Welcome …

Everybody should have a law named in their name, so here is mine: “For every specification, there exists at least one implementation that fulfils the specification by 100%, but does not solve the problem.” This is followed by the following observation: “The further away a development team is from the problem, the higher their ability to find and implement exactly such a solution.” There you have it. Enjoy!

I have switched my blog to Hugo, as Jenkyll was not working properly anymore on OpenBSD. Might have broken a few links, but should you should be able to find old stuff in the archives.

Continues from Part 1 - the problem I hope you had fun trying to come up with your own solution. I hope you have been successful. It is a tricky little problem. The story continues The next morning, Alice wakes up and starts going back to the basics. She draws the probabilities she wants on a sheet of paper: So, how is she going to choose two values from this? She needs to have two draws, with each draw choosing one friend....

The following is (seemingly) a simple problem in probability theory that had haunted me for a while, until - with the support of friends and colleagues - I managed to come up with a solution that was both effective and elegant. The solution can only be appreciated once you have tried to solve the problem yourself, which is why I am posting this in two parts: first a problem description, and then the solution that I have come up with....

I have built an e-paper display for my home to display current information. E-paper is nice, because it does not distract you with a bright surface, and it does not need to be switched on and off. Ingredients 1304×984, 12.48inch E-Ink display module, red/black/white three-color Raspberry PI 3 Most e-paper displays require you to build your own frame and kit around it. Also, many displays are rather small in size....

Oh - how I wish that OpenBSD would could be my one and only OS. It is clear, simple and beautiful. The documentation is amazing. And it does not try to outsmart me, it does not hide the world from me; instead its actions are understandable and it teaches me whenever I still need to learn. But, unfortunately reality sucks. There are a number of reasons why OpenBSD is on a few of my machines, but not on every one....

If you have a server on the internet, you need to think about how to do your backups. In my case, I do have a NAS box at home that is perfect for this. As I do not want to poke a hole into my NAT firewall, it should be a pull-based backup with minimal software on the machine that is backed up. It turns out, I do not need more than rsync on both the server and the NAS box....

Eiffel offers a number of unique or at least unusual programming features, with an own, radical view on - for example - imperative code, object-orientation or software correctness. This makes it a very interesting programming language to study, at least for a view beyond the current C/C++/Java hegemony. This is not a tutorial for Eiffel. It is also not a motivation to start getting interested in Eiffel or to advertise all the amazing features this language has....