Lots of generic crap for today. Without further ado:
- What in the bleeding hell.
I have to admit that this whole "code/hacker-caffeine" trend is
starting to get on my nerves. After years and years of caffeine
addiction (I could probably have won the world record for most coke
drank in a day) a couple of years ago I decided to let go of it -
almost completely. I now enjoy the occasional coke and, if I'm
genuinely tired and need a pick-me-up, a coffee always helps. Back in
the day I could've drowned a triple espresso without any effect. Bottom
line, it never ceases to amaze me how dependant people allow themselves
to become.
- Joku posted a worthy comment on Mike Stall's blog:
Not really related, but it would be good if technical
bloggers writing about X,Y & Z would also mention what is the
closest public release they are using. Now if you go google and find
some older blog entry it maybe the stuff being talked about was in
relation to for example VS Beta 1 and might be completely wrong today.
I don't think everyone who come to blogs.msdn from google will figure
out that many of the blog entries that talk about say VS2005 are
actually talking about something that's specific to non-RTM build. If
there were tags for every public build and they were visible and easy
to put on the blog entry... Well some day perhaps.
It is a valid point, and I shall endeavour to do that from now on.
- RMS never ceases to amaze me in how he takes theories (conspiratorial, political or otherwise) and treats them like facts. "Israel's real nuclear weapons",
says he. It is commonly accepted that Israel does have a nuclear
arsenal, but no-one knows for sure, myself included. Admittedly RMS's
never purported to be unbiased or politically-correct, but it bothers
me never-the-less.
- Fellow Israeli developer-blogger Oren Ellenbogen mentioned a few weeks ago a subtlety in the usage of interfaces
in C# I was not aware of. I've since used explicit interface
declarations with great success, however one caveat is that you can't
use the interface members even from a private scope (i.e. from a member
method within the class implementing the interface). So use this
feature with caution - it can reduce messiness (particularly where
intellisense is concerned), but often at the cost of forcing you to add
lots of unnecessary casts.
- Software patents are taking an increasingly alarming foothold in
common business practice. Litigation has always been part of business,
but when Creative sues Apple
for patent infringement over the iPod's navigation interface, to me it
means things have gotten completely out of hand. Face it, people:
one-click shopping, song navigation in menus etc. should not be patentable.
It's ridiculous, any UI-designer with more than 3 IQ could've come up
with that concept. Yes, Creative went to market first, but that is
completely irrelevant; just imagine if someone patented the "ability to
close a user interface component by clicking a button" - none of us
would be able to close windows. Does that make sense to you?
- This little hard-drive hack is really damn cool.
- The Blizzard vs BnetD
case is worrisome to say the least. I'm not versed in the particulars
of the case, but assuming the BnetD programers did not actually
reverse-engineer Blizzard proprietary code they should not have had a
case. I wonder how this case compares to the Microsoft vs Samba
litigation - I reckon I should do some further reading.
- I've been playing with Total Commander for several days now. Originally I couldn't stand the software, but admittedly it gives Servant Salamander a serious run for its money, and has quite a few features SS does not.
- I promised Oran (one of my colleagues) that if he found an IBM Model M keyboard
for me I would try it out for a week. He managed to find one and I've
spend a couple of hours on Sunday cleaning it up, and have been using
it since. It's a very nice keyboard; the buckling spring key design has
terrific tactile response and typing on it feels great. There are
several things I do not like about it, though: for one, it's missing
the Windows keys which I've grown accustomed to using (Left Windows key
+ D or L two dozen times a day...); the right shift occasionally gets
stuck; finally, it's a little big for my hands so certain keypresses
are far less convenient than they were with the trusty Microsoft
Natural Elite. It doesn't seem that the new keyboard has improved my
errors/character rate any, but it is a little early to tell. That said,
it's amazing that a keyboard manufactured in 1991 can favorably compare
to a modern, ergonomic keyboard. My model is a 1391408, in case you
were wondering. All in all, I still miss the old Microsoft Natural
classic (I've used one from 1996 to about 2001 when it crashed on the
floor one too many times. It's still working, by the way, just missing
some keys.)
- I came home from a pub last night and made the mistake of turning on the TV. Twelve Kingdoms
episodes 14 and 15 were on. No sleep for me tonight. Do yourself a
favour and watch that show; I own it in its entirety on DVD and it was
some of the finest money I've ever spent. Other anime favorites include
Trigun, Full Metal Alchemist and Cowboy Bebop. If you're curious about anime, NGE might be a good primer, although I have my gripes with it.
- Finally, I've made a list of all my DVD movies on IMDB, but unfortunately there is no way to link to it externally. I'll find some other catalogue, or write one on my own.
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