So some emotional impairment makes me unable to have a simple conversation with a neurotypical person, which makes all social interactions rather complicated.

All?

Well, perhaps not.

“It works…”

This laptop landed in my hands a couple weeks ago, and a quick check online suggested it was well supported by FreeBSD. So I gave it a try! It worked out of the box… nearly.

My relationship with Apple laptops and OSX: 2004♥ — 2013 :-( — 2015†.

tl;dr: Apple has stretched my ethical boundaries too far, so I decided to move on. I am now giving Android a shot in combination with a touch screen. So far, lovin’ it.

The issue started when Apple started requiring …

It’s alive, it’s alive!

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type             : Ralink RT5350 id:1 rev:3
machine                 : VoCore
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS 24KEc V4.12
BogoMIPS                : 479.23
wait instruction        : yes
microsecond timers      : yes
tlb_entries             : 32
extra interrupt vector  : yes
hardware watchpoint     : yes, count: 4, address …

Recently I designed a utility for my research. To implement this utility I needed a programming language that: 1) is appropriate for fast prototyping, 2) supports asynchronous, low-latency event handling, and 3) supports efficient in-program multi-way channel polling.

So far I could find, only Go fits the bill, and so …

Last week I implemented my first “useful” genetic algorithm (GA) to solve a mapping problem. Lesson learned: don’t mistake “good solution according to the algorithm” with “good solution to the problem.”

Two weeks ago, I learned that my research group will trade one large room for two smaller rooms …

I did it again.

It’s like self-gratification: can’t hurt anyone, reliable pleasure, kept me busy for a while, pleasant relief afterwards.

Really, I ought to have been working on new, abstract, sexy-sounding research directions to advance my career.

Instead, I spent a half week programming and engineering. And …

We have in our office this awesome networked multi-function laser color printer able to churn out hundreds of pages in a few minutes. It’s also our coffee corner at work. Which means I spend time quite often next to it. And therefore that I see stuff coming out of …

So there’s this bunch of friends who wanted me to play Scrabble with them. I’d like to play with them. Unfortunately, my relationship with words does not involve decomposing them into individual letters: I learn and use them as a whole, not an assembly of their parts. So …

Distraction is pleasurable, but there are many ways to waste time reading stuff online. There’s the useless stuff, and there’s the stuff that makes you stupid. In contrast, choose wisely and balance useful stuff with stuff that makes you smarter and more creative.

For example: web comics are …

How to organize your contact list, 21st century-style.

Orkut, Hyves, Facebook, Google+… They all try it and fail.

Did you ever have to decide whether your best buddy at work should be labeled “Friends” or “Work”? Or whether your brother-soon-to-be-co-founder should be “Family” or “Work”? Or whether your best-friend-closer-than-your-brother should …

All manners of self-help and “life hacking” sites promote programs and techniques to expand one’s boundaries of self-awareness or otherwise improve one’s compatibility with the real world (as opposed to the fantasy world that most people have built in their head). I think they are all unnecessary; there …

Ever wondered how to put a network to good use with sound matters? Here’s how it’s done at my place.

A simple setup looks like this:

This diagram illustrates the use of the Music Player Daemon (MPD, wiki, wiki) on a centralized music library and audio output, with …

The question “top or bottom?” can be answered with “versatile,” to mean “either, depending on circumstances.” Another possible answer is “interleaved.” Here’s an argument that the proper answer should be “both” to maximize satisfaction.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

The main options [when replying to email] are interleaved posting, also called …

I had a shitty week-end.

Maybe not the shittiest week-end ever. There were two light point, namely the impromptu water art session on Saturday night and two hours of dance classes on Sunday. Just for that it was not all that bad.

Nevertheless, except for these few light hours, I …

לֹא תַחְמֹד בֵּית רֵעֶךָ. לֹא תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ, וְעַבְדּוֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ וְשׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶך …