Why do we hate? (by alaric)

About a decade ago, I wrote a blog post about how people forget the humanity of others when they hate them. I find hate really interesting - it's not an emotion I'm particular prone to, but the world seems full of it, so it interests me. And it's usually very harmful, so I'm interested in ways to mitigate and eliminate it.

Since writing that post, I have pondered how we start to hate somebody in the first place, and I've noticed a pattern that seems to underlie a lot of hate. I've not seen it called out explicitly before, which is really interesting.

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An anecdote from my distant past: The Tale of the Half-Working Network (by alaric)

Ok, this is an interesting tale I've retold in person a few times. So I've decided to write it up for the world to see.

The scene: My student flat, 1998. Seven of us are living there, and we're all nerds so there's lots of computers. The world of networked multi-player games is exploding, and we want to play.

So, we buy some network cards, and go to Maplin for some coax cable, BNC connectors and terminators, and start to set up a 10BASE2 LAN.

But one of the computers can't talk to the others. What's going on? Read more »

Trickle charging spare batteries in the van (by alaric)

So, my van is a former "welfare van"; originally the sort of thing that would pull up next to some roadworks, offering a space for the crew to shelter from the rain and have their lunch. The back has four seats (with belts, so people can travel in them, making it a seven-seater overall), a table and a bunch of storage compartments. But it also has a 200Ah deep-cycle battery pack and a bunch of auxiliary electrical accessories. Read more »

Cool things I have worked on: Customer Relationship Management (by alaric)

Continuing my previous series of blog posts about interesting things I've worked on in my career (an analytical database engine and a transactional database engine), I thought it'd be interesting to talk about something I worked on that's less groundbreaking technology, but interesting in other ways. Read more »

The “Mr Redox” Home Energy Reactor (by alaric)

So, I work from home, which means I spend a lot of time in my workshop.

It's a long, thin, building. The door opens into the metalworking area; moving along the building, we get to the electronics bench, then to my desk. As I've previously mentioned, I want to redesign the place a bit, but I'll still be spending a lot of time in here. I have insulated the roof successfully, but the second front in my war against chilliness is my rocket mass heater.

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