Books I read in 2013: Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore (Robin Sloane)I loved this book. A modern-day mystery story, set in San Francisco with all the tech hipsterism that implies, but also featuring old books, movable type and a secret society. Taking Sudoku Seriously (Jason Rosenhouse and Laura Taalman)This was…
Indiecade day 1
An excellent day of networking at Indiecade. Link dump time so I don’t forget these people… First was the guys from Rust presenting their experience making The Museum of the Microstar. Then I hung out in the rotunda meeting interesting folks, having thought-provoking discussions and playing some cool games. Chatted…
An Interesting C++ Technique
I recently discovered a C++ technique I haven’t seen recognized before in any books, articles, or mentioned online anywhere (search terms are difficult perhaps). For want of a better name I call it Structural Capture. Consider the following code: #include #include using namespace std; //————————————————————— struct Foo { template Foo(const…
The Year in Books
Books I’ve read this year: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Daniel H Pink)I started the year by finishing this book. I was rather late to the party in reading it; it’s practically received wisdom now, especially for managers of knowledge workers. And of course there is a…
How 6-year-olds think about evolution…
Had an interesting conversation with Henry tonight. Can’t quite remember how we started – he was asking something to do with the Ice Age, or the Stone Age. Then he asked, “How did the first person get here?” Now, he’s seen plenty of nature shows; he’s heard of evolution; so…
The 4th Amendment and Email
Tonight there was an interesting broadcast of To The Point examining email privacy rights and the 4th amendment, with reference to the recent warrantless FBI investigation resulting in the resignation of David Petraeus as the director of the CIA. The program also featured Declan McCullagh, author of this piece on…
Late night stealth
I would like to share with you some things I’ve learned about creeping around stealthily late at night, after the family have gone to bed, in case you find yourself in a similar situation. I’m pretty good at it now. So, obviously to avoid waking anyone up, you want to…
The Second Amendment
Why do people support the second amendment? I’m going to try to avoid straw man arguments here. And the first straw man argument to avoid, I think, is: “because it protects us from tyranny: if the government becomes corrupt, we can rise up and overthrow it.” Perhaps I’m being naive,…
A musical interlude
I had piano lessons at around age 5, and again around age 10. I never practised enough or liked my teacher much. As a teenager at university, I went back to the piano to play tunes that I wanted to, and taught myself enough to get by on those. After…
Merry Xmas
This year it was a fairly quiet affair, seeing as we’d already visited family in late summer and at Thanksgiving. The kids did well as usual. Mini-Elbeno got a Kindle Fire from the grandparents (and has been bound not to buy anything on it without the express permission and help…