Boring Tech on akos.ma

Conway in Borland Delphi

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Yet another version of my Polyglot Conway project, this time in good old Borland Delphi 1.0 (which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary!) from 1995, running on Windows 3.1, and as usual you can find the source code on my GitLab account.

Conway in Scala

Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Another week, another version of my Polyglot Conway project, this time in Scala, a version bootstrapped with the help of ChatGPT.

My Faithful Logitech C930e Webcam

Fri, 16 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

I like boring technology that lasts decades: 2 years ago I was raving about my Harman Kardon SoundSticks (spoiler alert: they are still in service) and today I’d like to rave about my faithful Logitech C930e, an HDMI webcam that’s been with me for 10 years this month.

Conway in Bash

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve added a new version to my venerable Polyglot Conway project, this time as a good old Bash script, a version bootstrapped with the help of ChatGPT.

Conway in C89

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Another year, another version of my Polyglot Conway project, this time for C89, also known as “ANSI C”, targeting quite a few compilers of the early 1990s, and some others from our more recent times.

The New Clock and the Evolution of JavaScript

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The attentive readers among you might have noticed that the artsy clock that appears on every page of this blog (except on mobile devices) behaves slightly different now. In fact, I’ve removed its dependency to the old and unsupported Raphael.js library, and migrated it to new and modern JavaScript features.

Jumping to Random Posts

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The attentive among you might have noticed a new “Random” link at the bottom of each post in this blog, taking you to a (you guessed it) random post on this blog, powered by the RANDOM() function of SQLite (because, you do remember that the search feature in this blog is built on top of SQLite, do you?)

Revisiting Ruby on Rails

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve blogged about Ruby on Rails quite a few times in the past 18 years. I’ve delivered lots of Rails apps, I’ve used it for my own company, and I have been a historic fan of Rails against all odds and against all opinions.

On Documentation

Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In my career I’ve seen lots of teams struggling, not only to get their software out of the door, but much more often (even if successful in the previous step) to have a decent level of documentation next to it.

Conway in Minimal BASIC

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Last Monday I released the 59th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, my dear monthly magazine about code, developers, and society, and this month I talked about BASIC in all of its flavors. As part of the preparation of this issue, I dived into the world of Minimal BASIC code, the one with source code line numbers, the one that would start immediately after powering up your computer, and the one that brings endless nostalgia.