A few months ago, my wife went on a kick where we watched the first few seasons of the TV show Dallas, rented on DVD from Blockbuster Online. If you watch 2-3 episodes a day of anything, you can't but help become a little obsessed. So when we … [Read more]
The GoogleCam Has Covered A Lot of Miles
I'm a fan of the Fail Blog, and the recent Sign Design Fail included a Google Maps StreetView link to Concord, NC, a suburb of Charlotte. They have streetview there? Apparently. I zoomed out to the entire USA and they have covered a TON of cities, … [Read more]
Hey Language Snobs: Don’t Pinch Pennies
Programming language snobs are penny pinchers. That's a tough sentence to write for some that just finished holding a workshop to help people learn Lisp of all languages. Why would I make such a bold, inflammatory statement? (No, not to troll. … [Read more]
Recap of Intro to Lisp Workshop
Thanks to everyone who attended or helped with the Chicago Lisp User Group's Intro to Lisp Workshop! We had a great turnout (41 people!), a great facility (thanks to IIT's Institute of Design), food and prizes (thanks to Obtiva), plus there was some … [Read more]
“Lisp Basics and Idioms” Presentation from Intro to Lisp Workshop
This is an HTML version of the slides from my "Lisp Basics and Idioms" presentation at the Chicago Lisp User Group's Intro to Lisp Workshop. It's also videotaped but it will take a while to transfer it to digital, edit it, etc. It was a good … [Read more]
Chicago Intro to Lisp Workshop Attendee Stats
[UPDATED 6/3/2008: I fixed a duplicate, found some more registration forms, and updated the stats.] We're blogging live from the Chicago Lisp User Group's Intro to Lisp Workshop, and (now that my presentation is done - whew!) here are some … [Read more]
Installing SBCL, Emacs, and SLIME on Windows XP
My recent install guide for CLISP, Emacs, and SLIME on Windows XP was a big hit - it has had about 2000 hits and 5 sincere thanks in the comments (it even got praise from a troll!). In it I promised a similar guide for SBCL, and here it is. The … [Read more]
Recap of 5/16/2008 Chicago Lisp Meeting
My math joke in the recap of the previous meeting turned out to be too conservative: this month, we had 22 people, double the turnout from last month! The meeting was held at the offices of CashNetUSA, and they were generous enough to provide pizza … [Read more]
Setting Up and Using Emacs InfoMode
Emacs has an ancient (predating hypertext), simple, powerful documentation program called Info. It's very difficult to find info about it online (try searching for "Info"), so here's my beginner's guide. Info is an output format for the Texinfo … [Read more]
Beautiful Guts – Dissecting a First Generation iPod Nano
I've recently come into possession of a damaged, non-functioning iPod Nano (Public Service Announcement: be careful how you hold your iPod when operating a urinal) that gave its body to science. After cleaning and drying it, I decided to see what … [Read more]