I just released a new web app for learning words called WordVault. Read more about it here.

Arch Linux is the main system on my desktop computer. I love it but sometimes it screws up. Here are some tricks for unscrewing it up.

Scrabble endgames are computationally difficult to solve exhaustively. I used some chess programming techniques to greatly speed them up.

When I was 11 or so my friends and I snuck into Sesevenen (Se7en). I remember being excited that this was an R-rated movie and that we were going to see some cool violence or whatever. However, my main memory of the movie was that it was a disappointing slog. I think at the time I wanted something like an R-rated version of Independence Day, a movie I enjoyed very much. Or stylized violence ala Tarantino, not some film noir I didn’t really understand.

Weezer’s Falling For You is an amazing song

Linux provides the best and most cost-effective desktop experience.

A few months ago, I noticed my app was having CPU spikes. Read on to see how I diagnosed the issue on a running production server.

I have found that in the literature about games and AI (artificial intelligence) that Scrabble is invariably referred to as something of a “solved” game, in the same way that Chess, Go, etc are “solved” by AI —in these latter games, there exist AIs that have superhuman performance and can basically beat any person.

How we built the Woogles backend messaging system using NATS and Websockets.