Blog

icon

How the PC hardware market has changed in the past 5 years...
I've mostly ignored the hardware market for the past 5 years... until my desktop started acting up, which then caused an unplanned 2-week project to get my computer going. It all ended well. I didn't even need to resort to my BackBlaze backup. A bunch of stuff hasn't changed, not in the slightest…

icon

Brian O'Leary, Ex-Astronaut
Brian O'Leary was one of the " Excess Eleven ", the second group of Scientist-Astronauts hired by NASA in the midst of the Apollo program. In terms of the space program, he's pretty much a footnote, one of several who left or were forced out of the astronaut corps throughout the past few decades…

icon

This website should look a little different now
It's generally regarded as stupid to spend a bunch of time writing your own CMS. It's the website equivalent of spending hours fiddling with your vi config. Or the software equivalent of sorting your record collection in biographical order. Heck, I know folks who work on WordPress. They are…

icon

Illnesses of the non-visible sort
Since Sept 19th or so, I've had a series of colds with a little bit of ‘normal' time but then it comes back. This has meant some working from home and some times where I had conversations at work that I wasn't fully present for. On the other hand, you can hear it in my voice... the blocked sinuses…

icon

The tumblr of my mind... or... katas of more than one artistic pursuit
One of my coworkers joked that he'd really love to see a tumblr of "What's on Ken's mind". Because people get used to the idea that there's usually a bunch of stuff working it's way through my brain at the same time and that if I mention what I did lately outside of work in conversation, there's…

icon

A few thoughts on Yahoo and Microsoft's respective troubles
When I was working at Yahoo!, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo!. And I generally thought of it as a bad idea. At the time, my feelings were that if the deal went through, it would almost certainly mean the end of both companies... and I wasn't too interested in working for Microsoft. Although I…

icon

The frustration that is trying to do DRM-free eBooks legally
I've kinda come to terms with buying eBooks instead of physical books, even though there are a lot of archivist implications involved that bug me. However, I still heavily dislike the use of DRM, so I want to avoid this as much as possible. And this turns out to be tricky... The problem with DRM, in…