regex
I was intrigued by a recent comment from a Microsoft Hotmail developer on the pitfalls they’ve run into while upgrading Hotmail to .NET 2.0: Regular Expressions can be very expensive. Certain (unintended and intended) strings may cause RegExes to exhibit exponential behavior. We’ve taken several hotfixes for
.net
I just updated my post The Bloated World of Managed Code with baseline memory footprints for Console and Winforms apps in .NET 2.0. I’ll admit I am a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to managed code apps. Now that tiny, native BitTorrent clients are available such
code refactoring
I often encounter code like this: if (rowCount > rowIdx) { if (drc[rowIdx].Table.Columns.Contains("avalId") { do { if (Attributes[attrVal.AttributeClassId] == null) { // do stuff } else { if (!(Attributes[attrVal.AttributeClassId] is ArrayList)) { // do stuff } else { if (!isChecking) { // do stuff } else { // do stuff
html cleaning
I recently wrote a Word 2003 document that I later turned into a blog post. The transition between Word doc and HTML presented some problems. Word offers two HTML options in its save dialog: “Save as HTML” and “Save as Filtered HTML.” In practice, that means you get to choose
graphics
I’ve talked about Bilinear vs. Bicubic filtering before in the context of 2D images, but bilinear filtering is a key ingredient in 3D graphics, too. When a texture is applied to a polygon, the texture may be scaled up or down to fit, depending on your screen resolution. This
software development
A co-worker and I went over to Scott’s house today at around 1pm PST to pick something up for work. Scott just got a new television, so he demoed it for us, flipping through the channels, comparing HD signals to regular signals and so forth. As we were doing
mini-itx
VIA’s Nano-ITX fits an entire PC motherboard into an impossibly small 12 by 12 centimeter format: This board has been gestating for a while at VIA, and according to the nanoitx blog, it’s evidently because of interference and heat problems presented by the extremely small form factor. But
web development
Every few years, Jakob Nielsen takes websites to task with a Top Ten Web Design Mistakes article. Although things have clearly improved since the original 1996 list, I’m particularly concerned that in the competitive frenzy to get all JavaScripted up for Web 2.0, we may be defeating the
programming
I’m a huge fan of Beagle Brothers style cheat sheets, because nothing promotes the illusion of mastery like a densely packed chart of obscure reference information: Just throw some of those babies up on your walls and people will know that they’re clearly dealing with a coding genius!
file systems
Don Park recently made an interesting observation about how his family uses the computer: When I observe how my wife and son uses the family computer, I can’t help noticing how little use they have for the desktop. They look bewildered when I open the Windows Explorer. To them,
software development
For better or worse, I’ve been a Microsoft fan since Windows 3.1. Microsoft is far from perfect, but the alternatives were always so much worse. Can you imagine a dystopian future where we’re all running IBM’s OS/2 2004 and Lotus Notes Express? Brr. I get
games
My favorite holiday tradition is the white elephant gift exchange. If you don’t have these in your family or at your workplace, you’re missing out on a lot of fun. Maybe I’m easily amused, but it’s consistently the most fun I’ve had during the holidays.