Previously, on Just a Theory
2020
George Washington Bridge Pier
Photo of the Manhattan pier of the George Washington Bridge.
Blockhouse
A photo of The Blockhouse, a small fort in Central Park, New York City.
Biden on the Green New Deal
The Green New Deal may not be Joe Biden’s climate plan, but you better believe he knows it deeply and could dive deep into the details.
Harlem Hawk
An encounter with a hawk and a squirrel in St. Nicholas Park, Harlem.
The Kushner Kakistocracy
An expertly-reported, deeply disturbing piece by Katherine Eban on Jared Kushner’s key role in the colossal federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We Need to Talk About Ventilation
Zeynep Tufekci on aerosolized Covid-19 transmission and the need for ventilation.
BLM NYC
I biked down to Midtown to see the new #BlackLivesMatter street art in front of Trump Tower.
Jia Tolentino on… Gestures Vaguely
A terrific interview with a fabulous writer.
Harlem Park Steps
A photo from a walk in Jackie Robinson Park, Harlem, New York City.
Test Postgres Extensions With GitHub Actions
I finally made the jump from Travis CI to GitHub Actions for my Postgres extensions. Here’s how you can, too.
Valerie Wheeler
Remembering Valerie Wheeler, Anthropologist, mentor, “mom”.
2019
Antigone’s Voice
What Antigone in Ferguson taught me about beauty, creativity, justice, ego, and autocratic control.
Sqitch v1.0.0
After seven years of development and production database deployments, I finally put in the effort to release v1.0.0.
Impeach
The over-the-top malfeasance and criminality of this president and his White House leads inexorably to impeachment proceedings. It’s past time for the Democrats to accept that fact and make a plan to maximize its effectiveness.
Ban the Nazis, Twitter
Dear Twitter: Do the right thing, ban white supremacists, and have a fucking backbone.
Time is Short, So Be Generous
The universe is hospitable to life for a limited time; let’s make the best of it.
Humane Agile
The top-down imposition of agile, with a focus focus on predictability and control, fails to value people over process.
Compassionate Sacking
Jennifer Kim on firing with compassion. Ultimately, it’s about trust.
Founding Fodder
On the importance of setting direction and engendering organizational focus by formalizing the foundational concepts of an organization.
Borderline
Network perimeter protection is complicated, imperfect, and insufficient to protect sensitive and personal data.
Criminals, Not Spies
Masha Gessen highlights the inadequacy of the political press covering a criminal conspiracy as if it was a normal state.
Flex Your BICEPS
What do creative professionals value in their jobs? More than perks, it’s about the product of the work.
The Problem With Disk Encryption
Full disk encryption is necessary but insufficient to protect sensitive and personal data.
Testing Perl Projects on Travis Windows
A sample project demonstrates a few techniques for testing Perl projects in the Travis CI Windows environment.
2018
Removing Sqitch Deprecations
A list of deprecated Sqitch features and code paths I propose to remove ahead of the release of v1.0.
Fascism Is Violence
“Fascism is not an idea to be debated, it’s a set of actions to fight”
Flaked, Brewed, and Docked
Sqitch v0.9998: Now with Snowflake support, an improved Homebrew tap, and the quickest way to get started: the new Docker image.
The Farce of Consent
Helen Nissenbaum on how to approach data privacy beyond the insufficiency of consent, to its impacts on individuals, society, and institutions.
ACM Code of Ethics
The Association for Computing Machinery updates its code for the networked computing age, promoting ethical, responsible computer engineering.
They Is Smart
When they wants you to speak one way, but you prefer to stick to the inertia of your habits, you is wrong.
pgenv
I wrote a simple PostgreSQL binary manager. You should try it.
Deep Expertise
Zeynep Tufekci on what Elon Musk should learn from the Thailand cave rescue.
Irredeemable
Virginia Heffernan finds that Donald Trump has no values.
Lincoln on the Declaration
Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants…
What Elizabeth Warren Saw at the Border
The Trump administration’s immigration policies are a humanitarian crime.
Democracy Over Civility
The demand for civility in the face of deplorable lies and inhumane policies enables those lies and policies.
