Category Archives: Software

GTK+ printing

Posted on June 14, 2008 by Eric

I’m just starting to learn about printing in GTK+. The documentation provides a good API reference, but is a bit intimidating, and I didn’t find much in the way of sample code. There’s a sample called “printedit” in libegg, but … Continue reading →

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Nonpareil status

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Eric

I’m still making progress towards a new release on Nonpareil.  Sometimes it seems like the more work I do, the more I find that needs to be done.

Posted in Calculators, Nonpareil | 8 Comments

The suboptimal way to expand a filesystem online

Posted on April 12, 2008 by Eric

I used LVM to increase the size of a logical volume containing an ext3 fileystem from 300GB to 500GB. After expanding the logical volume, it is necessary to expand the filesystem to use the added space. In theory, this can … Continue reading →

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Suboptimal new computer experience — privacy vs. Mac OS X

Posted on April 10, 2008 by Eric

I just got a refurbished Apple Mac mini, with the 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It is mainly intended for use compiling my open source programs such as Nonpareil for Mac OS X. I am extremely surprised at … Continue reading →

Posted in Mac OS X, Nonpareil, Privacy, The Suboptimal Way | 4 Comments

Turing Machine in Bare Bones

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Eric

The most recent release of my Bare Bones interpreter made identifiers case-insensitive, and added an optional peephole optimizer that recognizes a common idiom: while N not 0 do;   decr N;   incr X; end; Such a loop adds N … Continue reading →

Posted in Bare Bones, Computer Science | 2 Comments

Bare Bones interpreter

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Eric

Over the weekend I finished the homework assignment for the “Theory of Computation” chapter of Computer Science: An Overview, Ninth Edition, by J. Glenn Brookshear. Brookshear defines a very minimal programming language called Bare Bones, in which variables may contain … Continue reading →

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I have the greatest enthusiasm for the mission, Dave.

Posted on January 20, 2008 by Eric

University of East Anglia researchers have received a grant of half a million dollars to develop lip reading software.  [h/t Slashdot Science]

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New software development methodologies

Posted on August 24, 2007 by Eric

Scott Berkun points out that the software industry invents an amazing number of new development methodologies, and proposes a few new ones.  Actually he’s just documenting existing practices.  More are listed in the comments.

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SCO loses!

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Eric

The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine! Judge Kimball has ruled in SCO v. Novell that SCO does not own the Unix copyrights, and therefore most of SCO’s claims against Novell are dismissed. SCO has to … Continue reading →

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Copyright, Software | Leave a comment

World’s oldest vaporware finally shipped

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Eric

You might think that vaporware is a relatively new thing. Perhaps the best known example is Duke Nukem Forever, which was announced in 1997 but still has not shipped. It received Wired News’ Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Vaporwear … Continue reading →

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