After writing some satire about The Matrix engineering, I felt like I should review the complete saga. The Matrix is, in fact, one of my favorite sci-fi universes, with some really good takes on co...

The Matrix is one of the best sci-fi movies and obviously one of my favorites. But if we look at it from an engineering perspective, it also presents one of the most ambitious infrastructure projec...

After moving from SEGA consoles to PC, indie games were never my thing. SimCity had been what moved me to PC, especially SimCity 3000, and StarCraft and Quake 3 Arena had been what kept me there. F...

With less time to dedicate to multiplayer games these days, I’ve been thinking about getting a console. After all, the last one I owned was a SEGA Dreamcast, which I really enjoyed. I used to be a ...

Any sysadmin will eventually have to deal with the pain of migrating email accounts from one service to another. Some providers make that process relatively straightforward with built-in tooling, w...

After reviewing Sun Tzu and reflecting on two of my favorite battles, Cannae and Aljubarrota, it feels like the right moment to unwind a bit. War is a serious subject. It is fascinating to study fo...

Fought in Portugal in 1385, the Battle of Aljubarrota does not enjoy the same global spotlight as Cannae, Thermopylae, or other classical engagements. And yet, within medieval warfare, it stands as...

Hannibal Barca may never have met Sun Tzu or read The Art of War, but through his father and his early campaigns in Iberia, he became a student of warfare from a very young age. That education woul...

In a previous post, I argued that RTS games expose many of the same strategic principles described in The Art of War. But strategy only matters when it survives contact with the opponent. The ladde...

Sun Tzu never knew what a video game was. He never saw a keyboard, a mouse, or a minimap. He certainly never planned a Zergling run-by or a Dark Templar drop. And yet, many of the principles descri...