SUN
The Return of the UNIX Workstation (Now With AI)
I was a heavy UNIX user throughout the 1990s, back when powerful RISC UNIX workstations roamed the Earth. SGI Octanes, Sun Ultras, DEC Alphastations... all absurdly expensive and built for science, engineering, and development work. And the new NVIDIA GB10 feels like the first true successor to those systems that I’ve used in over 25 years.
Grace Blackwell Desktop Supercomputer: First Impressions
Getting my hands on a Grace Blackwell desktop system felt like stepping back into the golden age of UNIX workstations, only now with petaflop-level AI power and a workflow I can run entirely headless.
RISCy business: The long and convoluted rise of today's dominant computing platform
In the 1980s, RISC was the future. By the early 2000s, it was the past. And now it's the future again.
SPARCbook teardown
In a 2019 blog post, I explored a SPARC-based laptop from the 1990s running Solaris UNIX. In this post, I run through a teardown of the laptop to explore its hardware design.
Futuretech '92
The Canadian government flew the top 125 students out to Calgary for Canada's 125th anniversary. I was one of them.
2. Retro Computers
I collect vintage computers, and this page is dedicated to my favourites. The first part discusses the old personal computers of the 1970s-1990s (Apple, Commodore, Tandy, IBM, Atari, Sinclair, ColecoVision, Osborne, Kaypro and GRiD) while the second part discusses the high-end (and costly) UNIX workstations of the 1990s and early 2000s (SUN, Tadpole, SGI, DEC, NeXT and HP).
7. Three Unconventional Tips for Career Success
A copy of the last-minute speech I did for the 2024 Kitchener graduation to fill in for a speaker who was absent.