programming languages
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. I was
hardware
There are two popular formulations of Moore’s Law: The most popular formulation [of Moore’s Law] is the doubling of the number of transistors on integrated circuits every 18 months. At the end of the 1970s, Moore’s Law became known as the limit for the number of transistors
multi-monitor setup
I have something in common with Bill Gates and Larry Page: Larry Page: I have a weird setup in my office. I have one computer with three monitors: one flat-screen monitor and two regular ones. I have my browser on one screen, my schedule on another and my e-mail on
data visualization
Today, a group of thirteen Vertigo folks, including myself, attended Edware Tufte’s one-day course on Presenting Data and Information in San Francisco. The course is $360 for the day, but that includes all four of Tufte’s books, which are currently going for about $141 new on Amazon. We
software development concepts
Anil Dash and I have the same job title: evangelist. I share Anil’s reservations about his job title, too: You see, these days my business cards describe me as “Chief Evangelist.” On the plus side, it’s the first time in the history of the company that I’ve
gifts
As a technology enthusiast with a bad impulse purchase habit, I’m unrepentantly difficult to buy gifts for. The way I figure it, the only reason to grow up is so you can afford to buy yourself all the crap your parents wouldn’t buy you when you were a
software development
I’m a Windows user, and I’m out to prove Wil Shipley wrong: Mac users love their machines; Windows users put up with their machines because they don’t believe there’s anything really better. I love the Mac user base because they tend to be people who are
software development
You may think you’ve completed a software project, but you aren’t truly finished until you’ve conducted a project post mortem. Mike Gunderloy calls the postmortem an essential tool for the savvy developer: The difference between average programmers and excellent developers is not a matter of knowing the
user experience
Deep down inside every software developer, there’s a budding graphic designer waiting to get out. And if you let that happen, you’re in trouble. Or at least your users will be, anyway: Joseph Cooney calls this The Dialog: A developer needed a screen for something, one or two
community moderation
Clay Shirky’s classic articles on social software should be required reading for all software developers working on web applications. As near as I can tell, that’s pretty much every developer these days. But I somehow missed Joel Spolsky’s related 2003 article on social software, Building Communities With
hardware
Intel’s latest quad-core CPU, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, consists of 582 million transistors. That’s a lot. But it pales in comparison to the 680 million transistors of nVidia’s latest video card, the 8800 GTX. Here’s a small chart of transistor counts for recent CPUs and
windows desktop search
I used the file search function in Windows XP a lot, particularly to find groups of files. But the XP search syntax doesn’t work in Vista. Vista uses the Windows Desktop Search query syntax. Which means “*.vbproj;*.csproj” becomes “ext:(*.vbproj OR *.csproj)” Note that the boolean operator must