Category Archives: technology

Testing is the safety harness for your code. They are not magical, and they will not prevent you from missing bugs you did not anticipate. They do however automate the boring chore of making sure various edge cases and special … Continue reading →

If you have ever linked to my blog, you might have noticed that my URL’s are absolutely monstrous in size. Not only is my long domain name rather long, but I also happen to use the “pretty” style of permalinks … Continue reading →

Back in 2012 I wrote about how I set up a $30 linux server by installing Debian Squeze on a PogoPlug. I have been using the device for close to two years, but it died. I grabbed an identical replacement … Continue reading →

Have I mentioned that the nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor was really cool? Because it was. Playing that game made me wander what else could be done with it. For example, I have always been fond of RPG oracles … Continue reading →

This was a conversation rolling through my Twitter feed lately: how do we design good web service signup form? One that is unobtrusive, intuitive and inclusive. How many fields do you need? What is the best way to arrange them? … Continue reading →

My old gaming rig has started to fall apart lately. Last year my video card blew up and took one of the PCIe slots with it. It took me a few weeks to sort it out. I purchased a replacement, … Continue reading →

Let’s assume your app is currently in production, and has a non-trivial number of users. By non-trivial I mean a number that makes it impractical for you to write a personalized apology email to each and every single one of … Continue reading →

My PC has died once again. This has happened before but it turned out to be a video card failure. I was able to identify the problem by listening to the beep-codes, ordered a new card and I was back … Continue reading →

Roughly a month or so ago, something weird happened to this website. It was one of those weird and a bit scary glitches that make you question your own sanity because they come out of nowhere and they have seemingly … Continue reading →

3D printing has been around for quite a while now. It has always been something I considered kinda cool, but mostly inconvenient to use. You either had to build your own printer from scratch, or send your 3D model to … Continue reading →

What I’m about to propose here is a bit unconventional, but it really works for me. I’ve been doing a lot of front and back end web stuff lately and as a result every machine I own or work with … Continue reading →

Did you know that you can add /.json to any Reddit URL to get a machine readable JSON document you can screw around with? You can test it yourself. For example, go to /r/vim/.json. It works for pretty much any … Continue reading →

Public encryption is great. It is a mature technology an an industry standard. The problem is, no one is actually using it. Or rather, whenever it is used, it is abstracted away, and hidden behind layers of misdirection. Why? Because … Continue reading →

There was a very interesting discussion happening last week between Chad Whitacre (founder of Gittip) and Shanley Kane (CEO and founder of Model View Culture) which ironically has been chronicled on Medium and in the Gittip bug tracker. I say … Continue reading →

I own a smart watch, and I’m not ashamed of it. I proudly tell people that my Pebble was probably one of my best purchasing decisions as of late. Or at the very least better than sniping Citadel/Marauder Warhammer miniatures … Continue reading →

Back in 2009 I got a brilliant idea into my head: I was going to build a site on top of Joomla. Why? I still don’t exactly understand my own thought process that lead me to that decision. I think … Continue reading →

Let’s talk about Heartbleed for a second, shall we? Perhaps not about the bug itself, but rather about it’s real world ramifications. What does a small implementation mistake mean for an average citizen of the web? Well, probably the most … Continue reading →

A few months ago I wrote about my desire to get a Chromebook. Well, I finally broke down and got one. At first I wasn’t really sure if it was worth the expense but now that I had it for … Continue reading →

There is a religious movement within the Vim community which emphasizes purity of the environment and rejects superfluous plugins and advises adherents to meticulously prune their .vimrc to keep it nearly empty and thus clean from impurities. I personally do … Continue reading →

Let’s talk about embedding code snippets in your LaTex documents. All of us here are programmers (except for those who aren’t) so this is a natural thing we might want to do. Despite being built by programmers for programmers, LaTex … Continue reading →

Bla, bla, bla, introductory paragraph. This is usually the place where I tell you a story, or make some generalizing statements about the nature of the universe, but for some reason I can’t be bothered to do any of that … Continue reading →

I’m a guy who has strong opinions about calculators. Most people don’t actually pay much attention to calculators or calculator apps they use. I do, because I spent most of my formative years (high school, college, grad school) calculating things … Continue reading →