Author Archives: Stephan Sokolow

What Disney Has Forgotten About Classic Donald Duck

Who hasn’t seen at least one of the classic Donald Duck cartoons from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s? You know, the ones where, in the later cartoons, the theme says “Who never never starts an argument?” Sadly, it seems that … Continue reading

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A more formal way to think about validity of input data

I’ve begun to port one of my hobby projects from Python to Rust and, while setting up the clap argument parser, I found myself having to bind to the access(2) libc function myself. Yes, it exposes you to a race … Continue reading

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On Making Steam Machines Successful

TL;DR: Provide a summarized representation of system requirements, make it easier to decide between different models, partner with YouTube and/or NetFlix to make the device more valuable, spin the cost of a Steam Machine as an investment in cheaper per-game … Continue reading

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A Compromise Between Substring and Prefix Matching

A.K.A.: How to write what human intuition actually expects substring matching to be While the changes aren’t yet ready to be pushed, I’ve been working on one of my hobby projects quite a bit over the last few days and … Continue reading

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Using OpenCV to automatically skip recurring post-roll ads

TL;DR: Install OpenCV-Python, download this script and follow the instructions in the script’s –help output. While I like The Young Turks, they’ve recently started adding the same two or three carnival barker-esque appeals for subscribers to the end of all … Continue reading

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“Gypsy Bard” and the My Little Pony Fandom’s Creative Output

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve a certain fondness for throwing characters into interesting situations to see what makes them tick and, as I’ve also mentioned before, I got lured into the My Little Pony fandom by the wide selection of … Continue reading

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Chickasaw Mountain by Leslie Fish

I’d like to take a few minutes to wax poetic on a song I just recently discovered: Chickasaw Mountain by Leslie Fish (lyrics, buy) There are so many reasons I love the song. However, I’ll focus on the lyrics since I’m … Continue reading

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