Since moving my blog to Django and Wagtail, I have been adding new features to it on a regular basis. The most recent addition is the new ability to typeset mathematical equations and formulas. To be fair, all the heavy lifting is courtesy of the MathJax project. These guys did an amazing job - they implemented, in JavaScript, support for LaTeX syntax. Quite astonishing, if you ask me. Very easy … more »

COVID-19 has been with us for almost a year as a news item. The reports indicate, that a lot of people died of the disease. Every lost life is a tragedy, of course. It is important to understand, how exactly the pandemic affected mortality in large populations. Unfortunately, the cause of death attribution to COVID-19 is not always accurate. Sometimes people are recorded as have died of the virus simply … more »

The number of large software systems in the world is growing steadily. Old first generation solutions get improvements and grow more sophisticated. Completely new areas open up for automation. More systems, more lines of code. More complexity everywhere. Inevitably, more questions about the behaviour - why did it do that??? And, of course, more errors, from bugs in the systems themselves to malfunctioning of external dependencies and processes.There are various … more »

The world we live in is not perfect. Not everyone has enough food. Some people lack even good drinkable water. Lots of children go about without proper education, or any education at all for that matter. Some dudes can't get their hands on that great Maserati they have been dreaming about all their lives. And only one thing seems to be available in abundance - online social networks!Facebook, Instagram (owned … more »

The year 2020 has been a hard one for many. COVID-19 was a surprise, although health experts made predictions for years regarding a future unknown virus. The restrictions, introduced by governments around the world in order to combat the disease, did as much damage to the humanity as the infection itself. We will continue to feel the consequences for years, if not decades to come, even if an end to … more »