Facebook Identity Theft
Some rando cybercriminal created a Facebook account to try to get a Foothold in my identity. Here’s what I did about it.
Tony
David Simon on his friend and collaborator, Anthony Bourdain.
Plain Text Figures
How I went about formatting embedded figures in the plain text output for Just a Theory.
Token Dimensions
The subtleties of tokenization merit deeper attention along the dimensions of reversibility and determinism.
Sqitchers
The time has come for Sqitch to leave the nest and go out on its own.
Twenty-Three
An Anniversary.
Superfan
“Trust and psychological safety are core elements of high performing teams.”
GDPR and the Professionalization of Tech
The GDPR is a big deal. What will be the best approaches to comply? Hard work, good tools, and ingenious new products.
Only One Scandal
It’s really as simple as that.
Racial Identity Is Not a Zero Sum Game
Here’s why Meghan Markle is a big deal.
Adopt My Modules
I no longer have the bandwidth to properly care for and feed my Perl modules. Maybe you’d be interested in adopting one?
Evolutionary Theory
The relaunch of Just a Theory.
iovation Tokenization
First in a series for iovation of posts on tokenization and the GDPR.
2016
2015
The Watch is You
Apple Watch and the future of identity.
2014
2013
The Women at XOXO Rocked It
This is how it ought be. You make something. You’re excited about it. Your energy infects the audience. And your gender and ethnicity have nothing to do with it.
Misguided Delusion
A simple post. I followed the link and have hardly stopped thinking about it since.
2012
Condé Nast on the iPad
I really want to enjoy reading The New Yorker on my iPad. But for a rather large number of reasons, it’s just unpleasant. Here’s why.
SQL Change Management Sans Duplication
Here’s how I propose to eliminate the duplication of code between deploy and revert SQL change management scripts.
VCS-Enabled SQL Change Management
Some thoughts on how to use VCS history to determine what changes need to be deployed or reverted without relying on a configuration file.
Simple SQL Change Management
I’ve been thinking a lot about SQL change management. I think I may finally have cracked this thing wide open.
2011
Less Tedium, More Transactions
2011 Perl Advent Calendar post on the use of the DBIx::Connector Perl module.
Cloudy Ideas
Apple’s not on in the cloud computing business and has no interest in it.
2010
Introducing MyTAP
After some prodding from the MySQL Community Manager, some OSCON hacking yields tangible results.
PGAN Bikeshedding
Help me pick a good name for the PostgreSQL extension distribution network and site.
Defend Against Programmer Mistakes?
I’m not sure I want to get into the business of defending against programmer mistakes in DBIx::Connector module. What do you think?
No more USE_PGXS=1?
I’m tired of having to remember to set USE_PGXS=1 when building third-party PostgreSQL extensions like pgTAP. Aren’t you?
2009
Test XML and HTML with XPath
Introducing a Rails-inspired Perl module to test the structure and content of an XML or HTML document using CSS selectors.
More on Database Testing
More thoughts on they whys and hows of database testing, and wondering why one might think that it’s pointless or useless.
Some Thoughts on Database Change Management
Database migration frameworks and ad-hoc solutions leave things…wanting. Herein lie some preliminary thoughts on how to solve this problem.
2008
Good at Doing Things
Notes from “Good at Doing Things: Montessori education and higher-order cognitive functions”, presented by Steve Hughes.
pgTAP 0.10 Released, Web Site Launched
The new version features compatibility back as far as PostgreSQL 8.0 and lots of cool functions for testing database schemas. The site’s cool, too.
pgTAP pgFoundry Project and Lightning Talk
pgTAP is now a pgFoundry project and I’ve posted the slides from my YAPC::NA 2008 Lightning Talk on pgTAP.
Need Suggestions for IMAP Solution and Migration
I’ve had my own IMAP server and have recently been burned by a commercial solution. So I’d like suggestions for where to go next.
How to Generate Recurring Events in the Database
Going deep on using Postgres functions to create efficient recurring events.
Teasers Only Atom Feed
In which I link to a teasers-only atom feed on the site.