Mar 21, 2021My Pusher of Digital MemorabiliaIf you are a grumpy old geek like me, you are probably a sucker for vintage computer games too. I don’t play games. Not anymore. I still enjoy reading about them, though. I guess it’s mostly nostalgia. I also believe that the mid-80s up to the mid-90s really was the…Retro Gaming3 min readRetro Gaming3 min read
Mar 19, 2021Book Review: MateradaI am very ignorant about the Istrian Peninsula’s history, a gap I always wanted to fill. After some research, Fulvio Tomizza’s book, Materada, surfaced as a good fit to fill this gap. It’s a semi-biographic historical novel set in the Istria of the author’s youth. Fulvio Tomizza was born in…Books2 min readBooks2 min read
Mar 17, 2021Battling with SSH, cron jobs, and macOS KeyringSo today, I was setting up a cronjob on my trusty MacBook Pro. The goal was to backup some folders from a remote Linux server via rsync. The script is simple. It goes something like this: rsync -avz -e "ssh -i ~/.ssh/my_rsa_keyfile" \ myuser@myserver:remotedir/ ~/localdir/ Launched by hand, it works…Ssh2 min readSsh2 min read
Mar 16, 2021How to Write Good Software DocumentationThere is a secret that needs to be understood in order to write good software documentation: there isn’t one thing called documentation, there are four. They are: tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference and explanation. They represent four different purposes or functions, and require four different approaches to their creation. …Documentation2 min readDocumentation2 min read
Mar 13, 2021How to Shrink a WSL2 Virtual DiskI discovered you can use the “diskpart” tool to compact a VHDX. This allows you to shrink a WSL2 virtual disk file, reclaiming disk space. It appeared to work for me without any data corruption, taking the file size down from 100GB to 15GB. (source) I adore Parallels “reclaim disk…Wsl 21 min readWsl 21 min read
Mar 12, 2021You Have to Write As Though Your Parents Are DeadThe Literary Hub has a great short interview with Ian McEwan. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? When I was living in London at the start of my career in the mid-1970s, I became friends with Philip Roth, who took an avuncular interest in my work. Where many…Books And Authors2 min readBooks And Authors2 min read
Mar 6, 2021Book Review: The Library at NightAs any other bookworm worth its salt, I digested a generous amount of books on books and the history of libraries. Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night was last, and that is a pity. It probably arrived just a little too late on my shelves. …Book Review2 min readBook Review2 min read
Mar 4, 2021Semantic Versioning Will Not Save YouThe always brilliant Hynek recently posted Semantic Versioning Will Not Save You. Primarily targeted at consumers of SemVer-versioned packages, it is full of insightful advice. From my perspective as an open-source maintainer, I can tell you that versioning is hard. Judging when a new release is going to break backward…Programming2 min readProgramming2 min read
Mar 2, 2021On the CEO and founder of SignalLast weekend’s reading list also included Taking Back Our Privacy, yet another1 New Yorker piece but this time signed by Anna Wiener. This article is a long-read on Moxie Marlinspike, co-founder and CEO of Signal. Moxie is a childhood nickname. That alone signals (pun intended) an original personality. …Signal2 min readSignal2 min read
Feb 26, 2021How to increase upload file size in ASP.NET CoreToday I learned the hard way that since ASP.NET Core 2.0, the request body has acquired a default size limit at 30MB (~28.6 MiB). If the request body size exceeds the configured max request body size limit, the call to Request.Body.ReadAsync will throw an IOException. If this exception is uncaught…Aspnetcore2 min readAspnetcore2 min read
