Marc Rochkind's Articles
Most of the ones here are fairly recent (last 10 years, anyway).
For really old blog articles from 2006-2008, click here.
And there are a few articles from 2012 and 2013 that I forgot I even wrote.
How To Back Up Your Personal Computer
An article I wrote in 2008, but still full of good advice.
Backing Up Photos When Traveling
Problems doing it and my solution. more
Rebuilding My Tall Ships Montage
A montage I put together 40 years ago fell apart when the Scotch tape failed, but I was able to rebuild it digitally.
How to Carry a TV Up From the Basement
The TV was big, the stairs were narrow, and in two years of thinking I never came up with a good way to get it out.
Verifying and Uploading Large Archives of Photos
ZipVerifier and S3BigUpload are for preparing large image archives and uploading them to Amazon S3 and Glacier. Designed for the backup of last resort, to be retrieved only if all other backups have been destroyed. The emphasis is on verifying that the archive is absolutely correct and that the upload, which could take days, completes and is correct.
Building Your Own Digital Photo Frame
Building your own wall-mounted digital photo frame, better than anything you can buy ready made.
.link "a-frame.html"
My Boxes
A short photo essay about my recent attempts to learn fine woodworking by making boxes. Lots of mistakes leading to lots of education. .link "https://mrochkind.smugmug.com/Other/Boxes/n-zkXP9/"
Moonrise at 4:05 PM
I can't legally show you the picture here, not even by linking to the image, but you probably know this Ansel Adams photograph. (If you don't, click here.)
Our local Boulder daily paper ran a story in August, 2001, about this photograph, in which they quoted none other Mary Alinder, who co-wrote Adams's autobiography, as saying that the picture was taken in mid-afternoon and was printed by Adams to make the sky darker. Something about the mid-afternoon part didn't sound right, as I remembered reading something else about the time. So I did some research and wrote this letter to the editor, my first ever.
Re-creating Ansel Adams's
Born Free and Equal
How I re-created Adams's book about the Manzanar relocation camp.
Review of the Pulsar Analogue Type Men's Strap
I used to write serious wrist-watch reviews (no, really!), and this one, a different kind of wrist-watch review, is my favorite.
The Source Code Control System
The original 1975 paper. link
"A Retrospective on the Source Code Control System"
A 50-year retrospective, to be published in Transactions on Software Engineering in March 2025. linkMy UNIX-Related Publications
Most of these are available behind paywalls, and some may not be available at all, although I think I have them on paper someplace.
Rochkind, M. J., “The Source Code Control System,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-1, Number 4, pp. 364-370, Dec., 1975. link
Rochkind, M. J., “A Retrospective on the Source Code Control System,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, March, 2025.. link
Rochkind, M. J., “A Table-Driven Data Validator,” Proc. of COMPCON FALL 1980, IEEE Catalog No. 80CH1598-2C. link
Bergeron, R. F. and Rochkind, M. J., “Software Tools and Components,” Bell System Technical Journal, 61(6), July-Aug., 1982.
Rochkind, M. J., “Structure of a Database File System for the UNIX Operating System,” Bell System Technical Journal, 61(9), Nov., 1982.
Rochkind, M. J., “Evolution of UNIX Within Bell Laboratories,” UNIX Symposium, Sydney, Australia, May 1-3, 1984.
Rochkind, M. J., Advanced UNIX Programming, Prentice-Hall, 1985.
Rochkind, M. J., “Pick, Coherent, and THEOS,” BYTE Inside the IBM PCs, 10(11), Fall, 1985. link
Rochkind, M. J., Advanced C Programming for Displays, Prentice-Hall, 1988.
Rochkind, M. J., “XVT: A Virtual Toolkit for Portability Between Window Systems,” Proceedings of the Winter 1989 USENIX Conference, Jan. 30-Feb. 3, 1989, San Diego, CA, USA, pp. 151-163.
Rochkind, M. J., “A Unified Programming Interface for Character-Based and Graphical Window Systems,” Proceedings of the Summer 1989 USENIX Conference, June 12-16, 1989, Baltimore, MD, USA, pp. 109-117.
Rochkind, M. J., “An extensible virtual toolkit (XVT) for portable GUI applications,” IEEE Compcon Spring'92 Thirty-Seventh IEEE Computer Society International Conference, Digest of Papers, 24-28, San Francisco, CA, USA, Feb., 1992.
Rochkind, M. J., “Has UNIX Programming Changed in 20 Years?,” informit.com, Addison Wesley Professional, May 28, 2004. link
Rochkind, M. J., Advanced UNIX Programming, 2nd Ed., Addison-Wesley, 2004.