Blogs

The Web Is Becoming Useless

I recently ordered some IKEA LADDA NiMH batteries for my handheld scanner radio.
When they were delivered, I received the following text.

Posted on February 14, 2024

Ode to the ThinkPad X2[67]0

My daily driver for the past 6 years has been a ThinkPad X2[67]0. Allow me to explain. This laptop, having an el cheapo plastic chassis, is subject to flexing, especially if you hold it on a corner often. Over time, the motherboard flexes and it will eventually start locking up hard when a trace becomes marginal. So, I have gone through 2 X260s (yay eBay) and an X270 (current machine) over the years, only because it is the only machine really without compare.

Posted on November 27, 2023

Trashcan MacPro6,1

I recently configured a small home office/studio at my apartment, with all of my music gear and my old Presonus FireStudio Project. This is an old 96kHZ/24bit 10 channel 1394 audio interface that I had last used under a 10.9 Mavericks machine. I won a 2013 trashcan Mac Pro on eBay already upgraded to a 12 core E5 and with 128GB of RAM for $500, and figured this could be the audio interface’s last gasp.

Posted on August 18, 2023

Why blasphem Is Written In Golang

Recently, I had a dilemma: should blasphem instead be written in Rust? I have been slowly learning Rust, and rewriting what I have of blasphem in it would be a boon to my learning. So why won’t I embark on such a project? Well, it turns out, a Home Assistant clone is precisely where Go’s dead-simple Web services capabilities shine. Let’s be realistic: nobody hyperscales Home Assistant, and if Python’s performance is acceptable, Golang is tenfold.

Posted on April 10, 2023

Pie Without Cheese...

Is like a kiss without a squeeze. And it’s true. Buckle up for the rare gastro post. Anyway, I had always heard of this combination before, but I guess I had never ventured in. Tonight, I learned the degree to which this was a mistake on my part. Yesterday, I picked up a deliciously spicy apple pie (along with a baguette, a wedge of Délice de Bourgogne, and a wedge of Fior d’Arancio) from my friends over at Quonnie Farms, who just had their opening weekend for their stand.

Posted on November 22, 2021

Supermarkets, point-of-sale, and nostalgia

For me, nothing dredges up nostalgia, curiosity, and the longing for a time and zeitgeist I barely remember and will never experience again like the mere mention of supermarket chains long defunct. In Rhode Island, Almacs was the standard bearer since long before my time. I was only five years old when they closed, I also remember my mother taking us to an A&P that I believe had only recently opened.

Posted on October 31, 2021

Golang Made Me Love Programming Again

When I was a teenager, I wrote C. When I was 13, I got a copy of Just For Fun, Linus Torvalds' autobiography. The Blizzard of 2003 happened during February vacation that year, and I figured what better way to spend it than implementing an operating system. So, I attempted it, in C and i386 assembler. It never got further than giving a single-task shell (in protected mode, though!) that could peek memory locations.

Posted on September 26, 2021

Georgia Bill

Georgia Senate Bill 202 is an abomination. This disgusting piece of racist tripe flies in the face of everything this country has worked to achieve.

Posted on March 26, 2021