Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:
laptop
I’ve determined power usage on my desktop and on my server, but I hadn’t gotten around to testing the power usage of my laptop. As battery life is always a concern with a laptop, I was particularly curious to see which parts of the laptop draw the most
best practices
James Bach’s seminal rant, No Best Practices, is a great reality check for architecture astronaut rhetoric. It’s worth revisiting even if you’ve read it before. Some might say Bach’s viewpoint is pessimistic, even cynical: The way to get rich in this world is mainly by making
security
I like to periodically watch the HTTP traffic on my server. I can see what I’m actually serving up over the wire, and how much bandwidth I’m using. That’s how I noticed that I’ve become somewhat popular with direct-link image bandwidth thieves. In other words, people
programming languages
I see that Scott Mitchell has a new book out, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours. Let me preface this post with a disclaimer: Scott Mitchell is a great writer. I’ve been a fan of his work since his 4 Guys From Rolla days. Anything he
hardware
Loyd Case recently noted that the standard 3-prong computer power connector is... not so standard any more: I have yet to see any of these mutant rounded power connectors yet, but I’m surprised that Dell – a company that built its entire empire around the very concept of beige box
user experience
I’ve witnessed the death of the main menu. And toolbars are on their last legs, too. This screenshot* clinches it for me: Granted, very few people would install this many Firefox extensions. But between this and the Office 2003 debacle, it’s patently obvious that the whole menu-and-toolbar paradigm
code quality
I’ve been reading a great book of interviews with programmers circa 1989. One of the most fascinating interviews is with Wayne Ratliff, the author of dBase. Wayne’s description of balance in programming really resonated with me: Interviewer: Can you elaborate on this feeling for balance and elegance? Balance
windows xp
If you... * use Windows XP SP2 of any flavor * have 1+ gigabytes or more of system memory * use hibernate functionality ... you may have experienced this error at some point when attempting to hibernate: I know I have. It drives me nuts, because my system fails to hibernate after I’ve
usability
From Engadget’s review of the iRiver H10: So the first thing we noticed about this player when we opened it up was, unfortunately, a huge orange flyer [. . .] From Larry Osterman’s review of the iRiver H10: My concerns started when I opened the box. To the left of the
naming conventions
Alan Green rails against the meaninglessness of SomethingManager: How many classes do you come across named SomethingManager? Any decent sized commercial system seems to have plenty – SessionManager, ConnectionManager, PolicyManager, QueueManager, UrlManager, ConfigurationManager, or even, sadly, EJBManager. A quick look at the dictionary entry for “manager” and “manage” gives at least
programming languages
Tom’s criticism of Mikael Grey’s article, How to Become a Rock Star Programmer, starts off promisingly enough: Let’s start with the title. There is no such thing as a “Rock Star Programmer,” so if you want to become one, you already have problems that reading a blog
furniture
A few years ago, I did a bit of research on computer desks and decided on this AnthroCart model: And it’s a fantastic computer desk. But its Wife Acceptance Factor (WAF) is abysmal for a few reasons: * It’s absolutely enormous * It’s black * It’s design is better