Corey Stephan, Ph.D.

A blog about Catholicism, theology, free & open source software, & related matters

An Asst. Professor’s Deep Review of a Stock QuirkLogic Papyr E-Ink Tablet

I promised the folks at QuirkLogic that I would provide them with deep, long-term analysis. After I have used my handy Papyr as a full-time assistant professor regularly for seven months, I now share my promised review, whether or not anyone is actually still at QuirkLogic to read it. Is this a farewell message to a technological startup company that has run its course, or is it timely critical feedback that will help that company — in at least some small way — with bringing something better to market for us E-Ink aficionados to enjoy?

My FreeBSD Friday Lecture: The Writing Scholar’s Guide to FreeBSD

The FreeBSD Foundation is a “non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the FreeBSD Project and community worldwide.” Part of the explicit mission of the Foundation is to provide “workshops, educational material, and presentations to recruit more users and contributors to FreeBSD.” Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the folks at the Foundation launched a monthly […]

Awesome Theology: a curated list of open source software for Catholic theology

One month ago, I launched the GitHub repository awesome-theology. I intend Awesome Theology to be a new contribution to the Awesome project. Awesome is a parent system by which “awesome lists about all kinds of interesting topics” are made and maintained by persons who are engaged in those topics. The Awesome Manifesto specifies that an […]

How to make Brightspace Desire2Learn (D2L) a bit less undesirable

The Learning Management System (LMS) Brightspace Desire2Learn (D2L) was one of a number of popular software tools that I condemned in my free software manifesto for Catholic institutions. Ideally, nobody would use non-free, closed source institutional spyware, including D2L. In addition to the litany of ideological and security-related problems that come with D2L, it also […]