Friendly HaackMan Reminder: Do Not Forget To Blink

Hey you! Yeah I’m talking to you. The one there who has been staring at the screen for several hours straight. Do NOT forget to blink often.

Read More

Community Server 1.2 Live Demo

tech suggest edit

When it was released, I was quite critical of Community Server. I felt it was a rush job and shouldn’t have even been graced with a “beta” next to its name. That, along with other reasons, spurred me to start the Subtext project.

Read More

Gmail adds Auto Save

tools suggest edit

Man this would have saved me from tearing out a lot of hair in the past. An excerpt from the announcement:

Read More

GhostDoc 1.3.0 Released!

tools suggest edit

Ghost Doc Roland released Ghost Doc 1.3.0. I am looking forward to trying the new bits out. Check out his release notes.

Read More

The Shining Redux - Feel Good Movie?

humor suggest edit

The Shining Since when was The Shining a feel good movie? Since somebody creatively edited footage to make this promo.

Read More

Twiggy Meets Ashton Kutcher

My wife can be a real bookworm at times. She took Twiggy to the local Starbucks in the downtown area of Culver City to have a drink and read her Spanish book outside in the beautiful weather. As she studied, she could overhear two guys behind her loudly engaged in annoying guy talk about some hot coworker of theirs and how some other guy got to her first.

Read More

Coca Cola's Dirty Ad - Why QA Really Matters

testing suggest edit

Saw this on the Snopes site about a Coke ad that Coca Cola released and then had to recall because of a hidden risqué image. Pretty damn funny. It just shows that companies shouldn’t skimp on QA.

Read More

Housing Prices in Los Angeles

personal suggest edit

Just to put housing prices in Los Angeles in perspective, we bought our small 1000 sq foot town house condo a year and a half ago. I just found out this week that our neighbors sold their comparable unit for 30% more than we paid for ours. It boggles my mind.

Read More

A Critical Look at C# 3.0 Extension Methods

csharp suggest edit

Ian Griffiths takes an in-depth look at C# 3.0 Extension methods and the potential problems with it. Of particular note is his philosophy, which directly follows from the idea that code should be written for humans, which he summarizes whe he say…

Read More

Thunder!

personal suggest edit

I just heard thunder. I don’t think the weather here in Los Angeles got the memo, but we already had a thunderstorm. To the thunder clounds, go away and come back later when the yearly quota has’t been filled.

Read More

Going Into Design Debt

Found this post in the trackbacks section of my post on Mental Laziness. It’s a classic example of where management pressure often leads to mental laziness.

Read More

Splitting Pascal/Camel Cased Strings

code suggest edit

Found this post in RossCode which mentions a blog post that discusses how to bind enumerations to drop downs, something I’ve done quite often.

Read More

Must We Put Code In Our Blog Titles and Subtitles?

blogging humor suggest edit

Perhaps it’s a rather innocuous practice, but after seeing one too many I am compelled to rant a bit, if only to be a total jerk. What do I speak of? I was going through the blogs in my blog reader the other day and I started noticing the predilection for geek blogs to have “cute” titles and/or subtitles with code snippets. I know we’re geeks, but must we be THAT geeky? It’s become so trendy that I must start the backlash now.

Read More

MEME: Top 10 Recent Blogs

blogging suggest edit

Ok, I am looking for some blogging fresh meat, so I thought I’d try my hand at starting a meme. The criteria is purposely vague and very simple. I want you to list ten blogs you’ve really enjoyed reading recently. Especially the underrated, undiscovered, recent finds. They don’t have to be your favorite blogs of all time, just ones that have caught your notice recently.

Read More

Now Repeat After Me, Var Isn't an Object

csharp suggest edit

Leave it to Ian to cut through the crap and give a very clear and detailed account of what exactly the new var keyword in C# does.

Read More

VisualStudioHacks is alive...

books suggest edit

Good to see James revive this. I really need to buy this book.

Read More

The Downside to Cool Software Names

tech humor suggest edit

Certainly there’s been a bit of a bad reaction regarding the name changes of Indigo to WCF and Avalon to WPF.

Read More

Refactoring the Gregorian Calendar

history suggest edit

In 1582, the Julian calendar was really starting to show its age. A bunch of brains got together and came up with the Gregorian calendar, which was received by the general population with a big middle finger in the air. Many saw it as an attempt by greedy landlords to cheat tenants out of a week of rent.

Read More

Tickets to Spain

personal suggest edit

Picked up our airline tickets to Spain today. We’ll be visiting in November, landing in Madrid, travelling through Andalucia and ending up in Barcelona. The main thing I want to visit in Madrid is the area where I used to live called Torrejon de Ardoz.

Read More

It Never Rains in Southern California...Except Today

personal suggest edit

UPDATE: Looks like I was sleeping during my class on 70s funk. It was Albert Hammond who wrote It Never Rains In Southern California, not Kool and the Gang. Thanks Jeff.

Read More