Category: Computers
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UNIX tip of the day: pushd
I am frequently surprised by the number of colleagues I have who do not know about the BASH builtins pushd and popd. I myself remember seeing them for the first time in a script about 10 years ago, and had to look up the commands. At first I didn’t quite understand the point, but now…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…