“Now that Vista is now the only Windows you can buy preinstalled…”
Apparently a lot of people have decided to avoid Windows Vista. Good for you, guys! 🙂
Archive of entries posted by Head Geek
“Don’t hide or disable menu items”
I generally agree with Joel Spolsky on most things computer-related, but I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and I just have to disagree. I see where he’s coming from, but it seems to me that there’s a better way to let the user know why an option is disabled (maybe a mouse-over …
“Happy Canada Day!”
Happy Canada Day, Boing Boing style: On this day in 1867, Amos Canada drove the spike that completed the Canadian National Railway, thus paving the way for the welding of Lefter Canada and Righter Canada into the new nation of Belgium (we changed the name about a month later — turns out it was already …
“The Dangers of Auto-Replace”
The humorous consequences of an automated editor.
“E-Mail After the Rapture”
I’ve always liked Bruce Schneier, a very well-known security professional. Earlier this month, he tackled the thorny question of how You’ve Been Left Behind, a post-Rapture service for those who believe in that Christian concept, secures the information that you give them to ensure that it won’t be stolen or prematurely released. If you’re not …
Goodbye, Windows XP
A sad farewell to Windows XP. It wasn’t the greatest, but it was a lot better than the piece-of-excrement successor that Microsoft is trying to force on everyone right now.
“Making vinyl records the old-fashioned way”
It seems that the LP is making a comeback, thanks (indirectly) to the iPod.
“#ifdef Considered Harmful”
This is an old (1992) paper on writing cross-platform C programs, but it’s useful nonetheless. A lot of the problems highlighted in it have all but vanished over the intervening years, but the general ideas are still valid, even on Windows machines. (Have you ever tried writing a non-trivial Windows application, using the raw Win32 …
#ifdef or #if defined?
One of my co-workers discovered an interesting item in the #ifdef/#ifndef entry of the help files for Microsoft Visual C++ 2005: These directives are provided only for compatibility with previous versions of the language. The defined( identifier ) constant expression used with the #if directive is preferred. (Update: The same statement is in the help …
Paper Spam!
A friend of mine noticed that an envelope had been slid under his apartment door yesterday, containing a hand-written note: Hi! Every time I see you I think how beautiful and georgious you are and want to get to know you better. Don’t get me wrong, I just want to be your friend. If you …