Miscellaneous and Useless Information

James Lin’s infrequently updated blog

  • 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.

  • This blog is working again!

    Even though I haven’t blogged in a while, I at least try to keep the version of WordPress and PHP up-to-date. Last year, my hosting service DreamHost notified me that it would start charging me for using PHP 7.4, which was no longer supported. So I upgraded all of my PHP installations to version 8.1,…

  • Computing as a career

    This is an update of a blog post I wrote in 2012. Be sure to look at a comment written by Daniel Azuma, who made a lot of excellent points of his own. Here are some thoughts for students who are considering computing, including computer science and software engineering, as a career. While these tips…

  • More KCBS changes

    KCBS just changed their tagline, emphasizing their FM instead of their AM station: “106.9 and AM 740”. I bet this will cause the anchors to slip up from time to time.

  • Another new set of KCBS jingles

    I don’t blog much anymore, but for posterity’s sake: KCBS Radio has been slowly switching over to a new set of jingles over the past two weeks (at least). The last pieces fell into place today, with a new jingle for John Madden and a new intro after CBS News at the top of the…

  • I’m from Newtown, Connecticut

    I’ve seen my other friends do this, on the advice of Newtown High School teacher Lash Ashmore, so here goes… Hi, I’m from Newtown, Connecticut. Newtown has modern conveniences — supermarkets, Starbucks, an Interstate highway. But it also has small-town charm. People go to the Town Hall to watch movies for $2 and buy sandwiches…