Robert J. Lang isn't just a physicist and a software developer-- he's also one of the world's foremost paper-folding artists [http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/070219fa_fact_orlean]: > The laser cutter was growling away, scoring one of Lang's Hanji sheets.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you've probably heard about the game Katamari Damacy. The gameplay consists of little more than rolling stuff up into an ever-increasing ball of stuff. That's literally all you do. You start by
It's the classic achilles heel of web applications-- without an internet connection, they're useless. It's why both Firefox and Internet Explorer still have Work Offline under the File menu, hanging there like a vestigial tail. But do you know anyone that actually uses work
My home theater PC is set to automatically enter a low-power sleep mode after 25 minutes of inactivity. This works well with Vista's Media Center, which wakes the machine up when it's scheduled to record. This way I can avoid the additional electricity cost of a
It's common knowledge that Mac users prefer Safari to Firefox. It is the browser bundled with the OS – and we know how that generally works out. But it's not just a monopoly play; there are legitimate reasons for Mac users to choose Safari: Mac users favor
Scott Stanfield forwarded me a link to Roger Sessions' A Better Path to Enterprise Architecture yesterday. Even though it's got the snake-oil word "Enterprise" in the title, the article is surprisingly good. I particularly liked the unusual analogy Roger chose to illustrate the difference between
Raymond Chen notes that, in his personal experience, users don't read dialogs: How do I make this error message go away? It appears every time I start the computer. RC: What does this error message say? User: It says, 'Updates are ready to install.' I'
I'm no fan of the classic login/password scheme. I can barely remember any of the zillion logins and passwords I have. More often than not, I end up using the "forgot password" link. Which means, in effect, that my email account is my global password.
As far as I'm concerned, Windows Media Center is one of the best-- if not the best-- applications Microsoft has ever created. And it was written in .NET to boot. I've been a huge MCE enthusiast since the original version was released in 2003, so I
One of the sadder recent news stories is the disappearance of Turing award-winning researcher Jim Gray. I've written about Jim's research before; he has a knack for explaining fundamental truths of computer architecture in uniquely clear ways. For example, in this ACM interview, Jim illustrates how
Pop quiz, hotshot. How do you know if your application works? Sure, maybe your app compiles. Maybe it passes all the unit tests. Maybe it ran the QA gauntlet successfully. Maybe it was successfully deployed to the production server, or packaged into an installer. Maybe your beta testers even signed
A commenter recently noted that it was difficult to print the Programmer's Bill of Rights post. And he's right. It's high time I set up a print stylesheet for this website. I added the following link tag to the page header: <link rel=