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Thoughts on "Do the Right Thing" (1989)
Thoughts about “Do The Right Thing” (no spoilers)
read moreGo has eliminated most of my off-by-one errors except 0... I mean 1.
Go’s
read morerange
operator (for x = range foo
) has eliminated the most common trap where I make off-by-one errors. The next largest category of off-by-one errors would be eliminated if there was a way to specify the last item in an array. It would also improve a developer’s ability to convey intent.How do Google Captchas help train neural networks
Q: I heard that the Google Captchas are used to train their neural networks so they can identify things like traffic lights, etc. How does this work since our thought process is in our brain?
read moreI Support Ex-Homophobes
You know what I want in the world? I want people that are on the other side of political issues to change their mind. I want them to “see the light”.
read moreBash Env Variable Defaults
In my previous blog post I explained a trick for setting bash env variables when you run a script. In this post I discuss how to write bash scripts that handle such variables properly.
read moreSetting env variables in /bin/bash
If you want to set an env variable in bash for only 1 command, here’s some bad ways to do it:
read moreAll I Do Is Play With Strings
A poem I wrote earlier this year.
read moreWho Builds The H-Bomb? Not I!
- “Who Builds The H-Bomb?”
- Mark Levy, December ‘81
How Biden can win like Obama
I have a theory that 3 things lead to Obama’s win. He surprised the GOP three ways.
read moreGoogle Meets and Sneezes
A Good Sign
Working at home with dogs
Most of my company works remote, and with C-19 we are now all working remotely.
read moreTerms and conditions
Section 1 Cookies: We reserve the right to set cookies and use use services that set cookies. Hell if we know what happens after that. Even if we had legal agreements with those external services, we wouldn’t trust those third parties to abide by the agreements. Nether should you. Section 2 Log retention: The web server we use logs all incoming requests (“traffic logs”) just like any reasonable web server software. read morePrimaries 2024
Wouldn’t it make more sense if the early primary states were picked from the battleground states of the previous election instead of being a fixed set of states? For example, the top 5 battleground states go first.
read moreOn requiring experienced presenters to rehearse
There’s a small controversy brewing behind the scenes at conferences because of this trend to require speakers to rehearse their talk via video conference prior to the event.
read moreClayton Christensen has died
Clayton Christensen died on Jan 23, 2020 at the age of 67.
You may know him from his 1997 best selling book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”
He was incredibly influential, well beyond the typical author.
read moreHow to spell the word "Bisexual"
I wrote this in Oct 1999. I’ve fixed up some typos but otherwise this is unchanged.
read moreCelebrating Martin Luther King, Jr and technology
My Martin Luther King, Jr. day tradition is to listen to the speech he made at my alma mater, Drew University, in Madison, New Jersey, on Feb 5, 1964 (nearly a quarter century before I attend).
read moreThe President Has Been Impeached
This is a sad day for our country. Impeachment is a “last resort”. The fact that it has come to this shows what a sorry state our democracy has become.
read moreA Star Wars Episode I memory
With the 9th and finalchapter of Star Wars arriving, here’s a memory from when I saw the premier of Star Wars: Episode I, the Phantom Menace.
read moreDid Google just have their Osborne Moment?
Do you know about The Osborne Effect?
read moreCommunicating Using the Numbers 1, 2, 3, and more
The human brain reacts differently to lists of different sizes. When we align what we say with what the human brain expects, we are more effective communicators.
read moreHow to encourage people to ask questions
One cool trick to get an audience to ask more questions: Silence inspires questions.
When you ask “Any questions?” be silent for least 10 seconds for someone to speak up. 15 seconds is better.
read moreThose Two Dozen Republicans Should Be Arrested
When the two-dozen GOP senators disrupted Laura Cooper’s deposition, they didn’t just create a publicity stunt… they created a security hole that every spy agency in the world could take advantage of.
read moreComcast's concern is that they can't fuck you hard enough
Comcast’s #1 concern is that if they can’t fuck you hard enough.
Or, as Vice reported it, Comcast Is Lobbying Against Encryption That Could Prevent it From Learning Your Browsing History.
read moreTom's Rules for Conference Organizing
These opinions have been developed from 3 decades of attending and organizing conferences. This advice applies whether a conference non-profit or for-profit, all-volunteer or professionally run, community-driven or commercial.
Time is precious. A bad conference wastes people’s time. As as conference organizers you owe it to the attendees to make sure their time was well-spent.
read moreHow to fix a conference? Rehearse Your Speakers
(Are you a speaker? Read this instead.)
The single biggest thing you can do to improve your conference’s content is to require all speakers rehearse their presentation two weeks prior to the conference, via video conference, with someone that has not seen the talk before. Everything else is spinning your wheels.
read moreHow Not to Unit Test
Dave Cheney started a Twitter discussion about when a unit test is not a unit test.
read moreMillion Dollar Computer-Controlled Drilling Machines
When I was in 8th grade I got a job working for a small company that was a reseller of electronic drilling and measuring equipment. I was just the office boy… mostly doing paperwork, shipping, and occasional data-entry.
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