A while back, I figured my site needed a bit of a facelift. So here it is. I’ve moved my posts from Epsilon Clue to here, and I plan on posting at ooblick.com rather than there. Obviously, any time you move from one site to another like this, there’s the risk that people won’t follow… Continue reading Grand Reopening
One of the nightmare scenarios sometimes brought up when arguing for the Electoral College and against the popular vote is, what happens in case of a really close election? There would have to be a nationwide recount. Think Florida 2000, times 50. For instance, take the 1960 election, where Kennedy beat Nixon by 0.17% of… Continue reading National Public Vote: Close Elections
I just spent some time banging my head against Ansible, and thought I’d share in case anyone else runs across it: I have a Firefox role that allows you to define a Firefox profile with various plugins, config settings, and the like. And I have a work-from-home (WFH) role that, among other things, sets up… Continue reading Ansible: Roles, Role Dependencies, and Variables
Sometimes you just need to grep recursively in a directory. If you’re using find $somedir -type f -exec grep $somestring {} \;, don’t: Use xargs to avoid creating a bazillion grep processes:find $somedir -type f -print | xargs grep $somestring But spaces in the output of find (i.e., spaces in filenames) will confuse xargs, so… Continue reading Recursive grepping
There’s an idea for a game that’s been rattling around my brain for a while, so I finally decided to learn enough Unity to birth it. To get an idea of what I have in mind, think Sid Meier’s Civilization, but for elections: you play a campaign manager, and your job is to get your… Continue reading Campaign Manager: Serializing Recursive Objects
Like the rest of the world, I’m working from home these days. One of the changes I’ve made has been to set up Emacs to work from home. I use Emacs extensively both at home and at work. So far, my method for keeping personal stuff and work stuff separate has been to, well, keep… Continue reading WFHing with Emacs: Work Mode and Command-Line Options
Here’s a rather breathless letter to the editor of the Brattleboro (VT) Reformer, promising dire consequences if we start electing presidents the same way we elect governors, senators, mayors, and school board members: The Los Angeles Times editorial (Feb. 17 in the Reformer) would like to disenfranchise more than half our nation by ending the… Continue reading Popular Vote: Majority Rule Is Disenfranchisement
An editorial at Fredericksburg.com warns of dire consequences if the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact passes: The House of Delegates voted to have the Old Dominion join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement that would force Virginia’s 13 electors to vote for the candidate chosen by the national popular vote. Joining this compact… Continue reading Counting Every Vote Will Nullify Your Vote
Of late, I’ve been taking an interest in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. For those who haven’t heard about it, the basic idea is that the US’s system of electing presidents through the Electoral College is archaic and convoluted, and too often doesn’t elect the person who won the most people’s votes. Since the… Continue reading Silly Objections to the Popular Vote
Ansible is billed as a configuration manager similar to Puppet or cfengine. But it occurred to me recently that it’s really (at least) two things: A configuration manager. A scripting language for the machine room. Mode 1 is the normal, expected one: here’s a description; now make the machine(s) look like the description. Same as… Continue reading Ansible As Scripting Language
