RoggaBlog

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Spot the Hofstadters... :-)

Friday, October 27, 2017

Why Wellington?

QED.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

The Bipolar LISP Programmer...?

Just reading this: The Bipolar Lisp Programmer ...

Perhaps we should await a followup article on The Prosopagnosiac Professor? :-/

Friday, April 3, 2015

How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline

How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline

Network Management under Ubuntu seems to be a complete pig's ear nowadays. I upgraded my laptop from 10.04LTS to 12.04LTS, and all manner of things b0rked :-( ...

I bravely proceeded to upgrade to 14.04LTS in the hope that it wall all magically get fixed...

WRONG! :-/

Can *anyone* make head or tail of network-manager, avahi, all the *dm's and daemons / services / upstart processes / ??? now?

I give up...

Turned off the networking with the GUI, resorted to the good ol' commandline; see How to set up Wireless Networking in Ubuntu on the commandline for some details.

It works!

This has me in a(nother) minimalist mood.

Friday, January 30, 2015

John Britten video at NZ OnScreen

During the late 1980s, Kiwi inventor John Britten developed and built a revolutionary racing motorcycle. He pursued his dream all the way to Daytona International Speedway, where, in 1992, as an unlikely underdog, he proceeded to beat the biggest and richest manufacturers in the world. Britten: Backyard Visionary documents the maverick motorcycle designer that Guggenheim curator Ultan Guilfoyle described as "the New Zealander who stood the world of racing-motorcycle design on its head." Watch the video here.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

68 Katy: 68000 Linux on a solderless breadboard

No MMU, but it runs Linux! An impressive example of what can be 'thrown together' relatively easily :-) 68-katy-68000-linux-on-a-solderless-breadboard

Monday, September 29, 2014

Techvana: Auckland Computer Museum - PledgeMe Crowdfunding

Monday, September 22, 2014

Near miss of CME in 2012 - We'd still be picking up the pieces if it had hit Earth :-/

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Il y a plus de fumaginatin' ...

mmmmmmmmm....

Smokinatin' :-)

0mn0mn0m

VHS to DVD with Mac

3 for Bedroom C

A film which was panned by critics and no huge Box Office hit - but is valued by train buffs for its real star - the SuperChief train!

Monday, July 21, 2014

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Genius in France (YouTube Video)

Had never heard this one until today... It's a goodie :-)

How to Retire by 20: Kristen Hadeed at TEDxUF (YouTube Video)

The Beauty of Mathematics - TEDx Talk by Jonathan Matte (YouTube video)

Friday, May 9, 2014

Martin Gardner - Genius of Recreational Mathematics (via NPR)

You can explore his prolific output on Amazon's Martin Gardner page

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Lockhart's Lament

A rather clever analogy :-) http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Mac OS X Keyboard tips

iOS March Meetup
with The Auckland iOS Meetup

From John Ballinger:
http://realmacsoftware.com/blog/xcode-4-s-less-obvious-shortcuts
http://paul-samuels.com/blog/2012/07/26/xcode-conditional-break-points/
https://github.com/mattt/Xcode-Snippets
http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ObjectiveCLiterals.html

From Peter Asquith:
http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/ This thing is excellent! I've installed it on my Mac, works like a charm. Only weirdness is that it sometimes seems to appear unbidden... perhaps that is my clothing impinging on the front of the trackpad though? (High humidity here)

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Syntax-Higlighted Code in Blogger - Alex Gorbatchev

This is a lot less tedious to use than manually converting and pasting into a blog post.

http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/

Code to Syntax-Higlighted HTML

This seems to work reasonably well:

http://tohtml.com

It'll Auto-identify the language, or you can select it yourself.

You can choose from several colour-scheme styles.

More Ass-Kicking...

This guy isn't pulling punches (or throwing pumpkins)... But he's right.

"Fact: college is a waste, but we haven't yet hit that point in society where we can bypass it. So we have to pass through another generation of massive college debt. How to pull in the suckers in? Answer: these articles."

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps.html

Geek Mind-Over-Matter: Bush Coding (Sam McEwan)

This is classic - Well done, Sam! :-)

For those interested, here's (a class-ified version of) Sam's pain-fuelled Magnum Opus:


public class BushCoding {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("This really hurts!");
    }

}

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Updated GIT Talk on Vimeo by Randal Schwartz

Thanks to Randal himself, for pointing out that there is an updated version of his GIT talk on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/35778382

Friday, July 20, 2012

systemd

1. cgroups.txt http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt
2. Original Design Document http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html
3. Interface Stability Promise http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/InterfaceStabilityPromise 4. XDG Base Directory specification http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html 5. If run inside a Linux container these arguments may be passed as command line arguments to systemd itself, next to any of the command line options listed in the Options section above.
If run outside of Linux containers, these arguments are parsed from /proc/cmdline instead.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Fedora Rawhide Release guidelines

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/Rawhide

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Slackware Linux links

More than just Slackware! ... Eclectic list of some useful Linux and other programming links... dunno how fresh or otherwise, YMMV. http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Slackware-Links#.22.27.27.27Slackware_LQ_Suggestions_Links.21.27.27.27.22

Monday, March 26, 2012

Re. "Can you afford to not know Git any longer?"

