jvandonsel

450 karma · joined July 5, 2010

submissions comments

jvandonsel··on Emacs 29.1

Finally! Thanks.

jvandonsel··on Emacs 29.1

Except maybe a file with really long lines.

jvandonsel··on A surprising dearth of spectacled bears

Perhaps it’s because they wear contact lenses now.

jvandonsel··on Wabi-Sabi

This is why I always hide at least one bug in my code.

jvandonsel··on The Big Penis War

Similar article in the latest New Yorker : https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/the-perils-and...

jvandonsel··on State of Clojure 2023 Results

This page renders poorly in an iPad. For example, for me question 20 is empty unless I rotate to landscape. Terrible UX.

jvandonsel··on A bejeweled prayer book has been identified as belonging to Thomas Cromwell

Sorry, I just could not get past casting Mark Rylance as Cromwell. In the books, he, Cromwell, is described as a thug and a street brawler, albeit a clever and ambitious one. As much as I like Rylance I can’t see him in a pub brawl.

jvandonsel··on As rising oceans threaten NYC, study documents another risk: The city is sinking

No problem! The sinking of the city will counteract the rising of the ocean.

Oh, wait...

jvandonsel··on Mapping the price of a big Mac at every US McDonald's

8 bucks for a Big Mac at Lee Plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike westbound! The funny thing is that the Eastbound plaza, on the other side of the highway, sells them for $6.69.

jvandonsel··on Electronics Lab Bench Setup Guide

New blog genre. “Workbench porn”

jvandonsel··on 1990 Impact Electric Drag Race [video]

Love the guy in the white lab coat with the starting flag.

jvandonsel··on How close are we to the holy grail of room-temperature superconductors?

This is a surprisingly well-written science article for a business magazine. It helps that a physicist wrote it.

jvandonsel··on Comparing Hobby PCB Vendors

I've always used protoboard and hand-wiring for all my home projects. Is it worth the time and effort to layout a PCB and have several fabricated for a one-off project? Do the aesthetics of a PCB win out?

jvandonsel··on MIT’s Barry Duncan demonstrates the power of writing in reverse

Fun fact: The entire article is a palindrome.

jvandonsel··on Setting up an electronics workshop

Yes. My workflow usually includes:

5) scream obscenities because you forgot to thread the heat shrink tubing before soldering.

6) snip wires

7) goto step 1

jvandonsel··on John Adams on composing and creative freedom

The title of the podcast is “Conversations with Tyler” but it just sounded like Tyler reading a list of canned questions, mispronouncing a couple of names along the way. Not exactly a conversation.

jvandonsel··on Cal 9 1752 (2004)

I pity all you heretics who are celebrating the new year tonight. We followers of The One True Julian Calendar are sitting at home alone for the next 14 days.

jvandonsel··on ‘I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch’

I’ve listened twice now to the wonderful audiobook narration of Middlemarch by Juliet Stevenson. Highly recommended. Maybe someday I’ll get around to reading the novel in print.

jvandonsel··on Hobbes: “Leviathan” in Modern English – Introduction

Typo in the second sentence of your intro.

jvandonsel··on Worst Opening Sentences of 2022

These winners are always too long-winded. “Brevity is the soul of wit”.

The alternative is the much funnier Lyttle Lytton Contest: http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html

jvandonsel··on I Asked ChatGPT to Explain Some Jokes to Me

Yeah, at first I didn’t understand the pun walking into a bar joke because the punchline really needed to be spoken out loud.

jvandonsel··on Cylindrical aquarium housing 1,500 exotic fish bursts in Berlin

Transparent aluminum

jvandonsel··on A “Safety Emergency” Happened at Wuhan Institute of Virology in November of 2019

U.S. imports from China year by year. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-from-chin...

The Chinese economy was not “crushed by Trump”.