The standard login form is everywhere. It's unavoidable. And it's a giant pain in the butt. As much as we see login forms every day, you'd think we would have mastered them by now. Unfortunately, we haven't. Here's what I&
As software developers, we're great at communicating with computers. But we're typically not so great at communicating with other people. Esther Schindler's recent interview with Steve McConnell [http://blogs.cio.com/towards-sanity-in-software-project-estimation-a-chat-with-steve-mcconnell] illustrates how this aspect of our personality tends to work against us:
You might read a post on this blog and decide I'm full of crap. That's fine. I often am full of crap. I encourage you to leave a comment explaining why you feel this way. And, while you're at it, feel free to point
Eric Lippert is one of my favorite Microsoft bloggers. He's one of those people who reminds you that Microsoft, despite all its problems, still employs a lot of incredibly thoughtful, near-genius programmers. Take a look at his greatest hits: * How many Microsoft employees does it take to change
In an earlier post on the philosophy of code comments [https://blog.codinghorror.com/when-good-comments-go-bad/], I noted that the best kind of comments are the ones you don't need. Allow me to clarify that point. You should first strive to make your code as simple as possible to
I recently had a noisy fan failure in my ASUS Vento 3600 case. The particular fan that failed was the 80mm fan in the front panel, which is responsible for circulating air by the hard drives in the front of the case. I disconnected it while I considered my options.
Next generation DVD formats promise a huge jump in resolution, from the 720 x 480 of standard DVD to the 1920 x 1080 of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Additional resolution is always welcome, of course. But it's not free. You'll have to purchase a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray
Now that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are starting to enter the market in earnest, I thought I'd revisit HD video playback on the PC. I'm seriously considering buying one of the $199 Xbox 360 HD-DVD kits [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=325] and retrofitting it
I couldn't resist [http://themot.org/gallery/d/58721-1/pacmanchart.png]. In the innocent era of 8-bit arcades, you made characters female by adding a cute little pixelated red bow. Just like in Ms. Sawhorse Detective [http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=2305&p=20].
After revisiting my ongoing three monitor obsession recently, I was compelled to upgrade my current mongrel mix of varying LCD monitor brands and sizes. I settled on three 20" Samsung 204B panels. Standardizing on a single type of monitor in a multiple monitor configuration has obvious advantages in color
When I ask development teams whether their database is under version control, I usually get blank stares. The database is a critical part of your application. If you deploy version 2.0 of your application against version 1.0 of your database, what do you get? A broken application. And
A recurring theme in Edward Tufte's books is the massive difference in resolution between the printed page and computer displays. Printed pages lend themselves to vastly greater information density. Sparklines are one particular technique of Tufte's designed to exploit the greater resolution of the printed page.