mtm | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?
mtm's comments
mtm | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Has anyone started over outside of tech?
After working full time in a wide variety of tech since 1983 (embedded systems work on medical equipment and commercial fire alarm systems, hotel reservation systems, ramp and fuel delivery systems in aviation, multiple startups in Silicon Valley, etc, ad naseum) I’m currently taking a break and working as a pin setter mechanic at a couple of local bowling alleys. The work is physical (running up and down the back of the 40 and 64 lane alleys, climbing up on the machines) and challenging in its own way: the machines were designed in the 50s and are a complex assortment of pulleys, belts, gears, cams, levers, etc. There is even a mechanical “computer” that acts as a state machine directing the operations of the machine. I still get to use my problem solving skills but in a much more tactile way. Also, no pointless meetings, conference calls. Downside: the pay is terrible. Fortunately I’m in a position in my life where that is not nearly as important as it used to be.
mtm | 4 years ago | on: Literate programming is much more than just commenting code
One of my favorite examples of a literate-style program is "cl-6502, A Readable CPU Emulator" by Brit Butler
mtm | 4 years ago | on: The BYTE magazine covers by Robert Tinney
Yep, I got the FORTH cover a few years ago, looks great:
mtm | 4 years ago | on: Intuit to share payroll data from 1.4M small businesses with Equifax
https://plaintextaccounting.org
Not sure about receipt scanning though.
mtm | 5 years ago | on: Watchy: Hackable $50 Smartwatch
Regarding the "camera viewfinder remote view thingy" I've used it to:
* point my phone at a TV while I aligned an outside VHF antenna
* point my phone at a security flood while I figured out which breaker in the garage controlled it
mtm | 5 years ago | on: The Framework Laptop
Any plans to support movable keycaps? I'd love to actually have the physical keys match my Colemak layout
mtm | 5 years ago | on: The benefits of note-taking by hand
I'm hoping the ReMarkable 2 closes that gap even further.
mtm | 5 years ago | on: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects
I've added mini-clover to my back yard. It's only been 2 months but the yard is already much healthier.
mtm | 6 years ago | on: Show HN: Quill – Messaging for teams that focus
Will there be a RESTish API available? Or really any well-documented API.
Will Quill play nice with federated systems?
mtm | 6 years ago | on: Basics of Compiler Design (2000) [pdf]
Instaparse is excellent (https://github.com/engelberg/instaparse) if you are using Clojure
mtm | 6 years ago | on: Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
how about like this:
# cp [existing-thing] [new-thing]
# mv [existing-thing] [new-thing]
# ln -s [existing-thing] [new-thing]
mtm | 8 years ago | on: USAF Is Jamming GPS in Western U.S. For Largest Ever Red Flag Air War Exercise
Interesting, I’m doing the same but using WWVB 60khz radio signal for my time source
mtm | 8 years ago | on: Insomnia REST Client
I've always been partial to 'restclient-mode': https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el
So nice to capture a flow of commands and notes in a single plain text file
mtm | 8 years ago | on: “It is never a compiler error”
I was a user of a very early version of Zortech C++ (one of the first native C++ compilers (late '80s); no running through cfront) and ran into a very subtle bug in the math routines: sometimes when doing math with 8 bit values the answers would be corrupted. Took a while for me to track down the bug but I eventually found it in the assembly output. Turns out that the math was actually being done with 16 bit registers and the high byte (AH) was not being cleared and this would sometimes set a carry (I think, my memory is fuzzy on the details).
Walter was quick with a fix. Sometimes it is the compiler, but usually it's not.
mtm | 8 years ago | on: Energy Efficiency Across Programming Languages
A real shame that Forth wasn't included in the tested languages. Chuck Moore has been an advocate for more energy efficient computation for a while now.
mtm | 8 years ago | on: Ferret – A free software Clojure implementation
It seems well thought out:
* malloc/free (ref counting GC)
* memory pooling (no heap, stack-based for memory constrained systems)
* third party allocators
* third party GC
Details here: http://ferret-lang.org/#sec-4-2
mtm | 8 years ago | on: The Loyal Engineers Steering NASA’s Voyager Probes Across the Universe
I'd also highly recommend "NASA Voyager 1 & 2 Owners' Workshop Manual" https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0857337750
It goes into amazing detail on the history of the spacecraft and the events that made it possible. For example: the story of an intern figuring out the '3 body' problem and, from there, the concept of 'gravity assist' gave me goosebumps
mtm | 8 years ago | on: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures
For github I crafted together this little bookmarklet to ignore whitespace on diffs (use it daily for our code reviews):
javascript:(function()%7Bopen(location.href+'?w=1');%7D)();void(0);
mtm | 8 years ago | on: GNU Guix and GuixSD 0.13.0 released
I just installed GuixSD 0.12 last week on a Dell 13 7000. Went mostly smoothly (had to use Grub BIOS instead of UEFI, that's been fixed in 0.13) after I replaced the Intel WiFi card with an Atheros based one.
My needs are simple: emacs, Clojure (with Icedtea), Icecat and StumpWM. Plus all the guile goodness!
Just realized I'm living in a system with four Lisps front and center (guile, Common Lisp, elisp, and Clojure)
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I'm working with the Brunswick A2 machines. Here's a link to the service manual if you're curious what these machines are like (PDF): https://brunswickbowling.com/uploads/document-library/Servic...