Tech

The Future Does Not Compute: Book Report
I’ve owned the book The Future Does Not Compute by Stephen Talbott for almost 30 years, but for a million reasons it was only recently that I focused on reading it.
Aug 28, 2023 Tech
iPhone hack: reading strap
I use my iPhone quite heavily as an ebook reader. I read in various situations, but one of the most frequent is when I’m in bed. When you’re lying down, either on your back or on your side, it can be quite a strain on your hand muscles to grip the phone and also use your thumb to scroll the pages.
Nov 30, 2009 3 min read Mac stuff, Tech
Infocom games, using your voice
I have a long history with Infocom games (“text adventures” was what I called them as a kid, and “interactive fiction” is the new name). People still write these games, did you know that?
Aug 17, 2008 3 min read Games, Tech
Microsoft engineers couldn't care less
Microsoft Excel was released in 1985 for the Mac and in 1987 for Windows. Today I was using the 2007 version. After 20 years of work by countless engineers, it cannot open two files with the same name, and the dialog is quite shameless about it.
Jun 20, 2008 1 min read Tech
I won my fight with Windows Media Player
As you know, I want to stream movies and music from my PC to my TV. I have an all-star lineup of tools: * PC running Vista with Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11), iTunes, and Zune software * Xbox 360 * PlayStation 3 * TiVo * Airport Express And a selection of Xvid, Divx, MPEG 4, MP3, and AAC files to stream.
May 18, 2008 2 min read Tech
How old is the term 'bug'?
Robert X. Cringely, my favorite tech pundit, had an interesting aside in this week’s column (which is otherwise about Apple and Blu-Ray). He ran across a use of the term ‘bug’ to mean a glitch in a technical system in a magazine article from the 1930s.
Mar 16, 2008 1 min read Tech
More on Zune (Moron Zune?)
The Zune software turned out not to be so great at working with iTunes playlists. It’s not a dynamic synchronization, just a one-time thing. So after asking the Zune to read my iTunes playlists, it did so, but after I changed my playlists in iTunes, the Zune did not see the change.
Nov 14, 2007 1 min read Tech
Two reasons to download Microsoft's Zune software
Microsoft includes a Windows-based desktop media player with their Zune portable media players, to manage your music and sync it with the Zune. It’s a lot like Windows Media Player, which I despise, but actually if you own an Xbox 360 there are two reasons to install the Zune software even if you don’t own a Zune:
Oct 8, 2007 2 min read Tech
Struggles with new computer
Recently I bought all the bits and pieces to build a new PC for home. My old one is a few years old now, and isn’t up for all the video transcoding I throw at it these days (mainly converting Xvid and Divx TV shows into MP4 for use on Xbox).
Sep 27, 2007 2 min read Tech
Amazon music downloads
Ars Technica is a wonderful tech news site that’s fast becoming more and more like a real news source, with journalists and investigation and everything! Anyway, recently they reviewed Amazon’s new MP3 store.
Sep 27, 2007 2 min read Tech
One view on the state of media-in-the-home
Within the last year, I’ve purchased both an Xbox 360 and an HDTV (a 37" Sharp Aquos LCD). I have a TiVo, a home network, a Powerbook, and a fast PC with lots of storage.
Feb 4, 2007 9 min read Tech
Amusingly bad web design
I came across this site while looking for card tables. It made me laugh out loud.
Jun 28, 2006 1 min read Tech
ShelfCentered.com
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a new side project that my wife, brother and sister and I came up with, called ShelfCentered.com. I haven’t posted about ShelfCentered.
Apr 25, 2005 2 min read Tech
MathML
My friend and former coworker, Robert Miner, has written an article about MathML in the latest issue of Notices of the American Mathematics Society, which you can read online [pdf]. MathML is a standard XML representation of math notation and semantics, and has been adopted steadily ever since Robert co-created it in 1998.
Apr 16, 2005 1 min read Tech
Hello from Clié
I’m blogging this from my new Clié TH-55. It has wireless networking and a full web browser, plus email. I’m still looking fo a free instant messaging client.
Mar 28, 2004 1 min read Tech
Hotspot
I’m blogging this from a Starbucks in Hollywood, near the big shopping center called Hollywood & Highland. Alison is out with a friend nearby, so I decided to try out the Starbucks hotspot system.
Mar 14, 2004 1 min read Tech
New family additions
I’ve made two changes to my video game family. First, I bought a GameCube and a couple games (Zelda, Viewtiful Joe). Also, a friend with a vinyl cutter made a wood-grain applique for my Xbox.
Oct 12, 2003 1 min read Tech
VisiCalc history
Bob Frankston, co-creator of the original spreadsheet VisiCalc, has recently written down a postmortem, 25 years later!
Apr 9, 2003 1 min read Tech
Work category coming
Not that you care, but I’m going to merge in all my work content into a category, and see how it coexists with my main category.
Apr 8, 2003 1 min read Tech
Beware of Bounceweb!
Boy, Bounceweb threw us for a loop. Our site went down so hard that when it came back up, various files and directories were gone! They had to restore from backups, and even so there was a lot of work to do.
Apr 1, 2003 1 min read Tech
So langmead.info seems relatively stable
So langmead.info seems relatively stable at the moment. As of now I have tried three hosting companies. This latest one strikes a good balance between price and features. They are having trouble installing PHPlib, which is needed for IMP, which is a web-based email client Alison wants.
Aug 14, 2002 1 min read Tech
Good evening. Go-Gan is progressing,
Good evening. Go-Gan is progressing, albeit slowly. It’s encouraging, though, to know that even though my job is largely programming, I still want to do it in the evenings.
Mar 14, 2002 1 min read Tech
So the Paint-by-Numbers project, named
So the Paint-by-Numbers project, named Go-Gan, is proceeding. Absolutely no interface has been coded yet, just the representation of the underlying puzzle. Tonight I’ll write the logic that creates the list of clues from a row or column of painted cells.
Mar 6, 2002 2 min read Tech
I'm going to get started
I’m going to get started today on a new piece of software. It will be a multipurpose “Paint by Numbers” application. Paint by Numbers is a puzzle game (I am not yet sure whether this name is a trademark or not) where you are presented with a blank rectangular grid of squares, usually about 20x20 or larger (the bigger it is, the harder it is).
Mar 4, 2002 3 min read Tech
I'm starting to understand the
I’m starting to understand the news aggregator concept. It is the flipside of the blog. It addresses my earliest question about blogs: won’t everything I write just disappear into the void?
Feb 28, 2002 1 min read Tech