively money you just gave away to be burned. So…take aContinue reading “Vacation Nerdsnipe”
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”