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Monthly Archives: April 2008
Drag and Drop Outlook Emails onto .NET Application
I do talk a lot of trash about Microsoft on this blog, but since I work in a place which is a Windows shop I can’t really get away from it’s products. Today I dusted off my “C# Developer” hat, … Continue reading
The Third Path…
I found the following quote from Scott Adam’s blog a bit depressing: Let’s say you have a typical life and try to live it in the healthiest way. You might allocate your 24-hour weekday this way: Sleep: 8 hours Exercise: … Continue reading
Posted in random stuff
9 Comments
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
I finally got my hands on a fansubbed copy of the first installation of the much hyped and much anticipated cinematic re-make of the cult TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion. And no, this is not yet another movie that attempts … Continue reading
URL’s In Printed Media
I was reading an article in a magazine last week and while I don’t exactly recall the magazine or the topic right now I distinctly remember mild annoyance at the editor’s decision to put list of URL’s at the end … Continue reading
Cylons don’t use Encryption
Let me preface this post by saying that I nitpick because I love. It seems that what started as a random nitpick will turn into a whole series of posts wot the “Cylons don’t use” in the title. This one … Continue reading
Javascript will be the Next Big Language
I’m on JavaScript kick lately. Or rather, I have been rediscovering it ever since I read the series of Steve Yegge’s blog posts on JS and Rhino and his predictions for the next big language. I really think he is … Continue reading
Cylons don’t use Backups
There are two storytelling crutches that often come into play to “hand wave” over some plot inconsistencies or explain something odd and unusual. One of them is called magic, and the other one is called technology. They are both used … Continue reading
Smart Business Move: Letting Viewers watch TV Shows Online
In the past if you missed an episode of your favorite show you had very limited choices. If you had Tivo or a similar service you could just pray and hope it was smart enough to record it. You could … Continue reading
Teaching about Programming: LOGO
The semester is almost over. I was convinced that I will actually have one regular class in May before the finals, but I was wrong. The regular schedule at MSU ends on the 5th and then we go into the … Continue reading
Posted in school and teaching
10 Comments
Setting up Dell 3100cn Printer on Kubuntu Gutsy
My office has several network printers. Most of them are HP and have zero issues using them from under Linux. They worked right out of the box – all I had to do was to set them up as Windows/Samba … Continue reading
My Renewed Love for Virtualization
Every once in a while I need to use windows centric applications at work. IE is the least of my problems since it seems to work semi-reliably under Wine. But sometimes I need to test things in a full Windows … Continue reading
Women in CS
Sometimes I wonder why there are so disproportionately few women in my field. What is it about Computer Science that sends most women running for the hills. I think this is a question that should be directed at sociologists more … Continue reading
Posted in technology
11 Comments
Generate Outlook Calendar Events with PHP and iCalendar
The internal web application at my company tends to send out a lot of email notifications. Some of them are reminders about various deadlines. Recently I got a feature request to allow people to add these reminders as events to … Continue reading
Adobe AIR Linux Alpha
At the beginning of the month, Adobe finally had a sudden bowel movement and defecated an AIR release for Linux all over the internets. Naturally it is an alpha release, which means some things may still be very, very broken. … Continue reading
Blinking Dash Returns with Vengance
Remember my blinking underscore issue from February? It’s back again, and I still have no clue what is causing it. Quick recap for new readers – I have a peculiar issue with my windows machine. Sometimes I shut it down, … Continue reading
Virtualizing the Security Layer
I was in the City the other day, listening to a somewhat interesting talk on computer security. For my readers who are not from the area, let me explain. When we NJ dwellers say “The City” (in capitals), we mean … Continue reading
From the Teachers Mailbox
Here are few literary gems from my inbox. These emails were sent to me by some of my students over the few last semesters. I will preface this by saying that the strange linguistic constructs you will see below were … Continue reading
Posted in school and teaching
13 Comments
KOTOR 2: Lightsaber Combat
I have either one or two more KOTOR 2 related posts in the queue. Sorry if this is a deathly boring subject to you, by now. Sadly since I have been having fun playing this game instead of doing bigger … Continue reading
Machine Empathy
A lot of people I meet tell me that they are not good with computers/technology when they hear what I do. I often wondered why do they do that. It seems like a silly self deprecation. In this day and … Continue reading
Posted in school and teaching
24 Comments
Rails 2.0 on Ubuntu Gutsy
I must confess that Rails makes me feel stupid every time I use it. The accepted truism about the framework is that it boosts your productivity like no other. Unfortunately people forget to tell you that there is second part … Continue reading
Excel: Too many different cell formats
The other day this well known Excel issue trickled down to me. If you are to trigger happy applying formating to your excel cells, you eventually hit some sort of hard coded limit. Excel can only handle 4k of formating … Continue reading
Posted in technology
48 Comments
What do you use for Bug/Issue Tracking?
Yet another post to add to my “Ask The Readers” cycle. What are you guys using for bug/issue tracking. As we all know, there are 3 things that distinguish a real software developer from a ‘just out of school’ newbie. … Continue reading
Posted in technology
19 Comments
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