font settings
Scott Hanselman recently brought up the topic of IDE font and color schemes again. I’ve been in search of the ideal programming font and the ideal syntax colorization scheme for a while now. Here’s my current take on it. As you can see, I’ve finally given in
software development
For the last few days, I’ve been surveying a software project. Landing on a planet populated entirely by an alien ecosystem of source code can be overwhelming. That’s why the first first thing I do is bust out my software tricorder – static code analysis tools. The two most
flash memory
In my recent Windows Vista performance investigation, I discovered the new ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost allows you to augment your PC’s performance using a USB flash memory drive. It’s very easy to use; just plug in a USB flash drive that’s 256 megabytes or larger, then navigate to
programming languages
When you’re starting out as a technical blogger, you’ll inevitably stumble across Joel on Software. He’s been blogging since the year 2000, when computers were hand-carved of wood and the internet transmitted data via carrier pigeon. He has his own software development company, a few books under
programming languages
Brian Kuhn recently described the real risk of technocentrism. [. . .] people use (or have rejected) particular operating systems, tools, and software that has in turn shaped their perceptions when it comes to making judgments on the various merits of particular technologies. People tend to categorize or identify themselves with particular “technological
windows vista
Now that Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is sorta-kinda available to everyone, let’s see what it takes to run it. Here's a comparison of the Vista hardware requirements with the hardware requirements of Windows XP: Windows XP (2001)Windows Vista (2007)CPU233 MHz800 MHz (1 GHz recommended)
software development
Nathan Myhrvold, the former CTO of Microsoft, is also a bona-fide physicist. He holds physics degress from UCAL and Princeton. He even had a postdoctoral fellowship under the famous Stephen Hawking. Thus, as you might expect, his 1997 ACM keynote presentation, The Next Fifty Years of Software is full of
usability
Although I like Notepad2, it has some pathological alert dialog behavior, particularly when it comes to searching. Here’s an alert dialog I almost always get when searching a document: Thanks for the update, Notepad2. I really wanted a whole modal alert dialog to tell me this important fact. And
hardware
I noticed when I was burning the Vista RC1 DVD that... 1. It took forever, eg. nearly an hour 2. My PC was very sluggish during the burn I began to suspect something was awry with the IDE controller that the DVD-R drive is connected to. I navigated to Device
hardware
Now that Vista Release Candidate 1 is available, it’s time to playing with it. I’m tired of using my current legacy operating system. Testing Vista probably means I’ll probably be booting from an external hard drive. External drives have been available in Firewire and USB flavors for
programming languages
Though I’ve become agnostic about the utterly meaningless non-choice between VB.NET and C#, the inherited syntax of C leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion. And not just in the case sensitivity department. Daniel Appleman, in his excellent e-book, VB.NET or C#, Which to Choose?
game development
Greg Costikyan’s essay Welcome Comrade! is a call to arms for hobbyist game programmers: Back in the day, it took a couple of man days to create a Doom level. Creating a Doom III level took multiple man-weeks. Thus budgets spiral every upward; as late as 1992, a typical