Technology/Internet

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet [Hardcover] (review)

September 8th, 2012 by alephnaught

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet [Hardcover] (review)

Title: Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet [Hardcover] Author:Andrew Blum (Author) Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Ecco (May 29, 2012) Language: English ISBN-10: 0061994936 ISBN-13: 978-0061994937 If you want to understand more about the internet, this is a great book. Where most books tell you about web browsers and on-line apps, this book […]

Travel tool experiments and experiences

June 12th, 2012 by alephnaught

Travel tool experiments and experiences

I just got back from almost two weeks in northern Italy, and I used a different set of tools for this trip than our other trips. I left my laptop at home – I used my new iPad And iPhone for everything. And it worked well – they took up less space, were a lot […]

Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman (review)

April 22nd, 2012 by alephnaught

Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman (review)

Title:Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman Author:Dave Hoover, Adewale Oshineye Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: O’Reilly Media; 1 edition (October 22, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 0596518382 ISBN-13: 978-0596518387 I added an apprentice to my software development team and figured I should brush up, so I bought this book. Apprenticeship Patterns is for apprentices – […]

January 20th, 2012 by alephnaught

You Are Not A Gadget (review)

Title:You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (Vintage) Author:Jaron Lanier Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (February 8, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0307389979 ISBN-13: 978-0307389978 This is a fantastic book.  If you spend time thinking about the impact of technology on daily life you’ll want to read this. Jaron Lanier is an early hacker, […]

November 21st, 2010 by alephnaught

Say hello to RSS and Google Reader

(Based on a recent speech I did at DirecTV Finance Toastmasters club) If you read blogs very much, you’ve probably seen this symbol: In various colors but usually orange, this is the symbol for an RSS feed.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it’s used to notify people and tools of new content on […]

Facebook Connect: Without an SLA, can you trust it with your business?

April 22nd, 2010 by alephnaught

Facebook Connect: Without an SLA, can you trust it with your business?

I was just listening to a SpoolCast podcast, “SpoolCast: Moving Beyond Static Forms with Luke Wroblewsk.” Mr. Wroblewski talked about the value of Facebook Connect in speeding up and simplifying the form-based process for registration, especially for social media web sites. This reminded me of a huge issue I just had with Facebook, one that […]

How I got the nickname ‘wizard’

January 30th, 2010 by alephnaught

How I got the nickname ‘wizard’

A long long time ago I did real-time programming for a high energy physics research laboratory, KMS Fusion, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I programmed a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11/45, and I knew all the assembly instructions required to process an interrupt from the backplane to my code (eventually I wrote a multi-device driver […]

November 21st, 2009 by alephnaught

Google Chrome OS VMware and Parallels 5 virtual machines

I wanted to check out Chrome OS from Google – I’m hoping it’ll be a good choice for a kitchen netbook (a small portable you can use to surf the web, read and print recipes, and sometimes carry to the family room to look up things you see on TV); I don’t have time to […]