A Brief Pause
I neglected to mention last week that I was planning to take two weeks off from Control-Alt-Backspace posts due to a particularly busy period in my m...
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, more or less. Got questions about something you read or suggestions for new posts? I love hearing from people – shoot me an email!
Recent Posts
On Welcome and Inclusion in Online Communities
The StackOverflow community is going through some interesting times right now. I’ve been following in great detail both because the community is an e...
Updated Likable Software Catalog
This week, I added several new entries to the Likable Software Catalog, which is based on my article about likable software. Each application in the...
The Art of the Sign
Ever since smartphone cameras became commonplace and you could quickly and conveniently grab a picture of anything anywhere, I’ve been taking pic...
Fix it Forever
The pursuit of “lifehacks,” or solutions to small annoyances, seems to have recently caught a lot of flak. And there is good reason for some of the disli...
No More Google Analytics
Since the beginning, Control-Alt-Backspace has been using Google Analytics, the most popular analytics service for websites. You likely visit dozens ...
A Design-Centered View of Digital Piracy
While the rage has died down in recent years, many of my readers will remember a time in the 2000s when big media companies were screeching nonstop p...
A Complete Definition of Badness
One of the classics of The Onion’s video series is entitled “Sony Releases Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work.” The segment discusses how...
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...
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...
Minimal Working Example
When we encounter a problem with a complex system, it’s easy to misidentify the problem. In other words, we can seize on some small piece of the syst...
Selections from The Technical Geekery Archives
This week I have been busy finishing up a project to clean up and reformat the archives of The Technical Geekery, a blog and website I maintained...
Gather Information
It is impossible to solve a problem without some kind of information about the problem.
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? ...
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...
