Perusing Eric S. Raymond’s blog recently, I noticed his claim that as a one-time maintainer of GIFLIB, just about every cellphone and browser has some of his software running in it.

That got me thinking about my own reach and where software that I’ve con­tributed to can be found.

‘Oh that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Heaven for?’

—Robert Browning

I spent seven years on the IIS (Internet In­for­ma­tion Services) de­vel­op­ment team at Microsoft. By any measure, that’s a successful product, running one-third of all websites. There are over 100 million registered websites. Many of them are parked and many others see negligible volume, but that’s millions, perhaps tens of millions of Windows …continue.

My first Thanks­giv­ing took place nineteen years ago. I was a 24-year-old graduate student, recently arrived at Brown. One of my of­fice­mates and her husband insisted that I and a Swedish grad student accompany them to her parents’ house for Thanks­giv­ing dinner. It snowed that day, the first snow of the winter. We set off in what seemed like a blizzard, up I-95 into Mass­a­chu­setts. The day was cold, but the reception was warm. A houseful of Patrice’s relatives made us most welcome.

Ever since, I’ve always sat down to a large, convivial dinner at Thanks­giv­ing. At first, others welcomed me into their homes. For the last decade, Emma and I have played host to others …continue.

Just in case you need some tips for tomorrow’s feast.

We’re hosting a dinner. My Irish friends, Paul and Maggie, who moved to San Jose at the end of last year, have come up for a few days. It will be their first Thanks­giv­ing together in the States. We’ll also be joined by Frank & Lyndol, Raven & Iain, and Peter & Carol.

We’re cooking the turkey at high heat, using Barbara Kafka’s 500F recipe. The others are bringing everything else. Yum.

I’ve been very happy with my MacBook Pro. It’s my primary home machine, sitting on the living room coffee table, and getting far more use than the desktop system in my office upstairs.

But it rarely leaves the house. It’s big–a 17" screen–and it’s heavy. I seldom carry it anywhere and I hardly ever bring it to a coffee shop.

I bought myself a netbook last month, an Asus Eee 1000H: 10" screen, 1024x600, 1.6GHz dual core Atom, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard disk, 3lbs, $479. Look at how much bigger the MacBook is in the photo! For reference, the Eee 1000H is the same size as a magazine. It’s small enough and light enough that …continue.

By a serendip­i­tous accident poking around on the TiVo a few weeks ago, we found that the Disney channel is broad­cast­ing Shaun the Sheep. It’s a series of seven-minute shorts spun off from Wallace and Gromit.

Shaun is the one smart sheep on a small­hold­ing. His in­quis­i­tive nature leads to all kinds of mischief. The flock follow along; the sheepdog sometimes helps, sometimes hinders. All the while, the farmer is oblivious. No dialog, just slapstick. Highly rec­om­mend­ed.

I learned today that a new 30-minute Wallace and Gromit, A Matter of Loaf and Death, premieres on BBC TV at Christmas. I’m not sure when it’ll be shown in the US. We’ll be in Dublin for …continue.

I hate composing anything longer than a couple of paragraphs in an online HTML editor. Specif­i­cal­ly, I hate writing posts for this blog online. I’d much rather write in Vim and upload HTML. But I don’t want to compose in raw HTML either.

I use re­Struc­tured­Text (reST), an un­ob­tru­sive plaintext markup language popular in the Python world. reST can generate HTML, LaTeX, native PDF, ODF, and other formats. The picture at right shows a draft of this document in MacVim; reST is, as you can see, quite readable (though I work with a larger font). I use restview to preview the HTML locally and Pygments for syntax high­light­ing of code. Vim has its own …continue.

A new series from the author of Garnethill. 1981: Paddy Meehan is an 18-year-old Catholic, living at home in working-class Glasgow. She works as a copy boy at a newspaper and aspires to be a journalist. In what seems to be an open-and-shut case, a three-year-old boy is murdered by two unnamed ten-year-olds. One of them is her fiancé’s cousin. She blurts that out in shock; the newspaper publishes it, causing her tight-knit community to shun her.

Paddy is forced to do a lot of growing up, while she in­ves­ti­gates who led …continue.

Daniel Craig once again plays James Bond in Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale rebooted the Bond franchise, going back to Bond’s first 00 mission to recreate the character. The plot takes up where Casino Royale left off, as MI6 becomes aware of a hitherto secret or­ga­ni­za­tion, Quantum, a sort of latter-day SPECTRE.

Said plot makes as little sense as these plots normally do. Rich, evil mastermind wants to corner the market on <substance> as a stepping stone towards world dom­i­na­tion; Bond follows villain and henchmen across several continents, blowing stuff up and killing people; sexy women are bedded along the way; nice suits, …continue.

Eric and I got advance screening tickets to Slumdog Mil­lion­aire, Danny Boyle’s new movie about a former Indian street kid who wins round after round on Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire?. The show can’t believe that he’s not cheating, he’s arrested, and the police beat the truth out of him. As Jamal tells his tale, we learn how an 18-year-old chai wallah in a call center came to know the answers.

Although there’s little doubt about the ending, the journey is un­pre­dictable. Jamal and his older brother Salim are orphaned at a young age. Latika, a girl, joins them, and they form …continue.

For decades, Detroit has fought a rearguard action against change—seat­belts, CAFE standards for increased fuel efficiency, met­ri­ca­tion, renewable energy, building gas guzzling SUVs instead of hybrids, all come to mind.

Change is needed. The current management must go. The big three must build vehicles that make sense.

It’s not often that I agree with Mitt Romney, but his op-ed piece, Let Detroit Go Bankrupt, in Wednesday’s NYT lands in the vicinity of the mark.

He ignores one big reason for the higher costs of American cars, the cost of company-funded healthcare.

But another article in the same day’s paper, Advantage of Corporate Bankruptcy Is Dwindling, points out:

Harsh as it is, a bankruptcy filing has always offered a glimmer of hope …continue.