Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language, has died at age 70. This soon after my post on Steve Jobs, I’m unable to write much on the subject. But the C programming language was a major invention in the history of computers, and a significant step in the evolution of computers from academia and… Continue reading Dennis Ritchie

Steve Jobs shaped my life

I never met Steve Jobs. I’ve never even been in the same room as him, or (to my knowledge), the same city. So why am I choked up about his death? Because I love the man for what he accomplished, and how he’s changed the world.

Objective-C memory management

With Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) coming out soon, you could argue this post is coming almost too late. But there’s a lot of confusion over this, and I don’t think ARC will help much if you don’t understand the why of memory management. After a couple years, I’ve come to adopt some very simple rules… Continue reading Objective-C memory management

How to reset Wii to lower resolution

So you’ve set your Wii to 480p, then moved it back to a TV that supports only 480i. How do you fix it? I searched for this for a while and found a few wrong and complicated answers.

Blocks to remove redundancy

Blocks have many complicated uses, from event-based code to multithreading. But they can also be used for very trivial tasks, such as removing redundant lines from code. Here’s a common operation for me: Split a list into sublists based on some piece of data changing within a loop. When the loop is over, dump whatever’s… Continue reading Blocks to remove redundancy

Flux adjusts your monitor’s color temperature

Install Flux right now. What does it do? Well, at sunset it adjusts the color temperature of your monitor to make it warmer and less glaring. At sunrise, it adjusts it back. I installed it yesterday afternoon; yesterday and today at sunset, it automatically adjusted my monitor’s color temperature. The difference on the eyes is… Continue reading Flux adjusts your monitor’s color temperature