Viewing profile — mediumdave

The Bolt will be back in 2027. I'm a huge fan of the Bolt, and I love my 2019. It's a very practical car, and has surprisingly decent range.

> I seem to recall that early versions of Linux wouldn’t run on a cheap 386sx until the kernel started to incorporate embedded applications from widespread use in the late 90s. I r…

Skycraft Surplus in Orlando: https://skycraftsurplus.com/ I was there last week (in town on business), and I found a Vector 3677-2 protoboard for $2!

I agree with the article that there is a lot of low-quality "journalism" out there, designed to outrage or entertain rather than inform. However, that does not mean that all journa…

I tried proper left hand mice for a while (naturally-right-handed, switched to left-hand mousing for RSI reasons similar to above), and eventually I just embraced the idea of using…

Now that Raspberry Pis are hard to find (in mid-2023), the Dell/Wyse 3290 makes a very nice print server for a reasonable price. https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/3030/

I've had good experiences using Upduino 3.0 and 3.1 [0] with the IceStorm tools via apio [1]. I wrote a blog post [2] with some info on getting things set up via Linux. All you nee…

> And if you want a portable computer (which by the way are demonstrably more secure in the face of physical tampering) you basically relegate yourself to terrible battery life, po…

> Jekyll should work on Windows because Ruby works on Windows. Jekyll is a bit of a nightmare on Windows at the moment, at least if any significant part of your workflow is based o…

> jOOQ is SQL-centric. Your database comes "first". This approach has always seemed completely backwards to me. Isn't the database simply a mechanism for persisting records/objects…

It's a fair question whether the visual/blocks model is appropriate for expert programmers. However, there was some research presented at ICER 2015 showing that visual/blocks langu…

He also invented dataflow analysis, which is the basis for a huge number of compiler optimization and program analysis techniques: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=…

I have a couple T61s from Ebay that I got for my kids. I've been using one of them for some development work, and I've been surprised at how well they work for that purpose --- as …

Don't write a game engine: write a game. You won't really know what features your engine will need until you have specific requirements. The generic parts - the "engine" - can be e…

> This doesn't surprise me. The whole academic publishing side of things is a royal pile of shit. Glad someone is calling them up on it. The ACM, at least, allows authors to post c…

First of all: I think the US education system (at both K12 and college/university levels) is deeply disfunctional. However, I can understand and sympathize with a teacher's desire …

Sparkfun ( http://www.sparkfun.com ) has some good tutorials. "Beginning Embedded Electronics" is a good place to start. I personally got started with microcontrollers and digital …

I teach computer science, and I've always felt the distinction between programming and computer science to be artificial, for the following reasons. (1) It is necessary to learn th…

Ah - I missed that. True emulators like Bochs are still potentially a win if they provide fine-grained debugging features. Bochs was nice because you could single-step through asse…

Back in the day when I was playing around with osdev, I ran my code in the Bochs emulator. WAY easier than running on actual hardware, especially starting the emulator was 10x fast…

I teach CS at a small undergrad college, and we often need adjuncts to help us teach intro classes when we have more sections that the full-time faculty can cover. You might check …

I don't think it was obvious at the time. I can distinctly recall seeing Mosaic for the first time in 1993 when a fellow undergrad showed me his home page. My thoughts were essenti…

True, but there are also significant cost of living differences between urban and rural areas. More generally, there are valid reasons why some people enjoy living outside of large…

"you will find yourself...banking on the thin chance of landing a job in some part of the country usually only seen on American Pickers" Because those of us who live in rural areas…