About

What is the Cloud, and why is it "Magical"?

Written by: Kimberlee Model, posted: 2021-09-30. Tags: Computing Thoughts.

Well, obviously I know what "the cloud" is. Upload more RAM (or compute or bandwidth or whatever it is you happen to need). You rent computing resources from Amazon or IBM or whomever, and instead of furnishing a brand new box to keep on your premises, you upload your data to it via the internet.

But there seems to be some magic to the cloud which I can't put my finger on. I know, I'm probably a decade late on figuring this out, but the cloud has never seemed that novel or meritorious to me. Today I'd like to take a look and figure out what it is that excites people about the cloud.

About PaCSTCL's Grammar

Written by: Kimberlee Model, posted: 2019-10-09. Tags: I Made a Thing, Programming Language Development, Computing Thoughts, Computer Science Education.

In September I spent a lot of time with the grammar of PACSTCL. Both in developing the grammar further than I had coming out of the CSforALL Bootcamp, and in preparing the PACSTCL code to parse the grammar. This post is going to start out by defining computer grammar in understandable terms, then it will go into some of the decisions going into and the quirks coming out of PACSTCL's grammar.

My New Blog: A Study in Lightweight Web Frontends

Written by: Kimberlee Model, posted: 2019-09-26. Tags: I Made a Thing, Web Development, Computing Thoughts, Home Server.

This past summer, I've put a good deal of effort into updating my blog. Previously I had used Apache Roller, and I decided that I would replace it with a web-application of my own creation. The goals I had when I set out to create this were to build a good looking online space for me to share my thoughts and opinions, and to completely avoid the use of JavaScript while doing so.