Monthly Archives: March 2008

Using Spare Laptop LCD as a VGA Monitor

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Luke Maciak

We have bunch of old broken laptops lying around at work. Most of them are unusable, but I don’t like to throw them out because they are a great resource of spare parts. Sometimes I’m able to dig in that … Continue reading →

Posted in sysadmin notes | Tagged , | 31 Comments

Taking Weekends Off

Posted on March 29, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Just wanted to drop a quick note here – I won’t be doing Saturday posts anymore. I already gave up on Sunday posting back in January and I mentioned I might go down to a much healthier 5 day schedule. … Continue reading →

Posted in meta | 3 Comments

Only Trolls wear Martian Headsets

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I wasn’t going to comment on Joel Spolsky’s Martian Headsets ramble for two reasons: it was an obvious troll-bait, and people much smarter than me already pounded it into the ground. But alas, the Spolsky FUD seems to have infected … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | Tagged , | 8 Comments

The Sudoku Infection

Posted on March 27, 2008 by Luke Maciak

My family has been decimated by the Sudoku bug. I’m actually physically tired of making the “Hey, the year 2005 called and they want their game back” jokes all the time. I’m not sure why is this happening now, but … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | 7 Comments

Hellstroms Hive

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Luke Maciak

As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan of Frank Herbert’s work. I own all six books in the Dune saga, and I more or less consider them an epic Science Fiction masterpiece. Dune is my yard … Continue reading →

Posted in literature | Tagged | 6 Comments

How to Teach Programming?

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I might be wrong about this, but I’m partial to the gauntlet method of teaching introductory programming courses. You make the class as challenging and difficult on purpose and make the students sweat. Hit them hard and as early as … Continue reading →

Posted in school and teaching | 9 Comments

3 Value Checkbox with JQuery

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Few days ago I did that whole 3-value checkbox thing basing it on some script I found online. I went back and I re-implemented it using some JQuery magic. I’m not going to reiterate the whole setup here. I recommend … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | Tagged , | 5 Comments

KOTOR 2: Broken Jedi

Posted on March 22, 2008 by Luke Maciak

KOTOR 2 uses an interesting plot device to explain why your battle scarred, world weary Jedi character has such meager stats and force powers at the beginning of the game. In the original there was no such excuse because you … Continue reading →

Posted in video games | Tagged | 8 Comments

JQuery Quirks

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Here are two interesting quirks in the way JQuery works. Let’s say you want to check all the check-boxes on the page – how do you do it? It’s trivial: $(":checkbox").attr("checked", "true"); Now quickly, how do you un-check all the … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Apostrophe in the Email Address?

Posted on March 20, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Here is a question for my IT/Sysadmin readers out there. When you get a user who has an apostrophe, or an unusual character in their last name, how do you go about setting up his or her email address? Do … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , | 20 Comments

JQuery Fun

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I’m doing more and more work with JQuery lately, and as I mentioned several times before I’m totally loving Javascript again. It is really a very concise and terse framework so it doesn’t really take long until you start feeling … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | Tagged | 4 Comments

KOTOR 2: The Sith Lords – First Impression

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I got some really good suggestions in the Recommend a RPG thread. Some of these titles are older games that are not so easy to locate, but I’m planning to give several of them a whirl. In the meantime I … Continue reading →

Posted in video games | Tagged | 4 Comments

Novint Falcon

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I was skimming through the PC Gamer today, and I saw a review for an interesting gaming device – the Novint Falcon. What is it? Well, let me paint you a picture: This incredibly, awkward, odd looking contraption is essentially … Continue reading →

Posted in video games | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Road

Posted on March 15, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I have this strange fascination with post apocalyptic stories. I love zombie movies, and MadMax like pictures despite their obvious cheesiness. I loved Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and I’m glad that I picked up I am Legend after watching … Continue reading →

Posted in literature | Tagged | 6 Comments

Creating Encrypted USB Drives with TrueCrypt

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I discovered a neat TrueCrypt trick the other day while searching for products that would encrypt flash drives on the fly. I never noticed it before but it has an option to create a “travel disk”. It’s right there in … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged | 17 Comments

What are you reading right now?

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Continuing with my reader participation streak. There will be time for more single sided rants later on. ;) This time I’m flipping it around and hopefully letting everyone, both tech oriented and non-technical readers to have a chance to contribute. … Continue reading →

Posted in literature | 16 Comments

What Language Are you Coding in Right Now?

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Luke Maciak

As I write this it is 2am on Tuesday night and I have nothing. I’m grasping for topics once again. So this post is yet another one of those conversational threads in which I ask you a questions and you … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | 32 Comments

What if the World Died Tomorrow?

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Luke Maciak

On Saturday evening I lost power. I do get a lot of brownouts around here, but this was different. It was around 7pm, and all of a sudden I found myself in total darkness. Fortunately I always keep a LED … Continue reading →

Posted in futuristic musings | 14 Comments

Dog Ear Bookmarking

Posted on March 10, 2008 by Luke Maciak

The other day my dad saw me dog ear my book to save my place, and he made a comment about it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I also sometimes make notes on the margins, and … Continue reading →

Posted in literature | 17 Comments

Night Watch (the book)

Posted on March 8, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Back at the begining of February I reviewed the movie Night Watch. It was deeply flawed but great looking action flick – in other words, very Hollywood like in execution. The plot seemed fragmented, and some things didn’t make any … Continue reading →

Posted in literature | Tagged | 3 Comments

Admiral Ackbar Says: Beware of Silver Lights

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Luke Maciak

The internet is killing Microsoft these days. Ever since man climbed down from a tree, learned how to walk upright and figured out how to write AJAX apps, the number of chairs thrown at unsuspecting developers in Redmond has been … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , | 4 Comments

My Firefox Extensions – Let Me Show You Them

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Considering my stats, and the comment threads, I can safely say that majority of readers here use Firefox. So let’s share the best/favorite extensions out there. Here are the ones I use. You probably already know some of them, but … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | 36 Comments

3 Value Checkbox

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Recent conversation with the PHB regarding internal web application project: PHB: This is all good, but these 4 items here need to have a “not available” option Me: Ok, no problem. I’ll change it into a yes, no, n/a radio … Continue reading →

Posted in programming | Tagged | 23 Comments

Pishing Ain’t Easy

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Luke Maciak

Yesterday evening I created a small pishing demo for my class tonight. I essentially scraped the ebay login site, and made the POST action on the login form forward to a an aptly named pwnt.html. The idea was to illustrate … Continue reading →

Posted in school and teaching | Tagged | 13 Comments

Please Recommend Good PC RPG Games

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Luke Maciak

I need some recommendations guys. I want to get some new games so I’m searching for worthwhile RPG’s that I could sink my teeth into. I figured I’ll ask everyone here and see if I can get some good recommendations. … Continue reading →

Posted in video games | 21 Comments