Posted by Eric
Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT
Vermont is locked deep in the grasp of winter. This December, the
Conneticut River Valley received about three feet of snow (quite
remarkable in these days of global warming). The snow has reflected
sunlight back into space, causing the temperature to drop far below our
winter average. But this Saturday, the weather got seriously
cold.
The temperatures in Manchester (to the east) and Burlington (to the
west) didn't go much below -5F (-20C) on Saturday morning. But a cold
air mass lodged itself in the river valley, and those of us near
Lebanon saw morning temperatures below -20F (-30C). To give you some
idea how cold this is, my breath freezes to my beard at -5F. But at
-20F, my eyelashes froze together.
This was, of course, the same morning we planned to go snowshoeing
at 9am. The first half-hour of hiking was rather unpleasant, but after
that, we warmed up and began to sweat. The woods were beautiful.
Posted by Eric
Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT
In high school, I loved to ski. But for the past 8 or 9 years, I've
stayed away from the mountains, thanks to procrastination and cold
toes. Last Sunday, I tossed my skis in the car and drove 20 minutes to
the local mountain.
Skiing is like riding a bicycle; you don't forget. The turns, the
feel of the snow, even the dull rattling sound of the chairlifts--it
all comes back. The physical conditioning, unfortunately, takes a bit
longer. In the winter of 1994, I worked out 8 to 10 hours per week.
Today, I write software for a living and make it to the gym rarely. So
I have the skiing skills of an aggressive high school athlete, and the
body of an all-to-sedentary adult.
But as you get older, you learn a trick or two. One of the most
valuable tricks is to ease up on the brute force, and to use your
strength wisely. Everything's easier if you let the mountain do the
hard work. Don't jam your skis into the turns; adapt to the rhythm of
the mountain.
Today I made a small breakthrough in skiing the bumps. My skis are
198 centimeters long, with a very shallow sidecut--not an ideal mogul
ski in a world of 165 centimeter parabolic skis, which create
ridiculously tiny bumps. I've never been able to turn my skis in the
narrow grooves between the moguls. But today I tried going faster, and
learned that each bump would give me enough power to get my skis
airborne (clear of the groove), and turn them before hitting the next
bump. It's a tiny victory--I can't ski more than half a dozen bumps
before my legs start to burn, and I'm the merest novice--but it feels
like a dance with the mountain. This is why I pay too much for ski
tickets.
Posted by Eric
Tue, 31 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
On impulse, I drove to the computer store today and picked up a
Cisco 350 series wireless networking card. It appears to work
fine with Linux. I'm currently participating in an ad-hoc wireless
network relayed through a laptop with two wireless interfaces--one to
serve the local net, and a long-range card to relay traffic to a nearby
building. Slick.
I still don't have a particularly good grasp on this
technology--there's a lot of strange parameters and configuration
options, especially under Linux. But it works.
Posted by Eric
Tue, 31 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
I run Linux on a Sony VAIO PCG-FX200 laptop. For the benefit of
other Linux FX200 users out there, here's a summary of my hardware
experiences.
The laptop itself works fine. The screen is good, the battery will
keep the laptop running for about 2 hours (under Linux), and the hard
drive is fairly quiet. The CD/DVD drive burns CDs and plays DVDs
(using Xine). The built-in Ethernet works fine (using the e100 driver,
not the eepro driver). At one point, I had the i815em video card
displaying 3D, but this appears to be broken at the moment.
Despite the respectable battery life, power management is a bit
dodgy. In particular, there's no APM support, and I can't get the
laptop to sleep or suspend using ACPI.
In the past few weeks, I've added a bunch of peripherals: a Cisco
350-series wireless card, a Maxtor 80GB external FireWire drive, and a
PNY USB 1.1 SmartMedia drive. These all appear to work correctly.
Posted by Eric
Sun, 15 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
Most large open source projects have a "core team". Members of the
core team often have consulting businesses. These folks known a lot
about the project (they wrote it), and they tend to be productive
programmers. If you need help, hire them. This is one of the best
support options money can buy.
Posted by Eric
Wed, 11 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
Do you need to hire a programmer for a small-to-medium
contracting job? Do you want a fighting chance of success? Here are
some tips.
Read more...
Posted by Eric
Tue, 10 Dec 2002 00:00:00 GMT
wxWindows is a portable C++
GUI framework. My employer has a portable C++ application, and I'm
getting tired of maintaining all the custom GUI code. So we've begun
an ongoing experiment: porting our application to wxWindows. Here's
what we've learned so far.
Read more...
Tags wxWidgets
Posted by Eric
Sun, 10 Nov 2002 00:00:00 GMT
This Saturday, I attended the LL2 conference at MIT. LL2 is
dedicated to "lightweight" programming languages, a delibrately loose
category including (1) any pleasant, easy-to-use scripting language and
(2) any academic language which makes it easier to prototype and write
software quickly. LL2 is a small, informal workshop with audience
participation. The attendees are a diverse bunch, and enjoy goring
each other's sacred cows. You have been warned.
Read more...
Tags Conference, Recommended
Posted by Eric
Mon, 30 Sep 2002 00:00:00 GMT
Turkey
seizes weapons-grade uranium. This time it was 15kg, seized from a
taxi. Last time it was 1kg, and that was sold to undercover
officers. Update: CNN claimed last night that initial reports were
wrong--they say that there was only a small amount of uranium (several
grams) and the purity is still being analyzed.
Posted by Eric
Mon, 30 Sep 2002 00:00:00 GMT
Michael Fromberger has
written a nice
formal analysis (PDF) of Paul Graham's Plan for Spam.
Tags Probability, Spam
