Posts
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A couple of opinion pieces published in my local newspaper
I’ve been fortunately recently to have two opinion pieces published by my local newspaper. I’m a bit old-fashioned perhaps when I submitted these to a print newspaper instead of something online, but it was enjoyable to see them in print.
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Climate Change and the Covid-19 Pandemic
I recently read an opinion article in the local paper arguing – rightly – that climate change is a much greater threat than the pandemic. But unfortunately it lead off by saying that climate change caused the pandemic:
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Star Citizen
It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited about a video game.
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Everything I know about photography I learned from Ken Rockwell (part one)
I walked outside on a spring day in 2018 and saw this great sky above me. I didn’t have my camera so I just used my iPhone. I shot literally straight up into the air. I turned it into black and white afterwards using Apple Photos. Nothing fancy. View on 500px -
Urban density is more complicated than you might think
Density is often seen as the cure for what ails our cities, our mental health, and the environment, and rightly so. Density is great for all those things. But density is also complicated. There is good density and not-so-good density. Staying in an Airbnb on the 37th floor of a Toronto highrise last week reminded me of why.
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A textbook example (Semacode)
My first startup was Semacode, the world’s first downloadable QR Code scanner. When I tell people my entrepreneurship story, I tell them that my first company was a technological and press success, but a business failure. We were covered in Wired and the Economist, and we did make some money, but not that much. Ultimately, we never figured out how to make a business out of it. That was a big mistake. I thought I had a product, but actually what I had was a technology.
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My very own CVE - Safari Security Update 2017-03-27-2 Safari 10.1
I’m famous!
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How to make emacs understand nginx files
I started using
emacsabout 20 years ago, but I never mastered it. I learned most of the text editing keys, but I never bothered to understand modes, commands, modules, or how to use it to read email, surf the web, or emulate videogames. -
Stephen Elop, Nokia, Microsoft, and the Trojan War
“What happened to Nokia” I was just wondering. Obviously the answer is like BlackBerry they were blinded by the magnificence of their own operating system and didn’t realize that they are a hardware company and can’t write an OS for shit.
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Awesome totally enclosed sets in Sci-Fi movies
All the best sci-fi movies built fully enclosed sets. What’s a fully enclosed set, you ask? Imagine the Firefly, the hero ship from the cult series, and you imagine walking around inside this beautiful, grungy interior, staircases, ladders, the bridge, the kitchen. The actual firefly set is exactly as you see it. If you climb up the stairs from the med station you get to the kitchen. If you go back from the bridge you pass the crew quarters. The actors and crew spent their days inside this magnificent and fully built set that occupied several floors of a massive soundfloor.