Here follows, in something like chronological order, some of the
miscellaneous wreckage I have strewn across the Internet over the years.
I link to the content instead of include it here inline except where it
is only a few lines long as in the case of a few short poems, aphorisms,
and one-liners. Links are HTTP(S) to HTML pages unless obviously
otherwise. The quality ranges from bad to not so bad. Sue me. Also, this
is not a historical record, so I edit freely where I want to.
Most (but not all) comes from: My old evanswinner.com homepage; my
less old but still fairly old evanswinner.com page; my tweets on “X”
(née Twitter); my personal Facebook posts; my old Posterous blog; my old
Wordpress blog; my old Usenet posts; my old Blogger blog; some other
stuff I’m forgetting.
It’s mostly some nerdy tech stuff from a curmudgeaonly perspective,
and essays on philosophy and the arts from a franky Randian
perspective.
I am JUST starting this, so it is, we we used to say on Web 1.0,
“Under construction.”
2024-04-11: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“At the end of every chain of causal reasoning stands a
smiling gremlin – smiling or leering, depending entirely upon our own
temperament.”
2023-09-07: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“The word ‘statistics,’ in its use naming a science, is
no more a plural merely because it ends in ‘s’ than is the word
‘mathematics.’”
2023-02-09: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“It may be that the main job of the 21st century is to
learn to understand the 20th.”
2023-01-13: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“A new informal fallacy seen part- icularly on Twitter:
Argumentum ex multis sectatoribus – argument from number of
followers.”
2023-01-13: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“If your side of the issue is having to constantly
invent new words and slogans for what amount to the same ideas, then
your side almost certainly doesn’t have reality on its side. Bad ideas
flourish though the constant rejuvenation of the fuzzy language that
carries them.”
2022-11-24: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Ah, Thanksgiving. That time when families come
together and take Covid tests.”
2022-11-08: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“Voting is win-win. If the person you voted for wins,
then”yay! – we won!“; and if they lose, then you don’t have to feel
partly responsible for all the idiotic shit they were going to do when
in office.”
2022-10-26: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Whenever I finally really figure out exactly how and
why I have screwed something up terribly in life I find that if I scan
my past hard enough I will find that at least someone, somewhere, at
some point in time, gave me the advice I needed – and I didn’t listen.”
2022-08-19: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Twitter only provides a heart for reacting to a tweet.
They need to provide more variety. An eyeroll, at the very least.”
2022-07-29: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“I find it difficult to respect anybody who ever uses
the ‘historical present’ tense.”
2022-06-24: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“Except for the coughing, COVID has been the best vacation
I’ve had in 15 years.”
2022-06-17: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“50 is the new 49.”
2022-05-21: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“I think we all owe Johnny Depp and Amber Heard our sincere
thanks for distracting us from having to keep watching the drama with
Will Smith slapping Chris Rock; and I think we owe Chris and Will our
thanks for keeping us from having to keep thinking about people dying in
Ukraine; and we really should thank Vlad for helping to distract us from
that global pandemic. Oh, and thanks, China, for taking our minds off
African civil wars, Chinese internment camps, oppression in Russia,
Islamic totalitarianism and the apotheosis of over a century and a half
of creeping government overreach and the steady loss of respect for
reason and individual rights in the US.”
2022-05-12: Facebook post
[LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“I met the Buddha on the road today.
My lawyer has advised me not to say anything more.”
2022-05-11: Facebook post
[LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“For financial reasons, the monastery was opened to visitors
for a week during May. A monk was approached by a young tourist who
mockingly called out, ‘Hey Buddha-dude! What is the sound of one hand
clapping?’
The monk swiftly extended his hand and slapped him across the face with
a loud thwack – whereupon the tourist was enlightened.”
2022-05-11: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“The Tao that can be sensed is not the senseless Tao.”
2022-03-24: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“It’s 7pm and Kim accuses me of day-drinking. Just another
reason to hate daylight saving time.”
2022-03-11: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“My son just announced that he is lasagna-intolerant.”
2021-08-23: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“I find it difficult to take seriously anyone who ever uses
the word ‘societal.’”
2021-08-13: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL
TEXT:
“The Afghan debacle: from which I conclude that G. Bush
either never played Risk or never saw Princess Bride. But why is
everyone else acting so surprised?”
