Archive for the 'Dailies' Category

How a System Engineer Works and Sleeps

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

This is a farewell to the best and most functional piece of furniture I’ve ever owned: a homemade lofted bed that I built 6 years ago. Over that time, it grew into an important piece of my own life, combining a sleeping space, a work space (although not a home office), and all the […]

How to Work in a Personal Fork on Github and Do Pull Requests

Friday, June 29th, 2012

Say that you are following someone else’s project on github, and you want to submit a patch to their code. Unfortunately you don’t have access to their repository. Github recommends that you create a fork of their project — which is correct — but from there, their instructions are less helpful.

So, assuming that […]

A Mayfly in May

Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Adult mayflies live for a very short time — sometimes less than a day. This one was relaxing on the hood of a car.

Digital Blasphemy Blob Animation

Wednesday, July 13th, 2011

About 12 years ago, I became a big fan of the art of Digital Blasphemy — digital artwork that was quite impressive for its time. I was a member, and downloaded every bit of media I could get my hands on. One of my favorites was a short video clip of an abstract […]

If You Bought A Pepper Grinder From “Bed Bath & Beyond”, You Wasted Your Money

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Both of these pepper grinders broke after less than 6 months of daily use because the grinding mechanism is held together with flimsy plastic.
Through the hole in the centers, you can see where and how the plastic broke. Both times, this resulted in peppercorns all over my food, counter, and floor.

Sort A Directory and Subdirectories By Date

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

It’s easy to sort a single directory by date in Linux with the ls command. Here’s how to sort a directory and its subdirectories by date:
find Music/ \
| xargs -d”\n” -i{} \
echo “stat –printf=\”%y\t%z\” \”{}\” \
[…]

A Pointless Infographic on Letters and Syllables in Names

Friday, February 11th, 2011

I got curious yesterday about how many letters peoples’ names have per syllable, so I called it “syllabic efficiency” and graphed it. I’m happy to say that my name is in the highly efficient “nletters = nsyllables + 1″ line.

A Few Good Oil Companies

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

(With apologies to Aaron Sorkin)
BP: You want answers?
America: I think I’m entitled to them.
BP: You want answers?
America: I want the truth!
BP: You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that needs energy. And that energy has to be produced by men with drill rigs. Who’s gonna do it? You? Obama? I have […]

Goodbye: An Open Letter to Make Magazine

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Dear Make Magazine,
It’s over. I’m done with you.
I like the idea of a magazine dedicated to DIY culture, but (as of late) the “Maker Revolution” is to “the next industrial revolution” as “breast implants” are to “inner beauty”. I’ll admit: you have your moments now and then. But, standards have fallen; currently […]

Booq Sells The Best Backpack I Have Ever Owned

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

On the left is my old Booq bag (Mamba Pack), on the right is the new one that they sent me for free. You see, Booq is an amazing company with an amazingly designed bag… and when my old bag developed a problem, they not only sent me a new bag for free but […]