JJinuxLand

The WiFi at my house has been somewhat slow and unreliable lately, so I decided to look into it. I did a lot of experiments with Speakeasy's Speed Test. I also upgraded my wireless access point from a Linksys WRT54GL to a ASUS RT-AC56U, although that wasn't strictly necessary. I fixed it to the point where my DSL connection is once again my bottleneck. Here's what I learned.First of all, the "wireless neighborhood" I live in is very different these days than when I first setup my wireless access point. When I first set it up, I only had 1-2 devices connected to it, and there were no other wireless access points in the neighborhood. These days, I have 3 wireless devices connected to my TV, 7 Nexus 7s, 2 laptops, 2 phones, and a Rasberry Pi all connected to the same access point. Furthermore, there are 5-7 wireless access points in my neighborhood (which is still low compared to some neighborhoods). Since wireless bandwidth is a shared resource, I'm sure there&…

I started reading Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas, the same guy who wrote "Programming Ruby" and who co-authored "The Pragmatic Programmer". So far, I'm really enjoying it!Here's a quote from p. 24 that I think is particularly compelling:This is a book about thinking differently; about accepting that some of the things that folks say about programming may not be the full story.Object-Orientation is not the only way to design code.Functional programming need not be complex or mathematical.The foundations of programming are not assignment, if statements, and loops.Concurrency does not need locks, semaphores, monitors, and the like.Processes are not necessarily expensive resources.Metaprogramming is not just something tacked onto a language.Even if it is work, programming should be fun.Of course, I’m not saying that Elixir is a magic potion (well, technically it is, but you know what I mean). There isn’t the ONE TRUE WAY to write code. But Elixir is differen…

I just finished Pimsleur Spanish phases 1-3 which I bought on audible.com. In short, I thought they were fantastic!Each phase consists of 30 units, each about 30 minutes long. Hence, I did 90 units altogether. That sounds like a lot, but I did almost all of them while driving to and from work when I worked in Mountain View. I streamed them from my phone through my stereo using bluetooth.Before I started, I already had a decent grasp of Spanish. However, I started Pimsleur Spanish from scratch. I'm normally a very visual learner, and Spanish is a pretty easy language to learn visually since it's so phonetic. However, I needed something to do while driving upwards of three hours a day, and this fit the bill. I really like how conversational it is. It constantly pushes you to say new things in new situations using your existing knowledge of vocabulary and grammar.I know that some people have said that they thought Pimsleur Spanish was a little boring compared to Rosetta Stone. Ho…