Re. http://www.bluetrainsoftware.com/2012/03/can-you-afford-to-not-know-git-any.html
Well said.
The videos (longish at an hour each or so, worthwhile IMO) of Google Talks by Linus Torvalds and Randal L. Schwartz are great for explaining the rationale behind GIT and its development.
They may even provide sufficient motivation for people to dive in. Pushed me over the edge ;-)

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

How to Google Search - Infographic (Mashable)

http://mashable.com/2011/11/24/google-search-infographic/

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Five things you should stop doing... Dorie Clark (HBR)

Thought-provoking shortlist of unproductive things to cut out.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

A couple of my Web Pet Peeves...

Grrr! ...

1) Sites that show precisely nothing until you unblock JavaScript - I'm looking at you, http://www.attitudeiseverything.com/ !

2) Links that when middle-clicked (Linux), hijack the current page rather than opening a new one. If I *wanted* to lose the current page, I would have left-clicked - Duhhh!

Anyone else annoyed by these behaviours? - Comments please!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Clojure and Android -- Daniel Solano Gomez

http://blip.tv/clojure/daniel-solano-g%C3%B3mez-clojure-and-android-5953832

Max's Bucket List -- EE Times

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4236043/Ten-things-I-want-to-do-before-I-die-?cid=NL_MCU&Ecosystem=microcontroller-mcu

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Spookily Realistic Skin Rendering (SSS) -- Jorge Jimenez

SSS == Separable Subsurface Scattering
Jorge Jimenez
Needs lots of grunt to render quickly.
Stunning results though!
http://www.iryoku.com/separable-sss-released

Saturday, February 11, 2012

PC Magazine online

http://www.pcmag.com/

On Peering in New Zealand (nztelco.com)

http://nztelco.com/content/?p=442

Monday, February 6, 2012

Chuck Lorre Vanity Cards - Warning: May make you think!

Ever watched "Dharma and Greg" (where I first noticed these) or other Chuck Lorre productions (Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory,...) and got frustrated because the 2-second flashed message at the end was too short to read?
Ever thought "I'm going to record that and freeze-frame it so I can read it"?
Someone's saved you the trouble:
http://chucklorre.com/index.php?p=45
Enjoy!
And thanks, Chuck :)
Big, Big Bang fan :)

Monday, January 30, 2012

How to fail at Commercial Software

http://successfulsoftware.net/2011/10/03/12-ways-to-fail-at-commercial-software/

Sunday, January 29, 2012

applelogic.org - FPGA + Apple II

http://www.applelogic.org/

Some veeery kewl stuff in here.

How to Detect a Toxic Customer (SoftwareByRob)

Wish I'd seen this a long time ago...
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/12/09/how-to-detect-a-toxic-customer/

Saturday, January 28, 2012

How to Detect a Toxic Customer (SoftwareByRob)

Wish I'd seen this a long detect-a-toxic-customer/>http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/12/09/how-to-detect-a-toxic-customer/

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Updated Terminal Emulator (?) -- acko.net

http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit/

Git-Flow Issues? (Scott Chacon)

http://scottchacon.com/2011/08/31/github-flow.html

windows-7-emulation-with-css3-and-jquery

http://www.normansblog.de/demos/windows-7-emulation-with-css3-and-jquery/

Kill Hollywood (Y Combinator)

http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html

10 things you need to do if you were FIRED yesterday (James Altucher)

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/03/10-things-you-need-to-do-if-you-were-fired-yesterday/

What Can We Learn From Woody Allen? (James Altucher)

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/01/9-things-i-learned-from-woody-allen/

Why? Because He Can...

http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Kiwi-recites-periodic-table-while-solving-Rubiks-Cube/tabid/439/articleID/25581/Default.aspx

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Model Airport in Auckland

http://www.imogenia.com/

1:600 scale

Does he allow visitors?

Miniatur Wunderland (Hamburg)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Monday, December 19, 2011

The funniest thing I have seen all year

This guy could do standup... wait, he *is* :)

OK, this is now officially *the* funniest thing I have seen in the past year
Forget Friday, or even Matt Mulholland's Bohemified cover of it...
If you're a (computer) geek at all, this is *it* !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&feature=channel_video_title

LMAO ~34min and following

Enjoy... maybe visit the little room first though :)

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Why Your New Programming Language Will Not Work

http://colinm.org/language_checklist.html

The Mature Programmer - C Bloom Rants

http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2011/11/11-22-11-mature-programmer.html

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

eMail Makes You Dumber Than Dope?

http://articles.cnn.com/2005-04-22/world/text.iq_1_mails-iq-messages?_s=PM:WORLD

7 Things Highly Productive People Do (or so I'm told)

http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/7-things-highly-productive-people-do.html

Monday, December 12, 2011

Bouncy Castle

http://www.bouncycastle.org/

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

NDepend CQL C#

http://www.ndepend.com/

FitSharp -- FitNesse for C#

http://fitsharp.github.com/FitSharp.html

Monday, December 5, 2011

Accelerating Hindsight: Rapid Prototyping in Common LISP

http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Hindsight.html

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Emacs Keybindings for Factor

http://stack-factor.blogspot.com/2011/11/emacs-keybindings.html

Gerald J Sussman -- 'We really don't know how to compute" lecture outlinks

Truth Maintenance Systems for Problem Solving:
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6926

Building Problem Solvers (Artificial Intelligence) [Hardcover]:
http://goo.gl/kfBB6

Truth maintenance systems (Tutorial) [Unknown Binding]:
http://goo.gl/nRESM
Truth Maintenance Systems: Tutorial Program [Paperback]:
http://goo.gl/HSNcf