Michael Gebis
Photo credit Do you have any badly behaved IoT devices? You know, the ones that can't seem to connect to your WiFi, or once they do connect, quickly fall off the network? Or worse yet, the device might go comatose and need rebooting frequently? For example, I had a hell …
I love contributing to various "citizen science" projects--things where I can buy a sensor or a raspberry pi, set it up, and contribute data to a larger project. Someday I will talk more about each of these projects that I contribute to, but for now I'm just collecting high-level links …
In 2017, I traveled to Oregon to see the total eclipse; in 2024, I traveled to Arkansas. I have a dedicated solar projection telescope. I have a pair of binoculars that are so dark they can only be used to look at the sun. The word for an eclipse chaser …
The distance from the pupil of my right eye to my cheekbone is two inches. On March 29th, I was resealing the grout on my kitchen countertop. My kitchen overlooks a den which is three steps down. I was standing on the top step, stretching around to the right, so …
The Fundamental Theorem of Engineering: Everything's a tradeoff A runaway trolley is about to create 5 trolley problems. Do you pull the lever and divert it, so it only creates 1? pic.twitter.com/hrlf8tpoVm — 𝓒𝓗𝓡𝓘𝓢 𝓡𝓞𝓓𝓛𝓔𝓨 (@chrisrodley) April 7, 2016 If you've gotten far enough along in math, you've …
Back when I worked at Ixia, one of my managers had a software process I called "Disaster Driven Development". He would overcommit our schedule by saying yes to everything , and then we would work on whichever project someone was screaming about the loudest. We were always, always, always fighting fires …
Raspberry Pis are a boon to citizen science. Tiny, cheap, low-power but highly functional Linux systems that can drive and monitor a wide variety of instruments--it's a dream come true. And there are tons of Pi-powered projects out there just waiting for you to join them. BirdNet-Pi is one such …
The Internet Has Some Suggestions I got a lot of feedback after my first article on Upside-Down Backups made it to Hacker News. There were a lot of good suggestions and it's worth a follow-up article to incorporate some of them. Think Deeply About Your Disaster Model The conventional wisdom …
An Upside-Down Backup Strategy I have a strange way of doing backups these days. When I save something, the master copy is in the cloud. If a file exists only on my local drive, it's not safe. Only once I've saved the file on my Google Drive or pushed to …
About a year ago, my girlfriend asked me what one does with clicking batteries. "Clicking batteries? What do you mean?" "You know, when a battery just starts clicking. Like they do from time to time." "I have never ever heard such a thing." Two minutes later, she texted me a …
"People don't walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced...but it would be nice if they did." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan I'm pretty sure Taleb was joking, but that kind of mischievous idea appeals to me. And it's more fun than working …
I had a short discussion with a friend about his VPN needs; here's a summary of that discussion. Executive summary: Most users don't need a VPN for privacy anymore; the majority of your web traffic is encrypted by default. If you need a VPN so you can access servers at …
In late 1991, I walked into the Computing Services Office at UIUC and timidly asked "Is there where we get an email account?" Not only did I get an email account, as mentioned in My First Hack , but they also gave me a sheet of paper with a bunch of …
Get good at reading code If you're a professional software engineer, it pays to think about the process of reading code. You're going to be doing it for the rest of your career, you might as well get good at it. But working on multimillion line legacy code bases is …
"Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." And I really did change a few details, if for no other reason than this story is 25 years old and I have a faulty memory. For legal …
Do you like splinter jokes? Because things are about to get out of hand . OK, that groaner out of the way: I was wiring a house for Ethernet last weekend and in the process I got multiple persnickety fiberglass splinters in the tip of my finger. It was one of …
Bubbly Water I drink a LOT of bubbly water. I used to buy it at the store, but the gigantic number of bottles soon became ridiculous. The best option is to make bubbly water myself, and I find myself making one or maybe even two bottles of soda water using …
I set up a new Windows laptop recently, giving me a chance to take inventory of what software I use on a regular basis. I find it interesting to peek behind the curtain to see how other developers work; maybe you will too. If nothing else this will help me …
This is a story about how I noticed that whenever I connected my new laptop to my girlfriend's wifi, it seemed like the router would reboot, but I refused to believe it for about two hours. I literally said "It doesn't work that way." Then I exhausted all other possibilities …
You probably already know that carbon monoxide (CO) from combustion is highly poisonous. Hemoglobin binds to CO tighter than it binds to O2 by a factor of 200 , so a small amount quickly prevents your blood cells from being able to carry oxygen, and you die. That's why you need …
COVID-19 has had a significant impact on IPv6 traffic. Among all of the other crazy impacts that COVID-19 has had in 2020, I did not expect COVID-19 to change the fundamental protocol mix of packets on the internet. But it did! Read on to find out how. IPv6 primer A …
When I worked at medium-to-large companies, I used to dread the yearly "performance self-assessments". Not that I didn't want a raise, but writing about my own performance was agonizing. It reminded me of writing college entrance essays, another torturous process for me. But at some point, I figured out the …
My girlfriend's COVID-19 hobby is gardening--broccoli, greens, carrots, radishes, you name it. The only problem has been the rascally neighborhood squirrels and raccoons, who insist on digging in the raised garden beds, ruining her crops. A few weeks ago, with a friend's help, we built PVC cages as protection. PVC …
I'm going to test this puppy out