In approximately an hour, the sun will be directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. Mark the southern solstice* as you will, and I wish you a peaceful and prosperous season. * I use this term rather than winter solstice out of a desire to be hemispherically neutral.
Beatles geek
I showed The Beatniks (an Aussie tribute band) playing Stairway to Heaven to Mrs Elbeno. She liked it, but remarked: “their Paul plays right handed though.”
Lisping towards enlightenment
Me: a C/C++ programmer of 12 years (professionally), a Lisp dabbler (programmer is too strong a word to use here) of, let’s say ~3 months. I’ve done enough functional stuff to be comfortable with that side, but I haven’t (hadn’t) yet written a project big enough to get me used to Lisp syntax. The project:… Continue reading Lisping towards enlightenment
Xmas cards have been sent
This year’s tally was: 38 to the continental US. 23 to the UK. 3 to Australia. 1 to Germany. 1 to Japan.
My Stuff
A new link section on the sidebar for my stuff – I finally got around to putting up my books & games, as well as RotateAVI, which rotates motion JPEGs (from Canon cameras and probably others).
Xmas Ornaments from the Elbeno household
Happy solstitial celebration!
Xmas Playlist Highlights?
Anyone got any yule tune recommendations? My current playlist (which is cool as far as it goes, but not v. seasonal): Who Am I from Les Mis Lay All Your Love On Me – ABBA These Words – Natasha Bedingfield White And Nerdy – Weird Al Yankovic La Femme d’Argent – Air Toccata and Fugue… Continue reading Xmas Playlist Highlights?
Six languages worth knowing
“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing” – Alan Perlis. I’ve thought about this, and developed a short list of languages worth knowing. Not-so-coincidentally, each language in my list embodies a distinct computational model. In no particular order: The ALGOL family. C and its descendants. This is… Continue reading Six languages worth knowing
Book sale again
Seems like we just had the last book sale… Saturday was this quarter’s already. Here’s the haul: Infinity One Tunnel in the Sky Goodbye, Mr. Chips Stuart Little Me Digital Fortress Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace Stupid White Men Minerals Dinosaurs Pop-up Book Comprehensive Fortran Programming Say the Magic Word, Please Roll the Bones… Continue reading Book sale again
Backup solution
In these days of digital memories, it’s important to have a proper backup solution for your family. So I’ve invested in a Dlink DNS-323 (a network storage device) and a couple of 500GB hard drives. Plugged it into my network, turned it on, and formatted the drives as RAID 1, which gives me 498GB of… Continue reading Backup solution