31 Jan
Python in Action
Book review. Sounds tasty.
Archive for January, 2009
31 Jan
Default Programs
How to register applications that use standard file types and other tricks, including the IApplicationAssociationRegistration and IApplicationAssociationRegistrationUI interfaces. I didn’t know this existed, and the docs aren’t clear on the origin but the docs for IApplicationAssociationRegistration say “Minimum operating systems” is “Windows Vista”.
30 Jan
Mars vs Venus
You’re just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman.’ And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me, I added, ‘Why can’t you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?’
29 Jan
Obama Mispelled ‘Obscene’
Ahem: President Barack Obama issued a withering critique Thursday of Wall Street corporate behavior, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” for employees to be paid more than $18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received a bailout from taxpayers.
28 Jan
Layers
Capture your displays as a Photoshop layered image, with save to PSD or PNG. Very handy if you need that sort of thing.
26 Jan
Puget Sound’s Tech Geneology
“A visual history” of the Puget Sound region’s tech industry, loosely tracing the genealogy of a galaxy of companies back to Microsoft, Boeing, McCaw Cellular, the University of Washington, Aldus and Amazon.com
25 Jan
Coccinelle
Coccinelle is not just another scripting language; it is aware of the structure of the C language and can make much more complex changes than are possible with pure string processing. For example, Coccinelle can make a particular change only in functions which are assigned to a function pointer in a particular type of array — say, the create member of struct inode_operations.
25 Jan
Who’s your paret node?!
Here: The programmer compiled an array of reasons as to why he can’t find a girlfriend with a good <HEAD> on her <BODY>, reason 0 being that he has limited cache. So often he searches his memory to recall connecting to the TCP/IP tunnel of his last girlfriend — sometimes even without a secure socket. [...]
25 Jan
You know what the problem with Hollywood is…
They make shit. Great movie. That opening clip cuts just before the camera pans back and you realize all is not as it seems. Now this you have to see on a big screen in wide screen. The YouTube clip just doesn’t do it justice. The SUV chase scene. The interview at the club. And [...]
24 Jan
Making Wrong Code Look Wrong
I’ve reached the point I tend to write code a certain way (depending on the language) because, as Joel puts it: 4. You deliberately architect your code in such a way that your nose for uncleanliness makes your code more likely to be correct. This is the real art: making robust code by literally inventing [...]
24 Jan
Roman Soldiers
Joel talking about the Development Abstraction Layer had a particularly interesting sinppet: A programmer is most productive with a quiet private office, a great computer, unlimited beverages, an ambient temperature between 68 and 72 degrees (F), no glare on the screen, a chair that’s so comfortable you don’t feel it, an administrator that brings them [...]
24 Jan
“Java Loves You – Please Wait”
Another good one from Joel: Just because there’s room on the dialog box, doesn’t mean you have to put something there. The Java installer starts off with a dialog box that manages to repeat the word Java six times without really telling you what it is, just that it’s “everywhere.” People don’t like to read. [...]
24 Jan
Assets
“In an information economy, the most valuable company assets drive themselves home every night. If they are not treated well, they do not return the next morning.” –Peter Chang
24 Jan
Regular Expressions
“Some people, when confronted with a problem, think ‘I know, I’ll use regular expressions.’ Now they have two problems.” – Jamie Zawinski
