Philosophical GeekPhilosophical GeekDiscussions about .Net, C-sharp, Cpp, code in general, design, and occasional deep thinking about what it all means. Also my current projects and lego building. 
Articles
Questions about Robots
2008-06-09 18:30:00 In the future, when you have your first humanoid robot servant and you decide to have some fun with it, and you tell it to do something stupid and arbitrary like go stand in the corner for no reason, put itself in embarrassing poses, or anything generally “abusive”, will you feel bad afterwards? Should you? ... More About: Questions , Robots
Volunteers for Change Fairfax, VA
2008-06-09 14:52:00 Leticia has been interested in getting us involved more in the community so she’s been hunting around for local service opportunities. She finally found a great program in our area that I thought I’d share for anybody looking for volunteer experiences in the DC metro region. Fairfax City runs a division called Volunteer Fairfax that provides ... More About: News , Change , Link , Volunteers
Review: Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit, 2nd Ed.
2008-06-04 18:38:00 I saw this book when I bought Programming WPF a few weeks ago and it looked promising enough to buy. I’ve been doing unit testing in C# for a few years now, but I thought there were always things to learn and maybe I’d pick up a few new ideas. It is easy to contrast this ... More About: Review , Testing , Unit
We Need More Growth of Nuclear Power
2008-05-23 14:00:00 With this post, I’m beginning a new series or category of bog posts that I’m loosely terming “A Better Future.” I’ve been thinking a lot about the grail of infinite power, coupled with the enormous rise in gas prices this week. While I am all in favor of reducing wasteful consumption, increasing efficiency, and generally being ... More About: Power , Nuclear , Growth , Nuclear power
Virtual PC 2007 Tips and Tricks
2008-05-22 16:42:00 Put them on any drive other than C: (actually, any drive that you don’t heavily use at the same time) Don Roessler discusses how to reduce the size of your virtual hard disk (.vhd) files, and some other tips. Scott Hanselman talks about disabling unneeded services Consider Virtual Server instead (not for ... More About: Tips , Tricks , Tips and Tricks
Custom data source for Google Earth
2008-05-20 15:21:00 Using just these links as a guide, we quickly (less than a day) put up a data source over https for our customers to download GIS data to Google Earth . KML reference and tutorial - KML is the XML language used to describe features that can be displayed in Google Earth and Google Maps. Sample code ... More About: Data , Source
Formational Experiences
2008-05-15 18:25:00 When I was 9, I started playing with GW-BASIC by typing in programs found in the old kid’s 3-2-1 Contact magazine. This soon progressed to QBASIC, where I mostly made cool graphics with lines and circles. (click for larger image) QBASIC is not included in Windows anymore, but you can still get it. (click for larger image) I had ... More About: Experiences
Lots of Good Movies This Year
2008-05-14 14:29:00 We might have to make a few exception this year to our decision not to go the theater anymore…hopefully won’t have experiences like the last time… Cloverfield The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Batman: The Dark Knight The Day The Earth Stood Still Get Smart Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince The Incredible Hulk Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Iron ... More About: Movies , Music , Film , Theater , Links
Tracking database changes using triggers
2008-05-13 14:00:00 Tracking changes in database tables is an incredibly useful feature–especially for operational data that can change often. Having recently had to implement this feature, I thought I’d share some of the techniques I learned. Sample Database First, let’s conceptualize a very simple database consisting of user information (name, date of birth), and e-mails. A user can have ... More About: Tracking , Triggers
Opening Visual Studio solutions from Explorer in Vista
2008-05-12 15:53:00 You’ve installed Visual Studio 2005 on Vista and dutifully changed it to run as administrator, like you’re supposed to. And then… Problem: Visual Studio 2005 solutions no longer open when you double-click them in Windows Vista. In fact, when you double-click nothing happens. Solution: Change them to open with Visual Studio 2005 directly instead of the vslauncher.exe ... More About: Opening , Explorer
Now twittering
2008-05-10 00:21:00 Thought I’d try it out. You can follow me at my twitter page and I’ll follow you back. Also trying out putting twitter status on my blog. I’ve been thinking about twitter for a while, but still not sure how I’ll use it. Tags: Personal, social networks, twitter
Software Pick: SyncMyCal
2008-05-09 14:58:00 With the acquisition of a Blackberry I wanted to be able to sync both my work and home Outlook setups to the Blackberry (and to each other). I tried a number of free tools (though they aren’t that easy to find) and quickly concluded I would need a better solution. Enter SyncMyCal. It’s easy, it’s cheap ... More About: Software , News , Tips , Link , Pick
4 Principles of Not Wasting Time
2008-05-06 17:35:00 There are so many postings out there on all sorts of blogs about how not to waste time that I’m not sure I can contribute something very meaningful (certainly not new), but since it’s something I’ve been thinking about, I might as well spill some ideas about it. Definition Any discussion of time-wasting is profitless unless you ... More About: Time , Principles
Announcing: GeekSoftworks.com
2008-05-06 00:24:00 I’ve setup a new domain for a front page for my software hobbies and what will eventually be my “store front”: Geek Softworks It uses WordPress, but it’s not a blog–it’s for the software I write. So far, only a few products are up, including DiskSlicer (a new version!), Windows Media Top 10 Plugin, and Word Count ...
I could get cable for this?
