software development concepts
I have tremendous respect for Paul Graham. His essays – repackaged in the book Hackers and Painters – are among the best writing I've found on software engineering. Not all of them are so great, of course, but the majority are well worth your time. That's more than
rechargeable batteries
Every self-respecting geek loves gadgets. I'm no exception. And so many of my favorite gadgets have a voracious appetite for batteries. I don't know why all the other battery types fell so far out of favor, but between AA and AAA, I could probably power 95%
multiple monitors
I've been a multiple monitor enthusiast since the dark days of Windows Millennium Edition. I've written about the manifold joys of many-monitor computing a number of times over the last four years: * Multiple Monitors and Productivity * Multiple LCDs * Joining the Prestigious Three Monitor Club * The Large
programming languages
The Choose Your Own Adventure [http://www.cyoa.com/] book series was one of my favorites as a young reader. [https://blog.codinghorror.com/content/images/2016/01/66-Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-covers--huge-.jpg] The Choose Your Own adventure books are still around; modern versions can be found at your local bookstore [http://www.
user experience
I miss Kathy Sierra. Kathy was the primary author of the Creating Passionate Users blog, which she started in December 2004. Her writing was of sufficient quality to propel her blog into the Technorati top 100 within a year and a half. That's almost unheard of, particularly for
security
In November 2007 I called these three CAPTCHA implementations "unbreakable": Google (unbreakable) Hotmail (unbreakable) Yahoo (unbreakable) 2008 is shaping up to be a very bad year indeed for CAPTCHAs: * Jan 17: InformationWeek reports Yahoo CAPTCHA broken * Feb 6: Websense reports Hotmail CAPTCHA broken * Feb 22: Websense reports Google
apple ii
A new in box Apple //c system was recently sold on eBay. This is quite remarkable; a vintage computer-- twenty-three years old-- that has never been opened. The people who ultimately won the auction posted a beautiful set of unboxing pictures. For a brief moment, it was 1984 all over
ruby
Joseph Cooney reminds us that, in January 2005, 37signals went live with a product they built in 579 lines of code [http://jcooney.net/archive/2007/08/16/54435.aspx]: > You read that right, not 60,000 or 600,000 but instead a commercial project written in less than
keyboard shortcuts
Nobody has time to memorize a complete list of web browser keyboard shortcuts, and really, why should they? I only know a handful of web browser keyboard shortcuts, myself, and I probably use the same five shortcuts a hundred times a day. But not everyone knows about these five essential
technology trends
Over the last few years, I've become mildly obsessive about the contents of my keychain. Here's what's on my keychain today: In internet parlance, this is known as EDC or every-day carry. There's an entire internet forum dedicated to the art and
programming languages
I saw on reddit that today, January 10th, is Donald Knuth's seventieth birthday. Knuth is arguably the most famous living computer scientist, author of the seminal Art of Computer Programming series. Here's how serious Mr. Knuth is – his books are dedicated, not to his wife or
software development
Bruce Eckel deftly identifies the root cause of all software development problems: We are in a young business. Primitive, really -- we don't know much about what works, and we keep thinking we've found the silver bullet that solves all problems. As a result, we go