Jonathan Dowland

Principal Software Engineer on #OpenJDK #IBM. #Debian developer. PhD in Computing Science. Amateur historian (Computing Science and H/W, esp. Commodore Amiga). Guerilla archivist.

blog: https://jmtd.net

Last Notes

2026-01-01 13:43:07 GMT

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is the Bakelite handset a monitor for one of the turntables?

2025-06-03 17:30:07 GMT

I was enjoying a blog post on the Fediverse about Canonical’s recruitment process but I only half read it and my mastodon client has lost it. Does anyone know which one it might have been? Thanks!

2025-04-18 08:54:07 GMT

https://github.com/joe-warren/opencascade-hs
#Haskell library for CAD / #3dprinting

2025-02-27 06:48:04 GMT

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I’ve seen several hardcore Excel users rubbish Google Sheets but for the level of usage I have (which isn’t “live in the spreadsheet” but it’s still substantial) i actually prefer it. Accessing them on phone though is terrible. Is Excel’s mobile app actually usable?
I think Collabora’s thing is derived from libreoffice but I’ve never tried it

2025-02-22 22:49:40 GMT

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so which version of Alpha Centauri is “acceptable” to run on modern Linux: the 25 year old Loki games binary, or the similar-age windows binary under WINE? (Bonus question: guess which is easier!) Or is the correct answer neither: start a project to clone the game from scratch?

2024-09-23 08:25:00 GMT

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> Would you argue that Python 3 isn't Python?
It's definitely not _Python 2_, and should not be (IMHO) `/usr/bin/python`. So it really depends on the context. Python-the-project, python-the-language, python-the-binary, etc.
Similarly it's no surprise people still stumble over what is referred to by the label "CentOS".

2024-08-21 15:43:06 GMT

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Doom supported Mouse from day 1. I think keyboard-only was popular in the early days, so some elitists call out mouse players, but Romero reportedly was a mouse player.
The situation today is entirely flipped: it turns out they deleted turn left/right in 2005 or so with the xbox360 port, and haven't put them back in yet!
I happen to prefer keyboard only for vanilla doom, but I'm probably in the minority.

2024-08-21 11:28:30 GMT

Launched doom remaster on pc. Realised the arrow keys aren’t bound to turn left/right. Realise you CANNOT bind turn left/right to keyboard keys. Close in disgust.