2021-05-07: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Collaboration doesn’t come from herding people
into cubicle farms or making them use Slack. It comes from an attitude
of help- fulness and from shared goals. If you have that, you don’t need
Slack. If you don’t, that’s the reason people think your IT department
is a cost center.”
2021-03-13: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
fake_acpi.ps1 Powershell function to
tell me my laptop’s battery status at the command line.
2021-03-12: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
banish.cs Tiny c# program to banish the
mouse. Inspired by the function in stumpwm. Replaced the one from 2016
when I couldn’t use Autohotkey at work anymore.
2021-02-17: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
pwgen.py I suppose that everyone has to
write a little program to generate quasi-random passwords at some point
in life.
2021-02-09: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
floating_message.py Written in about five
minutes to amuse my seven-year-old son.
2021-01-19: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
wsrch.bat Google search from the command
line on Windows. Doesn’t like non-alphanumeric characters, but still
basically works.
2020-07-17: Twitter
[LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“I asked the expert system if a dog possesses the
Buddha-nature.
It said ‘Null pointer exception.’“
2020-06-01: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“A civilization that had worked for generations
against individual rights, attempts to solve every problem caused by
collectivism with – more collectivism, can’t expect a police force that
respects individual rights. In the long run a civilization gets the
police force it deserves.”
2019-08-06: Twitter
[LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“You might be able to get away with one of the
following –
1. Hire idiots to work the front
line at your company
2. Promote from within
– but not both.”
2019-07-12: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
auction.py Little auction simulator in
Simpy for eBay auctions. I don’t really remember what I was trying to
figure out, but there it is.
2018-11-24: Twitter
[LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Good enough always is.
By definition.”
2018-11-18: Facebook post
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Dishes are tools. If they can’t suffer being
roughly thrown into a sink with other dishes, washed in a dishwasher, or
heated in a microwave, then – they’re crap!”
2018-08-19: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
"
-- Me: Alexa, have you ever
taken the Turning Test?
-- Alexa: I don't need to pass
that. I'm not pretending
to be human.
Can't argue with that.
"
2018-04-17: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Working is a virtue; working hard is a virtue;
working stupidly and inefficiently so you can say you worked hard – is a
vice.”
2018-04-04: Article (LinkedIn)
[
LINK]
DEMANDING SATISFACTION IN EMACS LISP A
blurb and code for a drop-in replacement for Emacs’
require
function that requires a library, or failing that, installs the package
and then requires it.
2018-03-31: Article (LinkedIn)
[
LINK]
NUMBER CHUNKING WITH CHUNKY NUMBERS A
slightly bizarre meditation on the orthography of “number chunking.”
2018-03-23: Article (LinkedIn)
[
LINK]
TALLY SYSTEMS FOR HAND COLLECTION OF COUNT
DATA A novel system of making tally counts.
2018-03-23: Article (LinkedIn)
[LINK]
USING SPLIT-SCREEN MODE IN ANDROID NUGAT FOR EASIER
DATA ENTRY
A blurb about how to do that.
2017-09-05: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Fifty bucks says if North Korea launches a nuke
at the West Coast it will explode on the pad, fail to detonate, or fall
into the ocean.”
2017-06-19: Facebook
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“A monk came to master Chow and said, ‘Sometimes
when we count mantras, I mix up the numbers three and eight. How can I
remember the difference?’ — Master Chow replied, ‘Would you prefer to
lose three toes or eight?’ — The monk said, ‘Three, of course.’ Master
Chow drew a blade and cut off eight of the monk’s toes, whereupon the
monk was enlightened.”
2017-04-03: Facebook
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“In the data center, no one can hear you fart.”
2017-02-24: Facebook
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“I’ve been saying it for years – or I would have
if I had thought of it.”
2017-02-15: Facebook
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Well, it was a good run there for a couple
hundred years, but I think it’s probably time we handed it all back to
the crown and see if she can straighten things out.”
2017-02-09: Facebook
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“Politics hasn’t been this entertaining since the
Jacobite Rebellion.”
2017-02-02: Facebook “Meme” image
[
LINK]
From when D. Trump was elected. C.f. “#NotMyPresident.”
2017-02-01: Facebook “Meme” image
[
LINK]
Another from when D. Trump was elected. C.f. “#NotMyPresident.” Includes
obligatory typo.
2016-12-16: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“The Statistician’s Fallacy: ‘50% of humans have
a penis; your mom is human; therefore there is a 50% chance that your
mom has a penis.’”
