On Scales, Skills, and Leaky Abstractions
Imagine for a moment one of the old-style balance-beam scales at a doctor’s office. You get on the scale and the nurse slides the weights across the beam...
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
One Big Problem
When I help family and friends with computer problems that get thorny, they often apologize for making me frustrated or causing trouble. The thing is, ...
Time Assets and Debts
Time is the scarcest resource for many people in industrialized countries, and no matter what, it’s the only resource we can’t directly get more of. ...
Reverse Polish Notation
Reverse Polish Notation is a curious way of writing arithmetic operations. Instead of writing the operations between the numbers they apply to (called in...
The Magic of Index Cards
I find that nowadays the humble three-by-five index card is extremely underappreciated. True, some of the former roles of index cards are much better...
Slow Pumpkin Bread
After last week’s post on slowing down and given the season, I figured this would be a good time to share my recipe for pumpkin bread, titled “No...
How to Slow Down
Reading and thinking lately, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that we all feel the world is moving too fast. I don’t pretend this feeling is u...
Introducing the Likable Software Catalog
This week I am introducing the Control-Alt-Backspace Catalog, which will gather together content and tools of various types that align with the philo...
Two Problems
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. Jamie Zawinski
In Defense of Chalkboards
How many cruddy whiteboards have you used in your life? We have a bunch of them at my workplace. You draw on them and your marker squeals and skips. Then whe...
Fix Your Control Key
Here’s a keyboard trick: although you may never have noticed it, the Control key on most keyboards isn’t in an effective position. If you have a desk...
The Control-Alt-Backspace Upgrade Strategy: Software
This is part two of a two-part series on my strategy for when and how to upgrade hardware and software for maximum effectiveness and minimum bother. ...
The Control-Alt-Backspace Upgrade Strategy: Hardware
This is part one of a two-part series on my strategy for when and how to upgrade hardware and software for maximum effectiveness and minimum bother. ...
Against Deadlines
I just counted: I have 205 tasks in my task manager – without my reading list, purchases list, or blog ideas list. And that’s only counting my pe...
Buying Duplicate Items
People today need a lot of items to go about their daily life, and sometimes dealing with them can get annoying. I’ve rarely seen this discussed anywhere...
Edit Week 2
This is the second Edit Week in Control-Alt-Backspace history (see here for an explanation of Edit Week).
On Answering Nine Questions to Pay for Groceries
Last night, I went to get some groceries, as most of us do from time to time. Buying groceries seems like it should be simple: you go into the store,...
It’s Probably Me
Back in my introduction to debugging, I observed that debugging often causes enormous frustration:
Take a Break
Debugging involves minutes or even hours of trial and error – and we tend to focus on the error part and get frustrated. Presented with error after error...
Scientific Method
Imagine for a moment that you’re an auto mechanic with a knack for attracting eccentric customers with unusual problems. Which of these scenarios would y...