Talking to Ducks
Have you ever called or gone to bother a friend or coworker for some information you can’t think of, only to remember the answer the moment you ask? ...
Welcome to Control-Alt-Backspace, a place for collecting ideas on regaining control in an increasingly complex world. Check out the manifesto to learn more about the purpose of this site or the sitemap for an overview of series and topics, or jump right in with recent posts below.
Control-Alt-Backspace updates every Monday. Got questions about something you read or suggestions for new posts? I love hearing from people – shoot me an email!
Recent posts
Debugging in Real Life: An Introduction to Debugging
One of the most critical and least popular activities when developing and maintaining software is debugging – fixing code that has been written incor...
Does Speeding Make Sense?
Most Americans exceed the speed limit almost every time they drive, to the point that we rarely even think about it. The conventional wisdom is that we’r...
The Power of Names
I have found people have a tendency to discount or ignore the important role of having names for things in human thinking. This can lead to neglecting or...
The Paradox of Documentation
When you buy a new consumer product, do you usually read through the manual? What if a small warning on the product says “read manual before using”? (I once ...
Do It Right the First Time
There’s never time to do it right but always time to do it over. Meskimen’s Law
Dealing With Duplicate Files
In the physical world, we encounter much difficulty because it’s hard to create copies of things: objects use finite resources and are expensive to produce, ...
When to Delete Files
By now we’ve studied a variety of organizational questions relating to filesystems in detail. But here’s a seemingly foundational one we haven’t touched ...
Just Get Started
If you like reading Control-Alt-Backspace, I expect there’s a decent chance that you also like doing things right. Maybe you’re not a perfectionist, but you ...
Why I Don’t Worry About Most Health Advice
Take one look at the news nowadays and you’re likely to see a heap of headlines proclaiming that you should or should not do or eat some thing be...
Why I Hate Texting
Except perhaps for the fax machine, texting is my least favorite extant form of communication. (Come to think of it, fax machines seem kind of cool and r...
Edit Week 1
This is the first occurrence of an institution on this blog that I’m going to call Edit Week and hope to repeat every few months. As you might have f...
A Blizzard Postmortem, Part 2: Analysis
As the title suggests, this is part 2 of a two-part post which began last week with my story of getting stranded in a blizzard. As discussed more ful...
A Blizzard Postmortem, Part 1: The Story
You may have noticed, if you read Control-Alt-Backspace regularly or if you pay close attention to the dates on my posts, that there was no scheduled...
Dreamdir and the Unix Philosophy, or Likable Software
This weekend I released version 2.0.0 of my open-source Dreamdir file format and associated application, termed dr. Dreamdir is one of my tools for keepi...
Managing Temporary Files
So you’ve followed the tips in the design section of this series, and you have a nicely laid out, organized filesystem. That’s great when you know where ...
Why and How to Follow Websites with RSS
How do you get most of the news and other material you read nowadays? If you’re like most people, a lot of it comes from social media of one type or anot...
Less-Quantifiable Benefits of Automation and Process Improvement
An engineer is someone who will spend three hours figuring out how to do a two-hour job in one hour. Anonymous
Scripting as Effective Communication
Take a moment right now to recognize how amazing a device a computer is. That little hunk of metal on your desk or in your pocket or in a vast se...
Spaced Repetition From The Ground Up
Last week we looked at three principles that combine to create an extraordinarily effective, scientific study method called spaced repetition. You ce...