2016-12-12: Facebook post
[
LINK]
“Of all forms of time-wasting, writing time management software is most
sublime.”
2016-10-11: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
refresh-notes.ahk Automatically refresh
shared inboxen in Lotus Notes using Auto Hot Key.
2016-10-11: Code (Github (Gist))
[
LINK]
banish.ahk Banish the mouse pointer to
the corner of the screen. Inspired by the function of the same name from
stumpwm. One line of Autohotkey.
2016-06-13: Article (LinkedIn) [
LINK]
WHY YOUR SYSTEMS PEOPLE NEED A
SANDBOX If you want people to learn, you have to give them a
low-stakes environment in which to make mistakes.
2015-08-19: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“When they write the art history of the early
21st century, it will be the computer-animated films of Pixar and
Dreamworks that are remembered.”
2013-09-22: Article (orig. Timbral.net)
[
LINK]
[
TEXT]
HELPING PAPA
GUMP FIND A NAME FOR HIS SON WITH COMMON LISP Using the
Alexandria permutations function for a silly purpose.
2012-09-28: Article (orig. Blogger)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
ONE
SPACE OR TWO On the use of one or two spaces between
sentences. Serious analytical overkill.
2012-09-25: Article (Blogger)
[
LINK]
CARTOUCHE LINKS WITH CSS Make html links
that are like old Egyptian cartouches. Why not?
2011-05-20: Article (orig. Timbral.net)
[
LINK]
[
TEXT]
LOAD A
DIRECTORY OF EMACS LISP FILES Load a whole directory of Emacs
Lisp files all at once – sort of like the title says.
2011-05-14: Article / Code (Blogger / Github) Article:
[LINK]
[LOCAL] [TEXT]
Code:
[LINK]
TODOSTACK.EL
An Emacs to-do list as a stack for when you get interrupted constantly.
The idea was stolen from someone else, and has since been re-stolen
countless times. I actually used it at work for a while.
2010-08-10: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“If the only tool you have is a computer, you
tend to see every problem as computable.”
2010-05-28 Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“When a man needs a hairbrush, he’s got bigger
problems than needing a hairbrush.”
2009-02-07: Twitter
[
LINK]
FULL TEXT:
“There are two kinds of sysadmins: those who are
overworked, and those who hang out on alt.sysadmin.recovery pretending
they are overworked.”
2008-01-08: Usenet (humanities.philosophy.objectivism)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL] [
TEXT]
Opinion re: Should HPO be Closed Down.
2007-06-01: Code (EmacsWiki)
[
LINK]
REP-WORDS.EL Emacs library to find repeat
words in a text that repetitively repeat too much. (Under my old
nom
de code “Theron Tlax.”)
2007-03-16i Code (EmacsWiki)
[
LINK]
TWIT.EL What was, I think, the second
Twitter client for Emacs. I only wrote the first versions (under my old
nom de code “Theron Tlax”).
2007-01-19: Code
[
LINK]
(gnu.emacs.sources)
CTRL-LANG.EL
Font lock and doc lookup Emacs mode for AS/400 (aka. iSeries, aka IBM i)
Control Language files.
2006-01-30: Article (LiveJournal)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
MUSIC FOR
TOY PIANO Review of Margeret Leng Tan’s toy piano recital in
Seattle.
2006-01-22: Article (LiveJournal)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
FELTSMAN
PRAISED DESPITE IRRITABLE REVIEWER Review of Vladimir Feltsman
at the
Amadeus! Mozart Festival in Seattle.
2005-12-28: Article (LiveJournal)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL] [
TEXT]
STEAL THIS CD Brief thoughts after a CD
of music by Morton Feldmen was evidently stolen from a Barnes &
Noble.
2004-12-09: Article (LiveJournal)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
BAD
KITTY-CAT! GARFIELD: THE MOVIE [spoilers] A movie review.
2004-06-07: Article (LiveJournal)
[
LINK]
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
A TALE
OF TWO CONDUCTORS Written for a conducting class. Comparison
between two styles of conducting.
2003-06-08: Comment (Usenet) (rec.scuba)
[
LOCAL]
[
TEXT]
A comment about snorkels. I don’t
link here to the original because it is riddled with embarrassing
spelling and other gaffs.
© 1991-2025 E. Hawthorne Winner