Category Archives: General

Philip Greenspun has an posting about the problems with early retirement. It’s hard for people to sympathise with the problems of a guy who has enough money that he can buy fun airplanes and not work 9-5, but I have … Continue reading →

[Update: in a comment, Mihai Parparita points out that the Graffiti v.2 was changed for legal reasons, not aesthetic, as explained in a Wikipedia article.] I got a Palm Z22 for Christmas, to replace my old monochrome Palm Vx. I … Continue reading →

Kurt Cagle has an interesting piece on the term Open Standard and what, if anything, it means. Rather than a definition, I’m more interested in a shiboleth, a single test that can tell us whether source or a standard (or … Continue reading →

[I normally stick to technical issues on this weblog. This posting is about logic, which is sort-of related to tech; apologies in advance to anyone who came here hoping for a short break from personal pontification about current events.] Over … Continue reading →

… and make friends with a technical writer. Prescriptive grammarians — the ones who argue that the English language should follow a single standard that is both correct and eternal (at least since Fowler) and attempt to impose that standard … Continue reading →

I was listening to Tim Bray‘s excellent talk On Language Creation today at the XML 2005 conference in Atlanta. Tim was talking about creating new XML-based markup languages (summary: “please don’t”), and in passing he mentioned the must-ignore/must-understand design pattern. … Continue reading →

My creaky little Piper Warrior has been grounded since a lighting strike (while tied-down on the apron) back in July, but the engine’s finally back from overhaul, and I plan to be in the air soon — just in time, … Continue reading →

Tim O’Reilly reprinted a note from Andy Oram about Oracle’s recent purchase of InnoDB, the company that produces the best of the MySQL backends. Assuming that Oracle knows what they’re doing (generally a safe assumption), the purchase is not an … Continue reading →

The Wikipedia article on the Robertson screwdriver gives an excellent example of how clumsy use of a patent hurts innovation. The Robertson screw (square hole, slightly tapered) is the best general-purpose screw drive ever designed, and accounts for about 85% … Continue reading →