Chronology of what was authored in the year 2006
While many public source code repositories have been used over the years, the relevant stuff has been consolidated onto GitHub and some new bits on GitLab.
See GitHub.com/dpezely and GitLab.com/dpezely.
Former repos included Bazaar for now outdated Linux patches and config tweaks for a 2009 vintage Sony laptop. There were Mercurial and many, many Subversion repos along the way. Sadly, never got around to trying Darcs.
Code previously available on play.org that might hold some historical interest such as the Constant Shader tutorial for Softimage XSI and MentaRay renderer (circa 2003) have been migrated to git and pushed to Github.
Going all the way back to early career, a once-promised lifetime university Lab Staff account was subsequently deleted by those unaware of the policy, and with it much was lost.
If anyone reading this has a copy of hitl.7.everything circa July 1990, that would make for a fun trip down memory lane.
The C and AutoLISP source code of my first business were also lost at that time: converting hydrographic survey data (depth soundings from waterways) into a 3D wireframe mesh for AutoCAD R9. This was among the very first uses of 3D for civil engineering as a commodity tool. Preliminary to that upstart, the very first version written was for VanDemark & Lynch in 1987.
Guidelines used while developing the Internet Protocol stack, as conveyed by Dave Mills (creator of fuzzballs, original IP routers)
As an undergrad, I was fortunate enough to work as EE/CS Lab Staff maintaining notable computers Huey, Dewey and Louie (named after robots of Silent Running 1972, by the way) that controlled DNS for udel.edu and were hosts used by faculty, graduate students and research staff.
From that experience and exposure, I was permitted to attend a course normally open only to graduate students.
The instructor was Dave Mills, known for creating the original Network Time Protocol (RFC 958 but revised many times since 1985) and creator of original IP routers known affectionately as "fuzzballs".
Incidentally, while known to not give a concise or consistent explanation for the name, fuzzballs, one theory among his students was that the criteria for these devices that mysteriously used more RAM than the hardware manufacturer accommodated was to be like bits of dust lingering and forgotten in a dark closet to be re-discovered many years hence. Back then, computers measuring
uptimein years was not unknown.
These are guidelines for network engineering— very much applicable for dev-ops today— as he conveyed them.
Want a demonstration that the so-called "real world" is just an illusion?
The primary title of this essay is a reference to the 1999 science fiction film, The Matrix, where most of humanity has been trapped within an artificially created reality.
Long before then, philosophers debated the "brain in a vat" concept: How would you know if the world you experience is actually real versus stimuli to just your brain?
Consider for the moment that we merely lack an appropriate metaphor or description of such a truth.
The food that most Americans and most post-industrialized nations eat is actually killing them. In fact, evidence would suggest that they're well on their way to extinction but just don't know it yet— much like a large corporation that fools its investors, management and regulators into believing that it's still viable when in fact it's bankrupt.
While strange at first, only after about a year was I beginning to understand the Common Lisp way.
Observations spanning decades in the software industry blending computer science, psychology and philosophy from Main Street, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and beyond