Month: August 2012

  • More rbenv notes

    My last post on rbenv mentioned some things you need to do to get ruby to build on Mountain Lion. Here are a few more things. This guy Jacob Swanner didn’t want to use either Xcode or gcc. He just used the Xcode command-line tools, with a CC environment variable, thus: $ CC=/usr/bin/clang rbenv install […]

  • rbenv notes

    I used to use rvm to manage my ruby environment, but the latest hotness seems to be rbenv. Here are some tips about using it. They’re aimed at me, because by the next time I need to use it, I’ll have forgotten. But you can read them too: One of the things you want is […]

  • Tab Sweep

    Khan Academy launches a program to teach Computer Science. Frank Fleming’s FAQ on Christianity for the unbeliever.

  • Sync iOS Calendar with Multiple Google Apps Calendars

    In a previous posting, I said I had problems connecting with more than one Google calendar per Google app. I assumed that was a misfeature of the syncing capability of the iOS calendar apps. But I was wrong. The problem was with Google — or, really, with me. Google provides an interface called iPhone Select. […]

  • Syncing Calendars in Mountain Lion

    Update: I’ve figured this out. The problem wasn’t with Apple at all. I was wrong to assume it was at their end, and even more wrong to assume the problem would never be fixed due to the poor state of relations between Apple and Google. I was wrong and I’m sorry.</update> I’m having trouble with […]

  • Blast From the Past

    I found this program called Cathode that does an incredible job of recreating the experience of writing code on a CRT display, ca. 1980–83. Many was the hour I logged on the Lear-Sigler ADM-3A — in those days time was logged, so you could pay for it. That was incredibly unfair since the I/O (for […]

  • Neil Peart Interview

    Interesting (but brief) interview with Neil Peart about Clockwork Angels and other topics. …I’m less comfortable in a gregarious social situation, and you can be introverted and still share everything. It just means that you’re guarded. Certainly there is a line that seems perfectly clear to me about what’s to be shared and what isn’t, […]

  • Lit Nights Lead to Dark Days?

    Depressed? Turn off the lights and go to sleep. That’s the conclusion of a study recently announced in Time magazine: A study from Ohio State University Medical Center found that hamsters with chronic exposure to dim light at night showed signs of depression within just a few weeks: reduced physical activity compared with hamsters living […]

  • “This was not a boating accident!”

    …well, actually, it was a boating accident, according to the Anchorage Daily News: Two women are dead after their canoe capsized on Eagle River on Wednesday afternoon, police and fire officials said. They had PFDs and other people were with them and still they died. Authorities are investigating. Earlier this summer, I was trying to […]

  • More on Passwords

    In my previous entry about passwords, I didn’t say how hard it would be to crack my passwords. Beats me. I didn’t even say how many bits of entropy they represent, which is apparently what all the cool crypto cats do. (The first number I cited, 3 × 1 million3, has 62 bits(!) of entropy. That’s […]