History on akos.ma

Birome

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0200

In Argentina we like to tell this urban legend that is somehow kind-of-true, that the ballpoint pen was invented there, thanks to the idea of a Hungarian-born man called László Bíró who moved to Argentina at some point during World War II.

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.

On Writing and Grading Papers in 2025

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve recently read two articles about the subject of how AI is quickly destroying higher education and what can be done about that; one on The New Yorker and another on The Chronicle of Higher Education, and they are quite similar in spirit: both quote similar sources, both deplore the current state of things, and both fail to provide any actionable idea at the end.

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.

32 Years of PC Configurations

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

I’ve been keeping track of the various characteristics of personal computers I’ve owned during the past 32 years, and here’s a table comparing those data points.

How to Install OS/2 Warp 3 and 4 on VirtualBox

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

30 years ago I bought a copy of the recently released IBM OS/2 Warp 3 operating system, and I used it in the primary partition of my computer for a while, until around 1997, when I sold my 486 PC and moved back to Argentina.

17 Equations that Changed the World

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0200

From the wonderful book by Ian Stewart, here are the equations themselves; read the book to know more about them.

Fading Into Irrelevance

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

As technology waves come and go, the names of iconic companies follow the movements, first reaching the pinnacle of their glories, and later fading into irrelevance.