Why do computer programmers start counting at 0 rather than 1? (As in, why do they count 0, 1, 2, 3 etcetera rather than 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on?) Apparently there’s a lot of lore out there that tries to explain the why, but one Mike Hoye decided to actually find out. He … Read More

My usual way of trying to find out about something I know exists but that I just cannot find any info on is to start an entry at Wikipedia. After a couple of years the wisdom of the crowds will have matured whatever seed I planted into something usable—even though by that time I will … Read More

I had lots of stuff to write about this, but do not have the time for much. If you want to use this diagram, consider it licensed under the following terms: I hereby release the files balanced-reporting-450×196.png and balanced-reporting.svg into the public domain. Where this is not possible, you may use these files as if … Read More

I heard an interesting economic morality tale the other day. Apparently some time in the past British Rail decided to cut a bunch of unprofitable lines. These lines were often life-lines for the communities they served, but that was ultimately of no consideration to the person wielding the axe. Applying the rules of modern neo-liberalism … Read More

Notice 5 February 2020: search engines have been sending a fair amount of people this way recently. Although the general principles of this post still hold, specifics such as which plugins to use and what their menu paths are, may no longer be valid. The Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client doesn’t provide a back-up tool. It … Read More

Here in the Netherlands we have a venerable, somewhat quaint but altogether rather innocent tradition involving a gift-giving immortal bishop called Saint Nicholas, who has a rather unfortunate side-kick called Black Peter. Black Peter is unfortunate because of his appearance which has been closely modeled on certain racist caricatures of black people. He has black … Read More

Apple iPad (iPad 2) As it happens all the four things I don’t like about my Apple iPad manifested themselves within a few minutes of each other today and they also helped to highlight what a cool little device it is, so I figured it was time for a quick review. The Apple iPad has … Read More

A serious hard disk crash but a damper on my already low posting frequency. I had lost my password and resetting it proved more difficult than clicking the I Lost My Password link. Anyway, just a heads up that I can log in again, now only to find something to write about.

The drafts queue of this blog currently holds 22 postings waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world, and some of them have been sitting there for years. Although some of those postings just haven’t been finished yet, most of them are of the type where I had an idea for a posting, I started … Read More

Game of Thrones is a TV drama series based on a series of novels called A Song of Ice and Fire. The series takes place in a medieval fantasy world that includes dragons and a sort of zombie and revolves around the intrigues and wars the noble families of the world, Westeros, use to get … Read More