The Bolt will be back in 2027. I'm a huge fan of the Bolt, and I love my 2019. It's a very practical car, and has surprisingly decent range.
> I seem to recall that early versions of Linux wouldn’t run on a cheap 386sx until the kernel started to incorporate embedded applications from widespread use in the late 90s. I ran Linux on a 486SX with 4MB RAM in…
Skycraft Surplus in Orlando: https://skycraftsurplus.com/ I was there last week (in town on business), and I found a Vector 3677-2 protoboard for $2!
I agree with the article that there is a lot of low-quality "journalism" out there, designed to outrage or entertain rather than inform. However, that does not mean that all journalism should be disregarded. I read the…
I tried proper left hand mice for a while (naturally-right-handed, switched to left-hand mousing for RSI reasons similar to above), and eventually I just embraced the idea of using a right-hand mouse with my left hand.…
Now that Raspberry Pis are hard to find (in mid-2023), the Dell/Wyse 3290 makes a very nice print server for a reasonable price. https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/3030/
I've had good experiences using Upduino 3.0 and 3.1 [0] with the IceStorm tools via apio [1]. I wrote a blog post [2] with some info on getting things set up via Linux. All you need is the Upduino board, which…
> And if you want a portable computer (which by the way are demonstrably more secure in the face of physical tampering) you basically relegate yourself to terrible battery life, poor display support, dicey sleep…
> Jekyll should work on Windows because Ruby works on Windows. Jekyll is a bit of a nightmare on Windows at the moment, at least if any significant part of your workflow is based on cygwin. (I helped a colleague get it…
> jOOQ is SQL-centric. Your database comes "first". This approach has always seemed completely backwards to me. Isn't the database simply a mechanism for persisting records/objects whose structure is determined by…
It's a fair question whether the visual/blocks model is appropriate for expert programmers. However, there was some research presented at ICER 2015 showing that visual/blocks languages have benefits for students…
He also invented dataflow analysis, which is the basis for a huge number of compiler optimization and program analysis techniques: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.102....
I have a couple T61s from Ebay that I got for my kids. I've been using one of them for some development work, and I've been surprised at how well they work for that purpose --- as in, I could easily use one for my day…
Don't write a game engine: write a game. You won't really know what features your engine will need until you have specific requirements. The generic parts - the "engine" - can be extracted via refactoring once you have…
> This doesn't surprise me. The whole academic publishing side of things is a royal pile of shit. Glad someone is calling them up on it. The ACM, at least, allows authors to post copies of articles on their web pages.…
First of all: I think the US education system (at both K12 and college/university levels) is deeply disfunctional. However, I can understand and sympathize with a teacher's desire to understand how his or her students…
Sparkfun (http://www.sparkfun.com) has some good tutorials. "Beginning Embedded Electronics" is a good place to start. I personally got started with microcontrollers and digital electronics by reading "The…
I teach computer science, and I've always felt the distinction between programming and computer science to be artificial, for the following reasons. (1) It is necessary to learn the basics of programming in order to…
Ah - I missed that. True emulators like Bochs are still potentially a win if they provide fine-grained debugging features. Bochs was nice because you could single-step through assembly and view contents of…
Back in the day when I was playing around with osdev, I ran my code in the Bochs emulator. WAY easier than running on actual hardware, especially starting the emulator was 10x faster then booting on an actual PC. I do…
I teach CS at a small undergrad college, and we often need adjuncts to help us teach intro classes when we have more sections that the full-time faculty can cover. You might check with your local colleges and…
I don't think it was obvious at the time. I can distinctly recall seeing Mosaic for the first time in 1993 when a fellow undergrad showed me his home page. My thoughts were essentially, "that's really stupid: it's just…
True, but there are also significant cost of living differences between urban and rural areas. More generally, there are valid reasons why some people enjoy living outside of large urban areas, and I don't think…
"you will find yourself...banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers" Because those of us who live in rural areas are worthless degenerates, right?
There is a movement to "contextualize" introductory programming courses (and other CS courses) by teaching core concepts in the context of a problem domain that is meaningful for the students. Media computation is one…
The Bolt will be back in 2027. I'm a huge fan of the Bolt, and I love my 2019. It's a very practical car, and has surprisingly decent range.
