ajlburke

6 ms·

1.
by ajlburke 5y ago
I saw the name and thought it might be some kind of retro throwback to the 1996 version of Netscape Communicator. I was sort of looking forward to the integrated but awkward built-in mail client and newsreader.
2.
by ajlburke 5y ago
Hacker News still uses tables - for layout ! But it always loads super fast, and it just works. We figured out how to display text on a web page decades ago. It's a shame more people aren't just doing it the direct way anymore. (
3.
by ajlburke 5y ago
I liked his point near the end of the article comparing blockchains to XML - overcomplicated and oversold and added to too many things due to marketing and consultant hype. The obvious next question he didn't ask is, what is the JSON o
4.
by ajlburke 6y ago
I gather it was used to regulate the temperature of the liquid coolant - but instead of just some pipes or whatever, the designers turned it into a nice "waterfall" feature. I think it even lit up.
5.
by ajlburke 7y ago
It should be noted that anybody coming into Canada now from a foreign country, no matter their citizenship, is being told to self-quarantine for 14 days. This isn't mandatory or enforced (yet) but it's not exactly a red carpet for
6.
by ajlburke 7y ago
Thanks for the beorg link - I've been trying to find a way to make my org-mode files mobile-accessible.
7.
by ajlburke 7y ago
JustifyContents and AlignItems are like inserting an old USB key: I always get it backwards the first time and have to switch it over.
8.
by ajlburke 7y ago
Take a look at FlexBox - if you've been around the CSS layout block a few times you might find yourself going "finally - they figured it out!"
9.
by ajlburke 7y ago
I like to think of Sisyphus a bit like someone waiting in line for a rollercoaster or a ski lift. The pushing is a slog, but then you reach the top and WOW BOOOM the rock cascades down the hill and it's AWESOME! Time to start pushing i
10.
by ajlburke 7y ago
I loved EMACS when I first tried it. Granted, that was in around 2001 and my day job had required using a terrible bloated version of IBM WebSphere Application Developer which would leak 16 megs of RAM every time I tried to open an HTML pag
11.
by ajlburke 7y ago
Between this and the infamous hacker group called "The Shadow Brokers" I think it's time someone did a study on the influence of Mass Effect on tech culture. Not me, though - I'm in the middle of some calibrations right
12.
by ajlburke 8y ago
My local airport (Halifax YHZ) has notoriously bad landing conditions, and around a year ago I was in a 767 that aborted its landing and went back around. Turns out (at least as far as I've been able to tell from Wikipedia etc.) that t
13.
by ajlburke 8y ago
That's very cool - thanks for sharing!
14.
by ajlburke 8y ago
I've done some work in "parallel worlds" overlaid on top of the real one by latitude/longitude, using the cool "ARCL" library - and the biggest headache I've found for location-based AR (instead of the typ
15.
by ajlburke 8y ago
One of the reasons I loved the Mass Effect games was that their design team had clearly been looking at these same pictures, especially when they built the Presidium. As a kid, I would look at those pictures and imagine my life in the futur
16.
by ajlburke 8y ago
Freshbooks and Wave both offer repeatable invoices - I'm sure other invoicing/bookkeeping services do as well. I "Flintstoned" my small SAAS with automated monthly Freshbooks invoices until I had the time and money to ge
17.
by ajlburke 8y ago
Skara Brae also features in some of the Ultima games. Supposedly both companies hired the same consultant who provided some of the same naming ideas to both customers - oops!
18.
by ajlburke 9y ago
I cannot recommend this highly enough. It's a real slice of history. If you're lucky they'll actually let you play the game - which is still a fun challenge. When I went there a few years ago, the PDP-1 demos were actually do
19.
by ajlburke 9y ago
You're right - my mistake!
20.
by ajlburke 9y ago
It was pretty awesome for enterprise software in the mid-90s, but the world caught up with it soon after.
21.
by ajlburke 9y ago
I used to be a Lotus Notes specialist, and one interesting thing I noticed is that from the earliest versions it was designed specifically to be a "step up" from a spreadsheet (Lotus of course also made Lotus 1-2-3, which was the
22.
by ajlburke 9y ago
I usually use one large monitor with my MacBook as a smaller sidecar for little things like music, billing timer, notes, etc. but there's one time when I've found two monitors come in really handy: if I'm mixing local termina
23.
by ajlburke 10y ago
You can still see clocks in the UK from the late 19th century which have two minute hands: one for the local time and the other for the official Greenwich time. The Bristol Exchange has a big one with the hands ten minutes apart, since that
24.
by ajlburke 10y ago
They're called "Gregorian Chants" because they were compiled by the much earlier Pope Gregory I ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant )
25.
by ajlburke 10y ago
My apologies
26.
by ajlburke 10y ago
If you're on a Linux/MacOS/BSD machine, "ncal -p" on the command line gives you a nifty list of when various countries switched to Gregorian. Interesting factoid: Russia's "October Revolution" actuall
27.
by ajlburke 10y ago
'Now, we shall receive four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in t
28.
by ajlburke 10y ago
The original Star Wars movies were largely shot in Britain, and used British actors for many of the roles, especially the Imperial officers and officials. Carrie Fisher's family had worked in Hollywood during the "golden age"
29.
by ajlburke 10y ago
Have you BEEN to Kansas City? I got sent there for work meetings once and I have to admit I dreaded it - but it's got lots going for it, with lots of great cultural history (Jazz!) and some awesome food (BBQ!) and some really interesti
30.
by ajlburke 10y ago
Canadian banks have generally been much more regulated than US ones. Through the 90s and early 2000s they constantly complained about too much government regulation getting in the way of their profits etc. - they seem to have shut up about

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