About this site
2006-11-10 17:47:37
This site is written by billo, a computer programmer. The tone and content of the articles here reflect my personal experience in the software business. I might sound like some kind of Macintosh cultist, but I am not. Or maybe I sound like a Unix zealot, which I pretty much am. However, in my defense, I always point out that I have worked for multiple years, as a full-time programmer on VMS, MS-DOS, Windows NT/2000/XP, many Unixes including many Linux variants, and only recently on Macintosh. So I would consider my personal bias to be wholly rational and based on knowledge rather than ignorance.
What I didn't want to do was create another useless, unread blog. You know, the kind of trite "what I had for breakfast" thing that journalists like to rail against. The blogs I like best are the ones that either explain some problem and a solution, or point to some useful resource online. I therefore promise to write mostly about problems I encounter, and solutions I find, with the occasional rant thrown in. My sincere hope is to create a useful, unread blog. If you found me here because you were trying to answer a question, and I answered it, then that is beyond my wildest expectations. If you are just wasting time, then get back to work.
What this site has become for me, more than anything else, is a living notebook, where I write things down that I learn. Otherwise my tiny brain has no chance of remembering stuff. I suppose I could write them in a file on my computer. Or in my paper notebook. (I do have one, by the way. It's one of those unbearably pretentious and cliche Moleskines, which are becoming de rigueur for über-nerd wannabes like me.) But I don't always have my computer with me, and I tend to lose paper notebooks. But it's pretty freaking hard to lose a web site, so this works well.
About the name EGOPOLY
A couple of years ago, I was thinking about monopolies in the software industry, and how annoying that can be. It doesn't bother me so much that a few companies are really big and make a lot of money. What bothers me is that they are big, and they really think that their software is so great that no other software should even exist. It should be stamped out. The giant software corporation is a big egotistical crybaby. Hence, each of them is an EGOPOLY.So I did what everybody does when they think up a new word. I registered the domain name.
It sat idle for a long time. I didn't really know what to do with it. But when my friend suggested that I make a blog, it seemed perfect. After all, what is a blog, but a platform for blah-blah-blah, me-me-me, blah-me, me-blah-blah-me. If you know what I mean. Me. Me. So there it is, the intrinsic vanity of a blog, embedded in the name. (Me, the greatest programmer of all time, me).