Author Archive

2009Q2 in a Word: Busy

August 16th, 2009

In a word, one could say that I have been “busy.” I was unable to find time for my blog during a whole quarter of the year. In one of those weeks, I flew from LAX to Dulles, Geneva, Paris, and Frankfurt. During another week in San Mateo, I was at the wedding of a […]

Configuring the timezone on Red Hat Linux

March 13th, 2009

I recently set up a server remotely and with much success, however I overlooked the configuration of the operating system’s timezone settings. This is typically set up during the installation of the operating system, but since the dedicated server provider performs the installation for customers, it is a step that can be easily overlooked when […]

Strategy-like Pattern in PHP

February 19th, 2009

Today, I had some time to write a little program while I was watching people work on the infrastructure at the office. I wrote up a couple of functions that calculated the n-th Fibonacci number, and wanted to display the sequence of the first 100 numbers as they were calculated by these functions. At first, […]

Viewing More Work with Multiple Displays

January 16th, 2009

A news story at The New York Times, Boss, I Need a Bigger Screen. For Work Efficiency, of Course., professes the benefits of using multiple displays or a bigger screen while computing. The article’s writer, Farhad Manjoo, points to research at the University of Utah that observed a 44% increase in productivity when multiple bigger […]

Disconnected

December 19th, 2008

A recent news article reports that a communications cable has been cut, affecting Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This has happened before, but it did not seem likely to me that it would be something that would reoccur. The article on BBC quotes Interoute’s Jonathan Wright, “For this to happen twice in one year, […]