Recent blog entries
Blog entries: 1 through 17Why Software Engineers Don't Respond to Recruiters
Published:It’s well-known in the software engineering field that it’s hard to recruit software engineers. Once, a recruiter once complained to me that most software engineers ignored introductory emails. (In co
How to get a stack trace of a background thread in .Net
Published:This blog entry is a response to a question I got in a stack overflow post: How to get non-current thread's stacktrace? [In C# / .Net] Specifically, I was asked if there were alternatives to the origi
Take-home vs whiteboard coding: The problem is bad interviews
Published:Note: The article made it to the front page of hacker news! Lots of great discussion there.The software engineering field has controversy over using whiteboard coding in interviews, versus candidates
Interviewing for a job over teleconference (During the COVID-19 Pandemic)
Published:Highlights:Make sure your sound works within 3 minutes. If there are problems, switch to your phone immediatelyYour background is more important than what you wearA good computer often sounds better t
So You want to Build a Tesla Killer (or, My Tesla Model 3 Has Some Quirks)
Published:I’ve had my Telsa Model 3, dual motor, for a year. It’s a great car, and one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. The thing with the Tesla Model 3 is that, because it’s so groundbreaking, it’s hard to fi
Inauguration Day 2021: All Living Former Presidents
Published:Objectively comparing audio codecs: The case for lossless
Published:I wrote a tool to investigate degradation of audio in lossy compression, like mp3 and aac. With this tool, I demonstrated that high bitrate lossy audio is not sufficient for audiophile-quality recordi
Embedding JavaScript into C# with Rhino and IKVM
Published:The web is full of various discussions on how to embed C# into JavaScript. Most of these approaches are flawed because they rely on the deprecated Microsoft.JScript APIs. Other approaches, like hostin
PDF Thumbnail Generator - OSX
Published:Available on Github:The PDF Thumbnail Generator is designed to allow for easy creation of thumbnails from PDF files. There are two versions: Create Thumbnails of the First Page of Many PDFs: Creates a
Automatic Interface Implementer: An Example of Runtime Type Building
Published:I wanted to experiment with using .NET's TypeBuilder class to automatically generate classes at runtime. For my experiment, I decided to implement a function, that, given an interface, returns a fully
What if Information were Free?
Published:This is a talk that I gave with Jeff Jones at the Santa Cruz Future Salon on November 18, 2007.We are moving to a world where access to information is perceivably free and instantly accessible. 20th C
An Open Letter to the Internet Advertising Industry
Published:This is an open letter to the internet advertising industry. It is targeted towards companies that advertise, advertising agencies, and web sites that host advertising. The letter was originally a rep
The Argument that Went Nowhere
Published:Have you ever been in an argument that went nowhere? One where neither side would admit to a tie without calling the other side an idiot? One where one or both sides just “couldn’t give up,” without t
My Love-Hate Relationship with Vinyl (or, Why We Should Keep Making Vinyl)
Published:Before I start, I would like to refer the reader to a document on mastering vinyl records at the following URL: http://www.urpressing.com/tips.html. I make comments about records that can be understoo
DIY (Do it yourself) Speakers
Published:Note: These pages are quite old, but I prefer to leave them as-is. Their style is quite similar to how the web looked in the early 2000s.I currently own a set of self-built DIY Voight Pipes. There are
Letter: Comment on an older article about DVD-audio
Published:One late night I was looking for reviews of DVD-Audio disks and came across an article which claimed that the goal of DVD-Audio is to fight MP3s. Here is my response. I didn't know that the site was g
Duct Tape Tie
Published:Yeah, I actually wore this tie to school one day during high school. (I went to a private catholic high school that requires its students to wear ties.) It was quite funny. A few days later, I happene