Topics on my particular interests.
Hot on the heels of my own version-control post, Joel Spolsky writes one of his own. It’s a good overview of what’s different between a traditional version-control system and the new distributed version-control systems, and how the new ones are better. (It works for me, I use Git myself.) The takeaway quote: If you are …
Continue reading ‘“Distributed Version Control is here to stay, baby”’ »
Many programmers claim that multi-threaded programming is painfully difficult, to the point that when I say otherwise, they claim that it shows “a lack of expert knowledge.” (Obviously, I disagree with that assessment.) 😉 But just because it’s “not difficult” doesn’t mean that it’s easy. And since most people who write programs don’t have my …
Continue reading ‘“US comp-boffins claim fix for multicore ‘concurrency bugs’”’ »
A good article, and one that will (to quote my sainted grandmother) “scare the pee-water right out” of anyone responsible for corporate-level security. But the main reason I wanted to mention it was for the excuse to put the amusing phrase “your panties in a bunch” into a blog title. 😉
A kid and his mother playing the Sims 3. It wouldn’t seem like a learning experience, but you might be surprised — there are six lessons listed there, and only one of them is something I’d expect. (Which one is left as an exercise for the reader. 😉 ) I think our generation has pretty …
Continue reading ‘“Everything I need to know I learned from tiny pretend people.”’ »
Um… what the f***? I have to agree with the first commenter, “es76grl”: Get over yourself, Lindsay-no one even thought the ad was about you until YOU started saying it was…..I hope you don’t get a dime!! (Via Boing Boing)
I’ve been using a number of these ideas for a while now, on Project X, without realizing it. Maybe the ones that are new to me will help too.
I’m a horrible packrat. I’m not holding onto things for their earlier value, like this article suggests, but because they might be useful someday — in my youth, I had one too many instances of throwing something away after a couple years of disuse, only to discover that I needed it the next week. Nevertheless, …
Continue reading ‘“Use the Stock Theory of Decluttering to Clean Your House”’ »
I really, really wish that computer book authors would pay more attention to their work. I know that I’ve mentioned the Montgomery reduction algorithm here before, and the sad state of nearly all of the few things that describe it. I finally got it to work properly a while back, thanks in part to the …
This article is good. Read it. Do it. Now. Your life (or at least your data) depends on it. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen people lose vital data to a dead hard drive, and it’s just as painful for me to have to tell them that it’s gone for good …
An interesting concept, at the very least. (I’m categorizing this under Productivity, but “anti-Productivity” might be a better description.)