> I seem to recall that early versions of Linux wouldn’t run on a cheap 386sx until the kernel started to incorporate embedded applications from widespread use in the late 90s. I ran Linux on a 486SX with 4MB RAM in…
Skycraft Surplus in Orlando: https://skycraftsurplus.com/ I was there last week (in town on business), and I found a Vector 3677-2 protoboard for $2!
I agree with the article that there is a lot of low-quality "journalism" out there, designed to outrage or entertain rather than inform. However, that does not mean that all journalism should be disregarded. I read the…
I tried proper left hand mice for a while (naturally-right-handed, switched to left-hand mousing for RSI reasons similar to above), and eventually I just embraced the idea of using a right-hand mouse with my left hand.…
Now that Raspberry Pis are hard to find (in mid-2023), the Dell/Wyse 3290 makes a very nice print server for a reasonable price. https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/3030/
I've had good experiences using Upduino 3.0 and 3.1 [0] with the IceStorm tools via apio [1]. I wrote a blog post [2] with some info on getting things set up via Linux. All you need is the Upduino board, which…
> And if you want a portable computer (which by the way are demonstrably more secure in the face of physical tampering) you basically relegate yourself to terrible battery life, poor display support, dicey sleep…
> Jekyll should work on Windows because Ruby works on Windows. Jekyll is a bit of a nightmare on Windows at the moment, at least if any significant part of your workflow is based on cygwin. (I helped a colleague get it…
> jOOQ is SQL-centric. Your database comes "first". This approach has always seemed completely backwards to me. Isn't the database simply a mechanism for persisting records/objects whose structure is determined by…
It's a fair question whether the visual/blocks model is appropriate for expert programmers. However, there was some research presented at ICER 2015 showing that visual/blocks languages have benefits for students…
He also invented dataflow analysis, which is the basis for a huge number of compiler optimization and program analysis techniques: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.102....
I have a couple T61s from Ebay that I got for my kids. I've been using one of them for some development work, and I've been surprised at how well they work for that purpose --- as in, I could easily use one for my day…
Don't write a game engine: write a game. You won't really know what features your engine will need until you have specific requirements. The generic parts - the "engine" - can be extracted via refactoring once you have…
> This doesn't surprise me. The whole academic publishing side of things is a royal pile of shit. Glad someone is calling them up on it. The ACM, at least, allows authors to post copies of articles on their web pages.…
First of all: I think the US education system (at both K12 and college/university levels) is deeply disfunctional. However, I can understand and sympathize with a teacher's desire to understand how his or her students…
Sparkfun (http://www.sparkfun.com) has some good tutorials. "Beginning Embedded Electronics" is a good place to start. I personally got started with microcontrollers and digital electronics by reading "The…
I teach computer science, and I've always felt the distinction between programming and computer science to be artificial, for the following reasons. (1) It is necessary to learn the basics of programming in order to…
Ah - I missed that. True emulators like Bochs are still potentially a win if they provide fine-grained debugging features. Bochs was nice because you could single-step through assembly and view contents of…
Back in the day when I was playing around with osdev, I ran my code in the Bochs emulator. WAY easier than running on actual hardware, especially starting the emulator was 10x faster then booting on an actual PC. I do…
I teach CS at a small undergrad college, and we often need adjuncts to help us teach intro classes when we have more sections that the full-time faculty can cover. You might check with your local colleges and…
I don't think it was obvious at the time. I can distinctly recall seeing Mosaic for the first time in 1993 when a fellow undergrad showed me his home page. My thoughts were essentially, "that's really stupid: it's just…
True, but there are also significant cost of living differences between urban and rural areas. More generally, there are valid reasons why some people enjoy living outside of large urban areas, and I don't think…
"you will find yourself...banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers" Because those of us who live in rural areas are worthless degenerates, right?
There is a movement to "contextualize" introductory programming courses (and other CS courses) by teaching core concepts in the context of a problem domain that is meaningful for the students. Media computation is one…