“Did you know,” said Gina, the other day, “that in Spanish, the word meaning to make is the same as the word meaning to do?” I don’t speak Spanish, but it seems that the usage of the Portuguese fazer and the French faire supports this hypothesis. I’m going to have to back up and put [...]

This story had the following curious observation: Among some people, the efficacy of open-source projects has amplified long-standing complaints that the JCP is not nimble enough to outpace Microsoft’s development efforts and bring enhancements to the market quickly. If I understand that aright, it means that Microsoft’s development efforts are more nimble than the JCP’s. [...]

The dental hygienist who cleaned my teeth today asked if I knew why, in the English language, the word for the country (Philippines) was spelled with a “ph”, but the word for the inhabitants (Filipino) was spelled with an “f”. I love going to the dentist.

My new machine arrived this past weekend. I guess I must have been one of the last people on the planet to order a PowerMac Dual G5 before the Intel announcement was made. Timing is everything. Maybe it’ll be a collector’s item. Why the new box? The crystallizing moment probably came when Gina, in frustration, [...]

I met and had breakfast last week with Ben Hyde. A really smart and interesting fellow — I wish I had recorded our conversation. We had fascinating and wide-ranging discussions all morning — but like when trying to remember the really hilarious stand-up routine you heard last night, you can only remember one or two [...]

The latest issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has an article entitled Between Expert and Lay — talking about the blurring of boundaries between amateur tinkerers and professionals. The article used the word Pro-Am to describe this blend. I had never heard the word before. It is not a new coinage. [...]

Every time I went to update my blog in the last couple of weeks, the site was down. Upon investigation, it turned out that the site wasn’t actually down — my IP address had been blocked. So, when I was home, it appeared to be down — when I was traveling, it didn’t. I had [...]