Running Wizardry: The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on an Apple ][e emulator is truly one of the fun things in life. There is no school, like the old school, after all! Of course, if you saw the above image, you knew you were in for an old school brouhaha. My advice is to… Continue reading No school like the old school

I made a joule thief. So what? So nothing. I just thought it would be fun and interesting to find something to do with all the old, not-quite-dead-but-not-quite-useful batteries I have sitting around. That is a 3V LED and it can be lit (lighted?) by a battery showing less than 0.5V of potential. Cool? I… Continue reading Joule Thief

I realized earlier today that I sang as many notes on Milli Vanilli’s song Girl You Know It’s True as Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus did. I also have as many Grammy’s as Milli Vanilli. Did I have a point? Not especially.

Labor omnia vincit. Alea Iacta est. “Hard work conquers all.” Virgil said it more than 2,000 years ago. “The die is cast.” Attributed to Caesar, having crossed the Rubicon. Here is how I am tying these together today: Most of the year, I follow the first quotation. Work work work. Just like the governor in… Continue reading Two Latin quotations

I have a new iPhone that supports 5G. I had a minute when I was out and about today and ran a speedtest. As you can see, I got a respectable 96.2 Mbps down and 32.8 Mbps up. That is not going to replace the 904.99 Mbps that I just tested on my home Mac… Continue reading Respectable 5G performance

Microsoft is bringing back Clippy the paperclip. You’d think the people who brought you Microsoft Bob would learn not to double-down on bad interface decisions, but, apparently not. I would expect there would be a way to turn off Clippy within Windows, or you could always do it the way I did: Use a Mac.

If you smiled when you read “Moof!” you are 1) An original Macintosh fan, 2) a nerd or a geek, your choice, 3) old, 4) all of the above. I miss the sense of humor that was present in the software world years and years ago when we had to walk up-hill both ways to… Continue reading Moof!

I was looking for something else entirely (how to access the built-in webserver on my wifi-enable Keurig coffee maker, thanks for asking), and I ran across the classic RFC 1149. If you don’t have all the internet requests for comment memorized, RFC 1149 is titled “A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian… Continue reading RFC1149

Although by the time I found it it was an ex-scorpion, much like Francis Buchholz, it was still a big one, about four or five inches long! I left it here on a rock so that one of our desert creatures could have a snack, or even a meal. Yum!

It struck me today that we read a lot about disgruntled people. Why don’t we ever hear about gruntled people? Besides having the word “grunt” in it, which could turn some people off, it seems like a reasonable thing to be. So, if you are gruntled, don’t keep it to yourself, let someone know it.… Continue reading Why is no one ever gruntled?