Instead of looking up how to spell a word, I always look up the Etymology. I don't know Latin or Greek, or any other languages, but a lot of the time, I'll find a link to some other English word, which the spelling make sense.

Defence or defense?

It's 'defence', because it has the same root as a 'garden fence' …

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I started the entire path to Linux due to a single Windows Error message. My little netbook couldn't handle the massive book I was writing (pictures every two pages, tables and formatting galore, et c.). I needed a real PC.

A friend kindly gifted me her old computer parts. She handed me a plastic bad full of plastic …

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My friends had a spirited debate after too many drinks. I suggested bringing back the Greek-style symposium, and it lead to a far more interesting debate.

First, we agreed on time - two minutes. Then someone kept the time, and motioned to indicate when only thirty second remained.

Everyone felt heard, nobody …

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If you haven't heard of him, he could only have been described as a 'mad genius'.

Looking at his work, I found myself astounded by the fact that if he hadn't existed, I would have sworn that what he did was impossible.

He made a full operating system.

At this point, before learning that he actually did this, I would …

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Using a command-line interface allows all manner of expression that clicking a list of buttons could never achieve. But for all the nice tools in bash, the one I use most often to make my life easier is just sleep.

Want to shut down the computer and leave, but don't want to shut off the music just yet?

sleep 5m; sudo …

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I bought a Sony PRS-600 e-reader, and it's great. I've started reading again, after not reading any books for some years.

Nothing could be easier. You plug it into a computer, stick on an epub book or pdf, then the e-reader lists the books you have, keeps the last page open of the books, and lets you make notes. This …

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I love bash, but it's worse than it needs to be.

Earlier today I was updating a script, and had to create lines of text in a file.

It was working fine with echo, and using \\n to place a new line into what I made. However, on the server, this stopped working. Same script, same operating system, same updates, same …

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This isn't advice. If I have any advice, it's just to try various things and find out what works for you.

When it comes to productivity tools, I focus always on speed before and above anything else. If some new tool has a wonderful new feature, but takes three seconds to load, it's off the table. I won't even consider …

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I've never been able to focus.

I'll be cleaning, or messing with spreadsheets for work, and all of a sudden I wonder 'could you type prose in the international phonetic alphabet (IPA), so you could put accents into a book properly?'. And then I think 'can I use the IPA as a keyboard layout, like I use the Polish …

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For the last ten years, I've tried to expunge the words 'simple' and 'complex' from my vocabulary and thinking.

Good and Bad Words

Different cultures use different words. I can't say how much it affects their thinking - people have levied many criticisms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Still, I suspect bad words inflict …

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