Author Archive

Podcasts I now listen to

I commute to work. Unfortunately, there is no way to carpool so I end up driving about 80 miles a day alone. Still, I drive a very fuel-efficient Honda Fit and try not to feel too guilty about the fuel consumption considering that I use very little. So, with all that time spent on the [ READ MORE ]

Slow-cooked lentil stew

It’s simple, easy and really good if you have the patience to wait while the slow-cooker does it’s work. Just make sure you season well enough because lentils can be bland. This being said, it certainly can get too salty so just be careful not to add too much salt with other stuff. Ingredients: 2 [ READ MORE ]

Getting somewhere with Scala

Ok, so when beginning with Scala, it was hard to figure certain things out. For example, what’s the best way to document my code? How should I go about testing my new programs? Which race in StarCraft best represents the ideals of Scala? Well, to prevent other people from getting stuck on these, I am [ READ MORE ]

Fun with case classes in Scala

Recently, I have been messing around with the Scala programming language. In particular, I am seriously considering purchasing the Lift Book (buy it for me and I’ll cook you something) because the Lift framework itself is so neat.  Though I’d like to see a few small features added to the language, I am very impressed [ READ MORE ]

Talks I am willing to give

The following are possible talks I am willing to give at a future SCOSUG meeting. Emacs concurrency (or lack thereof) XSLT for fun and profit Programming with distributed objects in Ruby Unit testing JavaScript That is all[ READ MORE ]

The trouble with USE

Today, I was caught a little off-guard by a question regarding the USE directive in SQL. While, it stumped me, it did give me pause to think. First and foremost, it occurred to me that part of the reason that I was caught off-guard was because, in the past, I’ve been advised to stay away [ READ MORE ]

Can I get a little MapReduce from my Debian people?

Debian is a world-class Linux distribution. It is used on it’s own for so many applications (desktop, laptop, workstation, handeld, server, etc.) as well as the foundation for so many wonderful projects ((U|K|X)buntu, Maemo, etc.). Personally, I run Debian on my laptop as well as my servers.  In fact, when I went to see about [ READ MORE ]

Languages, platforms, paradigms and speed

Ever since the latest round of Ruby benchmarks came out and everyone got all excited, I got to thinking about the overall discussion about languages and the interpreted vs. compiled debate. To be fair, there will always be those who take a specific side for some small-but-important-to-them reason yet this has not stopped so many [ READ MORE ]

A good Debian package caching system

I’ve got several servers on my network and I’m ok with that. Honestly, I am. The problem I run in to is that I end up wasting bandwidth by keeping them all up to date. In the past, I’ve tried apt-proxy (not the only one who’s had problems) and, most recently, debtorrent but they inevitably [ READ MORE ]

CrunchPad on the way!

For those who were naysayers and those of little faith, Arrington and the TechCrunch crowd have taken another step toward making good on their word. The CrunchPad tablet is in the final stages of testing and development.  To be honest, it looks really good. To be even more honest, it looks almost too good to [ READ MORE ]

About

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Jonathan E. Magen is a passionate developer who loves cooking and writing clean code. Star Trek is cool, too. Also, books. Many things are actually really great and Jonathan likes them as well.

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