Tag Archives: rant

Dear considerate Massachusetts drivers

If there’s a long line of cars behind you and you stop to let me turn across traffic, thanks, the courtesy is appreciated. If, on the other hand, there is no one behind you, I am already planning to make … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2015-06-11 by | Tagged , ,

Where we went wrong, or, The one thing Philip Greenspun got right (in 1997)

Posted on 2015-03-28 by

Cast your mind back, if you will, to the heady days of the “Web 1.0” bubble. A fellow by the name of Philip Greenspun was a Ph.D. student at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. He was also a serial … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , ,

What I saw (and did) at (and around) LISA’14

Posted on 2014-11-20 by

I recently got back from my one-per-year business trip, to attend the 2014 LISA Conference, and now that I’ve presented to my group, it’s time to make a more public write-up. I’ll start with some of the more personal or … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Unbelievable cookbook idiocy

The Amazon fairy just deposited a copy of Ovenly (by Agatha Kulaga and Erin Patinkin) in my mailbox. In the front matter, it says: As we sent out our recipes fo testing, we heard from friends, colleagues and family that … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2014-10-02 by | Tagged ,

From the pages of Stupid Software Design Quarterly…

Posted on 2014-09-01 by

About a month ago, printing stopped working on my machine. I had a clunky workaround, so I didn’t worry too much about it. I had just upgraded the cups package, which manages printing, on the print server, and it seemed … Continue reading →

Posted in FreeBSD | Tagged , , ,

Debugging a weird network problem (or: IPv6 privacy addresses, just say no)

Posted on 2014-07-16 by

All you folks who followed my blog for food porn are going to want to skip this one. The past ten days have been pretty horrible for me at work, thanks to the combined effect of five different network issues. … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , , , ,

The latest way in which Firefox is broken

Posted on 2014-04-28 by

At work, Firefox is our recommended and officially-supported browser. We have historically liked it because (a) it works the same on all platforms, and (b) it implements SSL client authentication correctly. Unfortunately, it seems that very few Firefox developers actually … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , ,

Is there a photo gallery app that doesn’t suck?

Posted on 2014-03-31 by

I’m looking for a new photo gallery application, and I’ve been having terrible trouble finding one that is worth the disk sectors it’s written on. I know something about writing such things, because I wrote the one I’m using now … Continue reading →

Posted in Administrivia, Broadcasting & Media, Computing | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

PSA: How to make buttermilk from regular milk

My blog stats are showing a lot of people ending up here after searching for “how to make buttermilk from regular milk”. You can’t. Buttermilk — real buttermilk — is made from cream, not milk. You can only make a … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on 2014-03-19 by | Tagged , ,

The cost of public broadcasting

Posted on 2013-10-28 by

One morning this past week, I spent some time listening to BBC Radio 4 “open up”. (It was actually yesterday evening for me, because I was listening live, and 0520 BST, when Radio 4 switches from relaying BBC World Service … Continue reading →

Posted in Broadcasting & Media | Tagged , , , , , ,