Brad's Technology Blog
Warm Start
On October 21st, 2006 In Software
It's important to note up front that I don't know what I am talking
about. At least when it comes to Lisp. There are some things I on
which I can speak authoritatively, but this isn't one of them.
Having said that, I am a obsessed with lisp and things lisp. It began
when I read first saw some adventure source code in
Never Say Die... (reviving a Linksys WRT54GS)
On October 21st, 2006 In Hardware
A while back I did a project using the Linksys wireless routers. Well,
more truthfully an associate did all the work, I just managed the project.
Anyway, my associate, being rusty with hardware at that point managed to "brick"
one of the units. It was toasted and would not respond to the simple
recovery proceedure. (aside: I do this all the
Why I'm not an ISP Anymore
On January 6th, 2006 In Technology
I had a nice year long run with a web hosting company (www.aqhost.com)
which ended in disaster. I stopped getting email from them in
December and then they shut me off and deleted my account on
12/31/2005.
They claim they sent me email throughout December but I never got any
of it and my qmail SMTP logs don't show any email from them. I
Why is Software Development Still Magic?
On October 17th, 2005 In Software
I regularly talk to companies who have software development problems - late schedules, too many bugs, unhappy customers. I sometimes marvel when people act as if software development was some magic process which was impossible to understand or control.
My experience is that's not magic and is not that hard to control. I'd like to share some
Throatless Rocket Engines
On August 8th, 2005 In Technology
I know it sounds like Buckaroo Bonzai, but I have a soft spot for people on a mission.
The folks at a new type of rocket engine.
It's "throatless". I'm going to say this means that if it can be
made to work (where work = not melt down or blow up) it could mean
that a normal machine shop could be building rocket engines capable
of putting
Generating RF signals with your VGA card
On August 8th, 2005 In Technology
This enterprising young man was able to generate RF signals a VGA card. Thought that was a pretty neat trick and made me think of some other possible uses.
After all, it's just a high speed bit
Very small, fast X86 C compile
On August 8th, 2005 In Technology
Some of my embedded work is on X86 (believe it or not). The "tcc"
compiler is very, very small and very very fast. At 140k it can
fit on small CF file systems. And with the "-run" option it makes C
into a scripting language.
It's an impressive piece of work, capable of compiling the linux
Oh those crazy young people in Europe...
On July 28th, 2005 In Software
Apparently every four years young hackers in Europe get together and make
a sort of tent city. It's called "whathehack"
It looks like fun, at least if you like laptops and beer