Here is an incredibly inspiring story about a homeless boy in Uganda who grew up to be a child advocate in the U.S., who has fostered 47 kids and adopted 3 more, and the man who changed his life.
Stephanie Shirley, a pioneer in tech
I think my knowledge of computer history is decent, yet only now am I learning about Stephanie Shirley, a pioneer in the tech industry who started a software company in 1962 employing mostly women working part-time at home. Way ahead of her time 🫡
- Stephanie Shirley, Who Created a Tech World for Women, Dies at 91, Jeré Longman, New York Times
The Gorton Font
Marcin Wichary has done it again. He has written a wonderful essay on the Gorton font, a font you probably have never heard of but “probably saw earlier today.”
As I read it, I realized I had been noticing it my whole life subconsciously, and the words using it always felt important, since it was almost always engraved. If it’s engraved, it must be important, right?
- The hardest working font in Manhattan by Marcin Wichary
Carol of the Bells in its original Ukrainian
This holiday season, I learned that the melody of the Christmas carol “Carol of the Bells” is from a Ukrainian New Year’s song called “Shchedryk” (Щедрик), first arranged in the early 1900s, which in turn is based on a traditional Ukrainian folk melody. Here is “Shchedryk” sung in its original Ukrainian:
- Original Ukrainian version of Carol of the Bells: Mykola Leontovych — Shchedryk, performed by the Academic Choir of the National Radio of Ukraine
Happy New Year everyone 🇺🇦
Handcrafted software in a mass-produced world
I’ve joked with my friends that I want to get into building hand-crafted, artisan software. Then Lian Proven of The Register makes the case for it, such as higher quality and being more attuned to a specific group’s needs.
I can think of a few examples of folks making hand-crafted software:
- Panic
- Good Enough
- 37signals,
- all the indie developers featured in MacStories
Bob James performs the theme song from Taxi
I’m a bit too young to have watched (or certainly understood) the sitcom Taxi, but I remember the opening theme song vividly. Here is Bob James, who wrote the song, performing it with his jazz trio at age 82. (Sometimes the YouTube algorithm is good for something!)
- Bob James – Angela (theme from ‘Taxi’) on YouTube
Yang Liping’s Rite of Spring
Last night, I watched Yang Liping’s interpretation of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at Stanford. Totally stunning and definitely worth watching. We also enjoyed her conversation with Thomas Mullaney (Stanford professor of history and East Asian languages and cultures) — like him, I didn’t fully understand what I saw 
but it set off my brain in all sorts of directions.
Here is a good overview of her work:
Let’s Get Creative
I love this collection of free online creativity tools, from drawing and music to creative coding.
- Let’s Get Creative — curated by Bryan Braun
Thomas Kurtz
A salute to Thomas Kurtz, who created BASIC with John Kemeny in 1964. BASIC was my first programming language, and I stuck with it long enough to graduate to QuickBASIC, without GOTOs or line numbers. In fact, I first really got structured programming in QuickBASIC.
Roy Clay Sr.: a salute to a Black pioneer in Silicon Valley
Wow, Roy Clay Sr. was such a pioneer: leader of the development of HP’s first computer, the first Black executive at HP, the first Black elected to the Palo Alto City Council, and so on. The history of Black Americans in Silicon Valley and the tech industry needs to be better known.