I am a coffee enthusiast. Preparing it. Drinking it. Talking about it. It’s a serious matter to me. One of the most heated debates in the coffee world is how best to prepare it. Some are die-hard French Press people. Others swear by the Pour-over. This piece is about the Aeropress, which is a newcomer with a passionate…
A Possible Text Editor Change for 2012?
I’m considering making an attempt to move from TextMate to MacVim/Janus as my main text editor. I have a few main things I do with TextEdit that I need to be able to (mostly) replicate: Git integration with my website (I use git to do all updates) Snippets Blog integration (I use TextMate to do all blog updates)…
Percentages of Hitting a Given Number Using x Number of d6’s
My buddies and I are doing a Harn campaign right now and one of the mechanics involves accruing stat “checks” over time. Every five stat checks you get allows you to roll a single d6. So if you have 15 checks you get to roll 3d6. The goal is to roll over your stat, which will raise it…
Hacker News is the New Reddit
Anyone who likes Reddit needs to check out another similar site called Hacker News. It’s rather like Reddit used to be before it went mainstream, i.e. lacking the high noise that reddit now has. The big difference is that this one is almost purely technical in nature. Definitely check it out if you’re looking for a high-quality reddit…
My Idea For A True Content Aggregation Service
I’ve been struggling with a problem for a while now. The problem is how to properly display on my site everything online that I create vs. everything online that I find and enjoy. The issue is that these two types of content need to be differentiated to provide maximum value to readers. So here are my requirements. I…
A Response to “Mac Elitism and Snobbery”
A fellow security blogger, Michael Farnum, has posted a piece that I felt compelled to respond to. In the post he essentially complains that most of the pro-pc/anti-mac commentary he reads at Computerworld get modded down, while the pro-mac/anti-pc stuff he sees usually gets modded up. He goes on to write: So if you own a Mac and…
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
This explains a lot. The Dunning-Kruger effect describes the phenomenon whereby people who don’t know anything about something think they know more than those who do. The peculiar part is that those who lack the expertise are often far more confident and forceful when they discuss the issue than those who are knowledgeable. This is because those who…
What Does OS X Say When You Ask it to Pronounce Itself?
In the tech world it’s easy to find debates about how to pronounce things. One of those things is OS X. Most people either say “Oh Es Ex” or “Oh Es Ten“. So which is it? As it turns out, it’s not a matter of preference like most claim — that is unless you simply prefer to pronounce…
This is How You Pronounce Ubuntu
It irks me when names are mispronounced—especially when it’s easy to figure out the right way to say it. Some examples include “line-ix”, “oh-es-ex”, or “you-bun-too”. The mispronunciation of Ubuntu is becoming more common now. As it gets more popular more are getting the opportunity to mangle it. When I first saw the name I proceeded to mess…
Shibboleths and Logical Fallacies
My friend Steven has some interesting things to say about, “begging the question”. In brief, it doesn’t mean to introduce a question, or to raise one. It is quite different from that, meaning most everyone is using it incorrectly. This is how I met Steven, actually. He corrected my misuse of it on the site here. He then…
It’s Time to Drop the “www”
[ NOTE: My position on this is now different, but I kept the post for historical purposes. I still do agree with parts of it as well. ] It’s no longer necessary to use “www” when referring to websites. It’s a waste of storage, a waste of ink, and it takes 2-5 times as long to pronounce as…
The Type Of Gas You Use Really Does Matter
I’ve always believed that gas was gas. I thought it was all the same stuff and that any rumors to the contrary were nothing but marketing. Well, it turns out that isn’t the case. Six of the world’s top automakers, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and Audi recognize that the current EPA minimum detergent requirements do not…
Why Apple Didn’t Release An iPhone SDK
The short answer is that not all developers are created equal, and Apple is all about risk management; with the desktop, for example, they don’t let just anyone run OS X because they want their OS to work well wherever it runs. If you could cram it onto anything and force drivers into it, the experience would deteriorate…
What School Never Taught You About The Waterfall Method
If you studied computer science in any form in college you’ve no doubt heard about the Waterfall Method. It’s the classic, multi-phased and elaborate process for designing software. It’s taught as a standard method for development in thousands of schools all over the world, and yet its history has an interesting secret that virtually nobody knows about —…
Rolex: It’s Not What You Think
Since getting my watch I’ve received some pretty interesting reactions from people. The biggest misconception people seem to have about Rolex is that any Rolex is better than any non-Rolex. Or to put it another way, they simply think that Rolex is the “top of the line”, “best of the best”, most expensive, etc, etc. This is simply…
New Server > Full Reddit Wrath
So I made it to the front page of reddit today and my new server didn’t even blink. This brings me great joy.
How to (Definitively) Pronounce Linux
There is a lot of debate about how to properly pronounce Linux. This will conclusively resolve the topic for anyone interested. Everyone has their own preferred sources of authority. This always comes down to authority, i.e., what source is most authoritative in setting the official way for something to be pronounced. Is it similar words? Is it common-usage?…
Getting Worried About Linux
So I’m getting a little freaked out lately. I keep hearing that both the Gentoo and Debian projects are in trouble. I haven’t researched how much truth there is to these claims, but I’m getting bothered that I keep hearing the same thing over and over. What would I do if these projects were to die off or…
My Gaming Idea
A long time ago (a couple of years) I considered going to market with a gaming idea. The idea was fairly simple, and it’s coming to fruition in many ways already today. The idea was to create a generic virtual world that could have modules built on it — modules for various different kinds of gaming interface. Examples…
What Mail Server Do The Big Universities Use?
Ever wonder what mail servers people run? I found myself wondering what the top universities used, so I wrote a lame little script to go and query the top 50 schools from this list, find out their mail servers, and then netcat to them to see what they respond with. The results were interesting. I was specifically wondering…
3 Steps to Highly Efficient News Reading
Few things are as important to geeks as how they stay informed. Knowledge is so key to us that the ability to pull it in, process it, and ensure that it’s recallable, is absolutely vital to being effective in our work. One of the main problems we as information fetishists face is the lack of a solid, repeatable…