Google '#{first_name} Needs'

The new game is to search Google for '#{your_first_name} Needs' and post the top two things:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Larry+Needs : Larry needs to make a budget. Liberal Larry needs a fisking.

Spooky.

more ...

From Theory to iPhone, Part 1: Everyone’s Got An Opinion

This is not a tutorial. This is me talking to myself. Much of what I say about iPhone development will be wrong.

It has become a truism that the platform library, not the programming language, has become the large barrier to learning. As a guy with a background in “everything …

more ...

StimulusWatch.org: Wow

StimulusWatch.org is a fantastic resource, which lists the specific projects in the economic stimulus, broken down to the county and city level, and sortable by price, number of jobs estimated, or votes (from the public) as to whether or not it's truly critical.

This is just fantastic; I hope …

more ...

Happy 1234567890!

See you at 0x500,000!

more ...

Fireable Offense?

Woman calls a customer service department, complains about something, has the situation explained to her.

She goes on a consumer advocate Website and describes the situation, saying that she had spoken to someone who was "moderately intelligent."

Customer service rep sees this post, takes offense. He uses his customer service …

more ...

Let’s Hope This Does Not Become An Iconic Image

jobsrecessionsSM

That green line is the current situation. Whee!!!!!

more ...

Kindle Monospaced Font Not "Picked Up" By My Existing Books

I checked every programming book I have on my Kindle: Hillegass's Cocoa Programming, Odersky et al.'s Programming in Scala, and a couple Pragmatic Programmer books -- none "trigger" the monospaced font now supported by the Kindle. I suppose the "good" news is that there are not many programming books for …

more ...

Kindle Monospaced Fonts: Fail

~~A mixed bag:~~

The Kindle has Greek characters, but not complete math (in the image below, there should be a ⇔ \<=> character).

~~It converts Courier (at least) to monospaced, but does not auto-convert Consolas:~~

As you can see, neither the Courier nor the Consolas work (just look at the difference in …

more ...

Functional Programming Guidelines a la SOLID?

The recent kerfuffle between “Uncle Bob” Martin and Joel Spolsky involves the SOLID Principles,some object-oriented design guidelines that compress into a pleasing acronym.

While there are weaknesses in the mainstream OOP languages, I believe that OOP has a great advantage in that it is teachable. You can start with …

more ...

Mathematica Releases $295 Version For Home Use

Mathematica is one of the most impressive pieces of software I’ve ever used. I use it any time I can find an excuse, which is unfortunately not that often (it’s surprising how rarely math intrudes upon the actual day-to-day life of the software developer).

In line with its …

more ...