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Wikipedia

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

This xkcd comic says it all: http://xkcd.com/214/.
I originally went to Wikipedia to look up barrow, because I had read something about someone being buried in a barrow, and I thought, you know, it’s time to find out exactly what that is. I then found out what I was really looking for was tumulus, so I […]

Source Control and Private Branches

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Jeff Atwood wrote a blog entry today extolling the virtues of early and often checkins to source control. I agree with this, though I think there are a variety of ways to accomplish it.
Recently I have become fond of using a combination of Git and Perforce. The Perforce depot provides the centralized, managed source control […]

SmugMug Customer Service is Great

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

I haven’t actually had to use it yet, but the more I use customer service features of other web sites, the more I appreciate the promise and guarantee of “an e-mail response within an hour” from SmugMug.
How many times have you sent in feedback, or a request, or a complaint, to a web site, and […]

Laugh Tracks Suck

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

Why do television producers feel the need to add a laugh track to some sitcoms these days?
Take the show Two and a Half Men for example. This show’s format seems to be nothing but one-liners separated by pauses for laughter from the laugh track. You know, you don’t have to try to make every single […]

KVM Switches

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Why do they have to suck? I have owned three different brands and four different styles of KVM switches in the past eight years or so, and all of them have had major shortcomings. The only reason I continue using them is that there is nothing better out there.
Why does it have to be this […]

On Creating Strong Passwords

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

It’s getting harder to generate secure passwords these days. Part of the problem is that, the stronger a password is, the harder it is for someone to remember. A password such as ‘F7c%el(9xfka$hsa’ is an extremely strong password, but probably almost impossible to remember unless you type it many many times a day for a […]

Airport Security for Parents

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I’ve recently been following a thread on one of my company’s internal mailing lists about tips and tricks for air travel with small children or infants. One of the major stress points seems to be getting through security.
This is stressful because parents are usually traveling with a whole bunch of extra stuff, and have to […]

iTunes Store requires WiFi

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

To access the iTunes store from an iPhone, you need to be connected via WiFi. It won’t let you connect over the 3G internet connection.
This restriction baffles me. Why would they do this? The 3G internet connection is perfectly fast enough. You can connect to the App store over 3G. It seems like they are […]

Rock Band Wish List

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

I’ve been playing a decent amount of Rock Band recently. I’ve been staying away from the vocals, but I can get through almost all of the songs it comes with on “hard” on bass, guitar, and drums. This game is a great way to build or maintain hand-eye coordination.
But it has left me wanting more. […]

Disable Menu Items

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

In a recent post on his blog, Joel Spolsky writes that you should not “hide or disable menu items”. His alternative is to leave all of the menu options in place, and provide messaging to tell the user why an action can’t be completed.
I have to respectfully disagree with his assessment. I think that leaving […]

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