Archive
Posts
Notes on engineering, applied AI, leadership and the occasional detour into writing fiction.
2012
Writing is the smallest part in writing
Sanderson-scale word counts make the point: typing the words is the smallest part of writing a novel — the process around them is the real job.
2011
The QuPiD principle
Quality, Performance, Design — pronounced like cupid — a three-question filter for choosing frying pans, software and pretty much everything else.
Testing USB Drive Capacity
Cheap USB sticks that report 16 GB and silently eat your files — how the controller lie works, and how to test a drive before trusting it.
2010
Disappointing endings in Video Games
Finishing Arcania: Gothic 4 left me cold, and it is not alone — a long, spoiler-heavy look at why games keep fumbling the one part you remember: the ending.
Flattr Statistics of September 2010
Four more months of Flattr numbers, from three-dollar summers to a single click worth 30 cents — small data on whether micro-donations add up.
MS SQL Blob truncated
JPEGs stored as blobs in MS SQL came back truncated at exactly 64'512 bytes — the triple-facepalm hunt that ended in a FreeTDS config default.
Flattr Statistics of May 2010
Full transparency on a month of micro-donations: 24 things, 66 clicks, 11.34 euros — and why more clicks did not mean more money.
Debian Killall Command
The package name I keep forgetting: where killall actually lives on Debian, written down so I never have to look it up again.
Language reversal, from German to English and back to German
One harmless German sentence about a bed, and everything that quietly breaks when you try to carry it into English and back again.
Writing as the main job?
Would you quit tomorrow and write full time if the money stayed the same? Reading how full-time authors actually live made me answer carefully.