Author's posts
Jan 23 2016
Wasting Time
When I was young, my friend James and I liked to fish. Other kids would be dropped at the mall for the day, but we’d get our parents to drop us at Joe Pool Lake. We were strange.
Dec 15 2015
#fear
At first, the google engineer cheered, knowing he or she had contributed to the world. It felt good knowing their contribution would save eons of man years of productivity that would have otherwise been wasted. They gladly marked their name down in wikipedia right beside bill gates.
Dec 10 2015
Music to Code By – 2015, or, how I learned to love the Dire Straits
Standard Disclaimer: My favorite band ever is The Smashing Pumpkins, or possibly Nine Inch Nails. In recent years my favorite genres of music have been EDM and Post Rock. If it’s dark, and/or mopey, I probably love it. If it starts off slow and sad and crescendos with catharsis 9 minutes later, I probably love …
Aug 26 2015
Yet Another OSX Yosemite Wifi / Bluetooth Connectivity Fix
Some users have problems with OSX Mavericks/Yosemite wifi connectivity – there’s all sorts of things that can go wrong. This stackexchange thread has a variety of solutions that you should probably try.
Jun 13 2015
The Coder Diet
A college friend of mine randomly decided that nutritional guidelines were bullshit. At the time, he was deliriously lost in a pipe dream of being rich before 30. This may or may not have been the same time frame when he bought a house in California and rented it out to too many roommates at …
Apr 29 2015
Act 2: The Surveillance State as Public Utility
A friend confides in me that they don’t feel as if their job is a ‘career’, because they didn’t need a degree for the career path they’ve been on for nearly 15 years. No degree, not management, not ‘career’. I respond that if a career means endless promotion resulting in management positions, then I never …
Apr 03 2015
Erosion of Privacy
See, this is why the erosion of privacy and data convergence worry me. Sometime in the future, I will skype video conference my doctor for my yearly physical. It will be convenient, because I won’t have to wait in a waiting room for an hour for my appointment. Bonus: No blood draws or treadmill tests, …
Mar 18 2015
Link Dump – March 2015
Time for another collection of random amazing things. Long Reads Ask Slashdot: Terminally Ill – What Wisdom Should I Pass On To My Geek Daughter? – if you read nothing else, read this (the post, and the comments!). The subtle art of not giving a fuck. What 4chan thinks of Hacker News “Sponsored” by my …
Jan 16 2015
Letters to my father: Building a Desktop computer in 2015
Arguably, in 2015, if you need to ask someone what to get to build a desktop machine, then you don’t need to build a desktop machine. Commodity (consumer, everyday, best buy-buyable) machines are fast enough for any home user who’s not a computing professional. If your job or video games require a beefy machine, you …
About
Jason Baker is a software engineer. He works on enterprise infrastructure for big companies. He also enjoys creating smaller scale software products and scripts in his spare time.