Charles Petzold
Can Guitar Frets Perform Multiplication?
I’m sure that some pictures are worth a thousand words, but others trigger a whole lot of...
2 weeks ago
I’m sure that some pictures are worth a thousand words, but others trigger a whole lot of puzzlement. Such was the case with the cover of a book I recently bought entitled Calculating with Tones: The Logarithmic Logic of Music: ... more ...
Charles Petzold
AI-Supercharged Phishing Emails
It was once possible to detect email scams by misspellings, sloppy grammar, messy formatting, and...
3 weeks ago
It was once possible to detect email scams by misspellings, sloppy grammar, messy formatting, and other blunders. Now that scammers are apparently using AI to aid in their phishing emails, the tells are more subtle. ... more ...
Charles Petzold
Protests Then and Now
When a government engages in deviant behavior, it is the responsibility of the people to express...
24th Mar 2026
When a government engages in deviant behavior, it is the responsibility of the people to express their opposition. That’s why I’ll be participating in the No Kings protest in New York City on Saturday. ... more ...
Charles Petzold
The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify’s AI DJ
Am I naïve in expecting Artificial Intelligence to be smart? Is my interpretation of the word...
26th Feb 2026
Am I naïve in expecting Artificial Intelligence to be smart? Is my interpretation of the word “intelligence” too literal? And when an AI behaves stupidly, who’s to blame? The programmers or the AI entity itself? Is it even proper to make a distinction between the two? Or does the...
Charles Petzold
30 Years
After all these years, I still get the dreams. ... more ...
13th Jan 2026
After all these years, I still get the dreams. ... more ...
Charles Petzold
Twenty Years of Blog Posts
Today is the 20th anniversary of this blog. I posted my first entry 20 years ago as I was finishing...
23rd Aug 2025
Today is the 20th anniversary of this blog. I posted my first entry 20 years ago as I was finishing my book Programming Microsoft Windows Forms. Since then, I’ve posted over 900 entries, all of which are still online. ... more ...
Charles Petzold
The Mary Queen of Scots Channel Anamorphosis: A 3D Simulation
I’ve been going down some odd rabbit holes recently while researching my free online...
17th May 2025
I’ve been going down some odd rabbit holes recently while researching my free online book-in-progress The Lost Art of Logarithms. Although the book is mostly focused on the history, use, meaning, and importance of logarithms, I believe that even histories of science and...
Charles Petzold
Password Math
A friend from my PC Magazine days recently posted on Facebook a little mathematics anomaly that he...
8th Feb 2025
A friend from my PC Magazine days recently posted on Facebook a little mathematics anomaly that he encountered while trying to figure out the number of possible passwords under certain conditions. He began with the stipulation that a four-character password had to be constructed...
Charles Petzold
2025 Project: “The Lost Art of Logarithms”
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I do have New Year’s projects, and for 2025 I hope to spend...
1st Jan 2025
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I do have New Year’s projects, and for 2025 I hope to spend as much time as possible working on my book The Lost Art of Logarithms. ... more ...
Charles Petzold
The Best Decade in Music
Like many people who turned 11 years old in 1964, the first record album I bought “on my own” — in...
14th Dec 2024
Like many people who turned 11 years old in 1964, the first record album I bought “on my own” — in other words by pleading “Mom, can you get this album for me?” — was Meet the Beatles!, their first release in the United States. But so what? I have about as much inclination to...
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