The Abacus

After winning an honourable mention in the Sun Microsystem's 1995 Java Applet Programming Contest and the Scientific American 2003 Sci/Tech Web Awards, my historical guide to this early computing device as been read by millions.

The abacus is still in use today by shopkeepers in Asia and Chinatowns in North America.

2OO1: A Space Odyssey (A Shrine)

Stanley Kubrick's 1969, 2OO1: A Space Odyssey, is the greatest science-fiction film ever made. This is my shrine to that masterpiece.

Cockpit of Bowman's pod.

Hacker's Wisdom

A collection of articles, USENET posts and personalities related to hacking compiled at the start of the millenium and updated occassionally.

PowerBook keyboard

Emacs

Emacs is The One True Editor; it is all things to all people. My Emacs page has Emacs and VM reference cards, my configuration files and the story of how I came to design the splash-screen logo.

Emacs splashscreen logo

My Pathologically Detailed™ Product Reviews

These are reviews of products that I thought merited a review. In a few cases, like the Powerbook Journal and the 50D Journal, they are detailed journals of my daily experiences using the products over a long period.

Sony SJ33 Clié

Back in the 2000s, personal digital assistants were leading-edge gadgets with appointments, calendar, reminders and it played video clips and MP3s. This was my first product review.

Powerbook Journal

In 2005, I bought my first Apple computer, a PowerBook G3 running OS X, and documented my pilgrimage daily in pathological detail. Since then, I have been an Apple convert.

The Seiko SNK809 Journal

The Seiko SNK809 is an inexpensive automatic, self-winding watch, perfect as your first automatic watch.

Canon 50D Journal

I began to take photography seriously in 2008, buying my first digital SLR and a 50mm lens.

Fuji X-E1 Journal

I switched from Canon to Fuji in late 2012, getting Fuji's mirrorless interchangeable lens digital camera. I haven't used the Canon ever since.

Fuji X100F Journal

I bought a fixed lens Fuji X100F in early 2017, as the X-E1 auto-focusing was too slow for street photography.

Gerber Multi-tool & Knife

This review is of the Cruicial multi-tool and the Contrast Knife, a pair of EDC (Every Day Carry) tools.

Leatherman New Wave

Leatherman makes rugged multi-tools. I also have the Leatherman P4.

Aether Fall Line Rain Shell

A review of a beautifully styled, but expensive, hooded jacket for the spring.

One Laptop Per Child

The One Laptop Per Child program was designed to provide laptops for children in developing nations.

Gallery

If you want to improve your photography, practice every day.

Opensource

Some software I wrote long ago.

xmotd (2003)

xmotd is a utility program for network administrators, that can be used to "broadcast" messages to users logged in across a network. xmotd runs on each user's workstation when they login and periodically checks whether a message file has been modified updated with a new message and pops up and displays the message, if it has.

prettyp (2002)

prettyp is a suite of programs that generates "pretty" PostScript source code listings using TeX. Who prints source-code any more?

gut (2007)

gut is a program that marks-up Project Gutenberg Etexts to HTML, suitable for reading in any Ebook reader (or any web browser) that supports HTML; e.g. Plucker (which ran on the Handspring Visor PDA).