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Lazy Reading for 2012/01/15

Getting back into the rhythm, here…

Your unrelated comics link of the week: there’s a Freddy, and a dragonfly, but it’s not DragonFly BSD.  It’s still fun though.

 

Posted on
Lazy Reading for 2012/01/01

Happy new year!  Regular posting should resume soon now that my holidays are over.

Your completely unrelated link of the day: Tiny Legs of Fire.  (video) Worth it for the origin of Beardslap.

 (Sorry about the giant text block.  This isn’t as readable as I’d like.)

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Lazy Reading for 2011/12/18

The links are sheer entertainment this week.  No strong options or anything, not even about that U.S. legislative mess called SOPA.

Your unrelated comic link of the week: Basic Instructions.  Well, not totally unrelated, since BSD author Michael Lucas’s tweet about it reminded me.  I’ve got the first book; I need to get the second and third.

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Lazy Reading for 12/11/11

Last week was low on links, but this week is great!  I hope you have some time set aside.

  • This article “The Strange Birth and Long Life of UNIX” has a picture of a PDP-11.  I don’t know if I ever actually saw one and knew it before.  (via)
  • Also from the same place: Window Managers Bloodlines.
  • Anecdotal, but probably true. (via luxh on EFNet )
  • nginx is the new cool and unpronounceable web server these days, apparently.  Michael Lucas covers how to transition static Apache sites over to it.
  • This PDF showing slides from the recent NYCBUG presentation by Ike Levy, titled “Inappropriate Cloud Use”, is entertaining, and makes a good point.  Cloud computing is cheap on a per month basis, but since it’s a reoccurring cost, it can cost a surprisingly large amount in the long run.  (via)
  • Hey, a patch for DragonFly (and other BSD) support in Google’s leveldb.
  • “Don’t Be a Free User” (via)  The last paragraph is the best.
  • An expanded grep and diff.  ‘grep’ and ‘diff’ have been present for so long, and people understand what they do, generally, that new tools get named after them just because the concept is ingrained in people’s minds.  Note that I said “generally”, as regular expressions can be difficult.  (via)
  • A lot of people don’t realize how they infringe on copyright.  This writeup describes something I’ve seen for years: people think a disclaimer that effectively says “I’m infringing but I’m doing it with the best of intentions” makes a difference.  It doesn’t.
  • So this is what that Xerox Star GUI interface looked like.  You know, the ‘first’ desktop GUI.   (via) Also, there was some advanced stuff in 1968.
  • I like this indicator light setup.  (also via luxh on EFNet #dragonflybsd)  There’s some other interesting old computer stuff at that site too.  I wish there still were computers like these.
  • While we’re talking about old things with a certain feel to them, why not Battersea Power Station?  Here’s some pictures.  (via)

Your unrelated link of the day: Since we’re talking about old things and environments, why not look at some pictures of my workplace?

Posted on
Lazy Reading for 2011/12/04

Another week, another linkpile.

  • Here’s some old software.  I’ve got something older sitting on my shelf here, though.
  • A patch to DragonFly, taken from OpenBSD, submitted by Loganaden Velvindron and committed by Venkatesh Srinivas.  The patch isn’t that exciting, but it makes me feel cool to namedrop non-Americanized names.  If only I could pronounce them!
  • Speaking of which, there isn’t always a lot of comments on this Digest (which is good; a long series of comments on the Internet tend to be the result of trolling or inanity.), but the recent strlen() story led to some juicy details.
  • Man, I wish this NoteSlate device existed.  There’s the BoogieBoard, but it’s not quite the same.

I’ll make up for my relatively low number of links by asking a question:   Where do you go for your end of year gift giving?  Where do you wish people would go to buy you gifts?  I’m looking for suggestions for a gift guide.

Your unrelated comics link of the week: Gun Show.  This one and that one are my favorites.

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Lazy Reading for 2011/11/27

Happy (post) Turkey Day for the U.S. readers!  A light link week this week.

  • Facebook is bad for the Internet.  ‘Gaslighting’ is a new term to me.  As that article points out, I can’t even put my posts to the Digest onto Facebook in any sort of automated way.  Facebook suggests that of course I’d love to retype them all by hand.  That’s not realistic.    Facebook doesn’t want any sort of useful external link to be visible to their customers.  Customers isn’t actually the right word; the customers are the advertisers.  What would be a better word for the users?  Crop?
  • “the internet is above and beyond all else a resentment machine.”  It’s a very long essay that points out people are confusing brand identity with personal identity.  (via)
  • You know what would be good?  More conversations about games on BSD, cause it could use some attention.  Oh hey there you go.
  • A Dragonfly lamp (via Julian Gehtdichgarnichtsan)

Your unrelated link of the week: Animals Talking In All Caps.  It is what it says it is.

 

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Lazy Reading for 2011/11/20

Hey, the date’s sorta palindromic!  Sorta.

  • “Bundled, Buried and Behind Closed Doors” – a video description of the physical parts of the Internet.  Remember when MAE-East or MAE-West would have a bad day and half the Internet felt it?  Really, half.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating. (via)
  • Google has a verbatim search mode now, for those of you who regret the loss of ‘+’ as a required search term designator.  (via and also sort of via)  There’s always alternatives.
  • “The expr program is a real piece of crap.”  Laser-focused complaining about a small program that’s had 4 decades to improve, and hasn’t.
  • “Mechanics for Pure Aesthetics”  The videos are interesting, and I’m linking to this because so much of what I post here and deal with is focused computer work.  Everything is a tool, with a purpose, and a result that you expect.  This idea of machinery or even software having a purpose other than result generation is underexplored.  There’s lots of tools to create art, but there’s little that is art itself.  Even with that general lack, we still get excited when the edge of some sort of aesthetic appeal nudges its way into the materials we use.  You could argue that Apple’s success (for instance) comes from being the one company that consistently thinks about what a product is, instead of what it does.
  • If you use fastcgi, you may need the patch that this blog post talks about.  Also, apache-mpm-prefork is the better choice for Apache on DragonFly.
  • “DragonFly mug shot“

Your random comic link of the day: Calamity of Challenge.  Also here.  And here.  If this artist’s way of drawing grabs you like it grabs me, he has pages and commissions for sale.

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Lazy Reading for 2011/11/06

A bumper crop of articles to read this week.

Random unrelated link for the week: “War Photographer“.  This animation makes me so happy.