“Are the ice caps melting?”
A lesson in Bad Science from NASA (predictably on Global Warming again): if the facts get in the way of your favorite theory, ignore the facts.
Archive of posts filed under the Interests category.
Topics on my particular interests.
“Openmoko to release Linux handset tomorrow”
Want a good cell phone/organizer, but don’t want to pay through the nose for a proprietary and closed-source system that limits you in all sorts of ways? Looks like there’s an alternative coming Real Soon Now. 🙂
“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! 🙂
“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 …
“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 …
“The Ultimate Code Kata”
Jeff Atwood has a good article on using practice-programming to continually hone your programming skills: Contrary to what you might believe, merely doing your job every day doesn’t qualify as real practice. Going to meetings isn’t practicing your people skills, and replying to mail isn’t practicing your typing. You have to set aside some time …