2008-04-29 21:51:00 My wife and I only recently bought a TV, but we still don’t get cable or even have an antenna. If we ever did, the only things we’d watch are Discovery, History, and Food. This is the closest I’ve come to signing up: Tags: inspiration, music, Personal, science, tv More About: News , Music , Film , Theater , Link
Please help with Word Count Plugin
2008-04-29 21:46:00 I was taking a look at the download page for my Word Count Plugin for Windows Live Writer. It’s gotten a few hundred downloads (thanks!), but the single review is actually spam. Unfortunately, I can’t remove it or even report the review from my account since it’s my own software. Plea for help: Can a helpful reader ...
Rudeness is destroying the arts
2008-04-28 21:59:00 or Why I Don’t Leave The House Anymore “Am I disturbing you?” The last movie I saw in the theater was the 3-D version of Beowulf. The theater was fairly empty–maybe 30-40 people total. Two teenage girls sat two seats to my left. A man was in front of me. The two girls talked loudly through before ... More About: Music , Film , Arts , The Arts , Rudeness
How to enable Simple Tags support in Windows Live Writer
2008-04-18 18:14:00 I’m using Simple Tags to do the tags on this site. I wanted to enable support for these tag links in Windows Live Writer (it beats having to log in and edit each post after publishing). Quite easy: Click on Insert Tags In the Tag Provider combo, scroll to the bottom where it says (Customize Providers…) and ... More About: Windows Live , Tips , Support
In this universe we obey the law of commutativity
2008-04-17 14:43:00 This kind of thing has happened to be a few times now, so I thought I’d share the fun. In one of our pieces of software we have a process that looks like this: void MyThread() { while (true) { DoFunctionA(); ... More About: Humor , Universe , Code
Need some new audio cable?
2008-04-15 19:36:00 Get it from Blue Jeans. Awesome. (BlueJeansCable .com) (via digg) Tags: Link s /News More About: Audio
How to work an 8-hour day
2008-04-14 21:03:00 One of the things I decided when I started working was that I was not going to be one of those guys who worked 12 hours a day for a company (if I ever become an entrepreneur, all bets are off since I’m working for myself). So far, I’ve been pretty successful, and I’ve noticed ... More About: Work , Hour
GetTextExtent vs. DrawText (with DT_CALCRECT)
2008-04-10 20:35:00 Working on an MFC app that has just been converted to Unicode (finally!), I noticed that one button (which is created dynamically) is too small to fit the text in Korean (and Russian and a few other languages). The code was calling something like: CSize sz = m_btAdjustColors.GetDC()->GetTextExte nt(sCaption); It seems correct, but these script languages are throwing it ... More About: Code
How to catch a NetFlix thief
2008-04-08 20:50:00 Via Geekologie comes the hilarious tale of a man (boy, really) caught stealing NetFlix DVDs from a mailbox. The comments are funny, too. Some seem like they’re obviously written by the neighbor. One issue I didn’t really see addressed in the comments on the post is the overall issue of mail safety. People need to consider ... More About: News , Humor , Links , Link , Netflix
The Bugle podcast
2008-04-03 16:30:00 I just discovered this gem of a podcast. The Bugle is a podcast published by the Times Online. Better writing than the Onion, and funnier than the Daily Show. It’s basically two Brits being witty about the week’s news. I’ve only listened to episode one so far, but found myself laughing too hard to concentrate ... More About: Humor , Podcast , Link
10 Ways to Learn New Things in Development
2008-04-01 20:46:00 Expanding upon one of the topics in my post about 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Developers, I’ve been thinking of various ways to kick-start learning opportunities in my career and hobbies. 1. Read books. There are tons of books about programming–probably most of them are useless, but there are many, many gems that can greatly influence ... More About: Development , Things , Learn
Installed Vista SP1 - no problems
2008-03-21 18:36:00 I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this morning. It took about 45 minutes, two reboots, and afterward I had no problems. It never showed up in Windows Update for me so I used the standalone installer (linked to above), fully prepared to reinstall some drivers. But afterwards, no drivers seemed to have any problems–Device ... More About: Tech , Problems
How to file good bug reports (from Frank Kelly)
2008-03-19 15:41:00 This is an issue I run into constantly at my job. Frank Kelly wrote up a good summary of some items. They’re simple, easy to understand, easy to follow, even for non-programmers. In fact, I’m sending this link out to everyone in my group here at work. Technorati Tags: testing,programming,bug reporting More About: File , Code , Good
Never make assumptions about performance
2008-03-17 14:47:00 The importance of measuring performance changes is a topic that has been covered by others smarter and more experienced than me, but I have a recent simple tale. I’ve simplified the code quite a bit in order to demonstrate the issue. Suppose I have a wrapper around an image (it has many more attributes): ... More About: Performance , Tips , Code , Make , Forms
6 Ways to Increase Your Confidence As You Code
2008-03-06 22:03:00 One of the key requirements for being able to reliably update software is the confidence that the changes you are making are safe. The amount of confidence required increases with the complexity of the system. In my day job I work on a real-time messaging system that can have very, very little downtime. As the service ... More About: Code , Confidence
Why I love LEGO
More articles from this author:2008-03-03 16:43:00 For Christmas, I got my wife a neat little townhouse. A LEGO townhouse. She loved it–until she got towards the end of the first model. There was a single piece missing. I went to LEGO’s web site and filled out a simple form. A few weeks later, I got the part and a really nice ... More About: Personal , Love , Lego 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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