Author Archives: Robert

Use ‘%%’ to indicate a percentage change of a percentage?

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Robert

“40% of people clicked through when the button was blue. When we changed it to green, the click-through rate increased by 20%!” We all know that the above statement is ambiguous; we can’t be sure whether the writer intends to … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal Technology | Leave a comment

Reader-augmented Writing

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Robert

Words gave us the ability to effectively share ideas and knowledge, and writing allowed those words to spread further and be carried across time. The printing press accelerated that spread, and electronic mediums allowed even more people to share ideas … Continue reading →

Posted in Futurism | Leave a comment

Containerized Passenger Transportation

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Robert

Getting someone from point-A to point-B will often — even in the distant future — involve a variety of methods of transport. For example, getting someone from their home in San Francisco to an office in Los Angeles might primarily … Continue reading →

Posted in Futurism | 2 Comments

Schrödinger’s Laugh

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Robert

Schrödinger’s Laugh [shroh-ding-ers laf] -noun The strong expression by one that paradoxically may be either laughing or wailing, this being tied to an earlier random event. It creates an awkward period during which the observer does not know which and … Continue reading →

Posted in portmanteau | Leave a comment

HTTP Status Codes 401 Unauthorized and 403 Forbidden for Authentication and Authorization (and OAuth)

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Robert

When a client requests a resource from an HTTP server and it’s not allowed to access that resource, the client needs to know enough about why in order to present the right message or options to the user. Basically, we … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, Software Development, Web Technology | Leave a comment

Protected: Now Entering Germany

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Robert

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My Experience with Carbonite Home and CrashPlan+

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Robert

I don’t like losing data, and I’m guessing that you don’t, either. I already do local backups, but not only can it a little cumbersome and easy to forget (not to mention drive failures), fire or theft could result in … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal Technology | 11 Comments

OpenVPN over DSL with PPPoE

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Robert

I work remotely and use OpenVPN to access development services such as SVN and our file server, both of which are at our colocation facility. While at a new location, I first encountered a problem trying to do any SVN … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking | 2 Comments

Logging Levels

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Robert

Trace/Verbose Use this logging level to help you develop or find bugs in something you’re currently working on, and when the information being logged is not useful once the current task is done. So, trace logging should usually be removed … Continue reading →

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A system for getting the most out of “TODO” comments in code

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Robert

Annotating code with “TODO” can help remind us what code needs attention. It’s easy, however, for them to build up, get out of hand, and no longer be useful. Below is a system I came up with to keep TODOs … Continue reading →

Posted in Software Development | 1 Comment