Extreme Computing
Dispatches from the golden age of computing, retold by someone whose mind still lives there.
Now publishing irregularly.
About the blog
Extreme Computing is a love letter to when computers were still fun, when computing was still an interesting subject for weird people, before it became too mainstream for its own good. XC recounts the stories of the machines, the software, the people, and the communities that typified nerd culture between 1993 and 2013, with an eye toward the Apple and Linux communities. Think of this site as Good Old Days Magazine for the Twitter generation.
I bought this domain name after seeing that the former Extreme Computing, once an Awful Link of the Day at Something Awful, was no longer online.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can I expect to find here?
Reminiscence over times gone by. Love letters to machines and software that live on in the collective memory. Occasional stupid tricks and dumb challenges with old computer hardware.
Be honest. How much do you use AI?
Like every site in the Null Curriculum Network, this is an intelligence-free zone, artificial or otherwise.
I do not use AI to generate site content. I do use the Consensus app (https://consensus.app) to help with scholarly research and I use Claude (https://claude.ai) for brainstorming post topics. I occasionally include AI-generated images in my posts, generated with my local Stable Diffusion instance, if a prompt gives me something I particularly like.
What is your favorite computer of all time?
I have three answers – a laptop, a desktop, and a server.
My favorite desktop of all time is the 2013 Mac Pro. I currently run a modified Mac Pro with an E5-2695v2 CPU (12c/24t), 64 GB of RAM, and a 2 TB SSD as my main desktop, running macOS Sequoia.
My favorite server of all time is the dual-Xeon build I did a few years back with a Supermicro X8DTL-iF motherboard, Xeon X5680 CPUs (total 12c/24t), and 24 GB of RAM, running Debian Linux.
My favorite laptop of all time is the 2008 ThinkPad X200 by Lenovo, a machine that I got 11 years of use out of under five different versions of Windows (from XP to 10) and many, many versions of Ubuntu Linux.
What is your favorite operating system/other software of all time?
Modern OS: macOS.
Legacy OS: Mac OS 9.
Editor: GNU Emacs.
Browser: Apple Safari.
Mail client: Apple Mail.
Word processor: Apple Pages.
Spreadsheet: Microsoft Excel.
Version control: Git.
Terminal emulator: Apple Terminal.
Programming languages: Python, C.
What do you listen to when you write?
Carefully curated playlists that make me think, help me concentrate, lift up my mood, or some combination thereof. Links to publicly shared Apple Music playlists will be posted to this FAQ at some point.
In rotation right now: Queen, Heart, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Steely Dan, and Teresa Teng.
How do you draft your posts?
I post to the site via WordPress, invariably accessed via Apple Safari on one of my Mac computers. Some posts are drafted in Apple Pages, but that’s something I do more often for my other sites where I post full essays rather than rambling about technology.
How did you learn all this stuff?
I’ve tinkered with computers and the software that runs on them for the past 25 years.
I also got a computer science degree from the University of Tennessee. Don’t feel like you have to pursue a college degree to know a lot about computers – you absolutely do not.
How do you afford so much Apple hardware?
I buy almost all of my hardware secondhand. Only rarely do I buy a computer brand-new, usually laptops. I buy a lot of refurbs, store display units, and open-box models.
I do purchase smaller devices (phones, tablets, smart watches) brand new, and I refuse to buy earphones secondhand.
What do you use to run this site?
I have been a Linode customer since 2016 and find their service to be exemplary.
Extreme Computing is hosted on a virtual private server running Debian Linux, the nginx web server, the MariaDB database, and the PHP programming runtime. In addition to serving as its editor-in-chief, I am also the site’s webmaster and system administrator – if something breaks, holler in my general direction and I’ll fix it.
To manage the site’s editorial aspects, I use Apple software and hardware.
How can I reach out to you?
Email mail@tnwae.us. I reserve the right to showcase your response here on the site if I feel it is particularly good – or particularly bad. Keep it civil.
I’m not on social media. Don’t go looking for me there.
Comments are disabled and will stay that way. If you’ve ever had to moderate website comments, you already know why.