• (mostly) Unplugged weekend

    (mostly) Unplugged weekend

    Last weekend I decided to try an experiment in which I didn’t use any screens at all. I made a couple exceptions for some video chat meetings I had already had scheduled with some friends and family, and there were a few very brief things I had to do on my computer for the kids.…


  • What is a professor?

    What is a professor?

    Yesterday at dinner my 12-year old son asked me if I used to be a professor. “No, I didn’t.” But I did teach at a university, right? “Yes, I did.” And thus began a 20 minute explanation of what it is to be a professor. I thought I would summarize it up here, since it…


  • MacOS updates are slow

    I remember a time 10 or 15 years ago when you could install a system update on your Mac without rebooting. I always chuckled at the Windows users who seemingly had to reboot every time they installed a new program, let alone a system update. I don’t remember exactly when Macs started requiring reboots for…


  • Forcing JPEG instead of WebP for images with Jetpack

    Forcing JPEG instead of WebP for images with Jetpack

    I use Jetpack on most of my WordPress websites, because it has some really great features, many of them free. I still can’t believe that Automattic gives away a CDN (content distribution network). If you don’t know what that is, it is a way of hosting static files like images, javascript, and css and the…


  • Diff twice, commit once

    Diff twice, commit once

    Carpenters have a saying “measure twice, cut once”. The idea is that if you double-check your work, you are less likely to make mistakes, and have to re-do the work later. A former boss adapted this to software development – “diff twice, commit once”. That is, before you commit a change, take a second look…


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