Posted inInformation Technology

VERSION, SOVERSION, and Tiny x86 Minds

The tiny x86 mindset keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. Lately they’ve done it with SOVERSION. It wouldn’t be so bad if their decisions didn’t jack up the world for at least a decade. These stupid decisions go all the way back to IBM and it’s first PC where they opted to place the address space for adapter cards (like video) in the address space 640-1024K, thus creating a 640K barrier for … VERSION, SOVERSION, and Tiny x86 MindsRead more

Posted inInformation Technology

CopperSpice Experiments – Pt. 19

My first real computer job was midnight computer operator for Airfone Inc. There I learned respect for automated update procedures and bare metal backups. I’m not talking about that hokey Microsoft stuff that reboots your computer in the middle of a critical process. I’m talking about batch scripts run in a controlled manner as part of a regular job stream. When you are working with an OpenSource library and building from scratch you too need … CopperSpice Experiments – Pt. 19Read more

Posted inInformation Technology

Getting Started With Doxygen

Whether starting a new project or trying to decipher OpenSource code that has near zero comments, Doxygen is a tool you need to know. It can shine a light in that deep dark tunnel known as “what you need to do.” Too few of us know how to use Doxygen. Too few of the “getting started” examples you find online are actually good enough to get you started. Install doxygen and graphviz. I’m going to … Getting Started With DoxygenRead more

Posted inInformation Technology / Thank You Sir May I Have Another

The 486SX

It’s not just COVID-19 vaccines receiving large quantities of disinformation. Even the 486SX has its own Holocaust Deniers. I couldn’t believe this popped up again months ago. Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay The time honored (and correct) tale of the 486SX was that the original units were 486DX chips with a defective math co-processor. With every new chip design, especially back there and back then, there was always a bit of a yield problem … The 486SXRead more

Posted inExperience / Information Technology

The CUTE Journey

Every now and then you will find yourself needing to install a really old Ubuntu version. I stumbled into this with CUTE and Scintilla. You see, the RedDiamond project really needs to jump ship from QPlainTextEdit. The syntax highlighting available in that module is horribly inefficient. If you never have more than a couple thousand lines in your source file and you don’t have multiple source files of that size, you can probably continue on … The CUTE JourneyRead more