Recently, I’ve been reminiscing a bit about the past ever since I rediscovered a small set of old dairies in some box in the basement whilst looking for something else. For some unknown reason at that particular stage of my life, I managed (endeavored? was encouraged?) to keep a daily diary, and did it for a couple of years, basically from my last few months of University well into my first job. Since then? Nope, no diaries. […]
READ MOREFor a few reasons, this year has been very different for me. More so than even 2020 and the start of the big pandemic was. For instance, I went to get my eyes checked about 6 months ago, got some new glasses with a new stronger prescription, and I still feel awkward and clumsy since everything seems closer but isn’t. Witness me falling flat on my face at Heathrow at the start of our vacation because I didn’t realize the curb was higher than I noticed. […]
READ MOREWeirdly, someone pinged me about a week ago asking about the A* algorithm. Wut?, I thought to myself, and then remembered writing an article about it way back when. So, here goes… […]
READ MOREOne of the things I do on this site is to monitor requests that produce 404 errors. Originally it was for purely personal reasons (I use a URL shortener for many URLs I post so it was a way to check I’d got the URL-lengthening right), but very quickly it became obvious that script kiddies were the main source of 404 errors (one, two, three, etc). The one that still makes me laugh is the script kiddie trying to access a vulnerability in a long-since-fixed Telerik control on my web site (hello! I’m the CTO for DevExpress!). […]
READ MOREA couple of times now I’ve been “caught out” by the fact that I’m a Windows guy and AWS is Linux-based. Or, to put it another way, I’m used to case insensitivity with file names (so foobar.txt and FooBar.txt are the same file), whereas AWS is case-sensitive (those two names are for different files). […]
OK, the news that Sir Clive Sinclair died today (RIP, Sir Clive!) caused me to remember that I have another Sinclair calculator in my collection, apart from the two I’ve already talked about (the Sinclair Cambridge Scientific and the Sinclair Scientific). It’s the Sinclair Cambridge Programmable. Yes, it can be programmed! And, just like the Casio fx-98 I talked about last time, it was licensed in the US to produce the Radio Shack EC-4001 (more on that in a moment). […]
READ MOREOK, time for another quick delve into my calculator collection: it’s the Casio fx-98. This particular one is interesting for a few reasons: first is it’s a scientific calculator, albeit not RPN; second, it’s the size of a credit card, even though it’s thicker; third, it’s solar powered – no batteries to worry about; and finally, Casio licensed it out to Radio Shack who produced the equivalent under their own name. […]
READ MORESo a couple of days ago, I had a free half hour, so decided to check that the open source JavaScript libraries I use in my various websites were up to date. Rather than open up the base source files and check, I decided to be hip and use Firefox’s Developer Tools console window instead, when suddenly… […]
READ MOREI’m sure that you are prevalent to getting scam emails just like I am. For me, there’s a class of them that I get one of per week, maybe two, that pretend to be a Voicemail. An urgent Voicemail. Possibly involving payments. Must be IMPORTANT! […]
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