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# Wednesday, September 7, 2005
Lots of generic crap for today. Without further ado:
  • What in the bleeding hell. I have to admit that this whole "code/hacker-caffeine" trend is starting to get on my nerves. After years and years of caffeine addiction (I could probably have won the world record for most coke drank in a day) a couple of years ago I decided to let go of it - almost completely. I now enjoy the occasional coke and, if I'm genuinely tired and need a pick-me-up, a coffee always helps. Back in the day I could've drowned a triple espresso without any effect. Bottom line, it never ceases to amaze me how dependant people allow themselves to become.
  • Joku posted a worthy comment on Mike Stall's blog:
    Not really related, but it would be good if technical bloggers writing about X,Y & Z would also mention what is the closest public release they are using. Now if you go google and find some older blog entry it maybe the stuff being talked about was in relation to for example VS Beta 1 and might be completely wrong today. I don't think everyone who come to blogs.msdn from google will figure out that many of the blog entries that talk about say VS2005 are actually talking about something that's specific to non-RTM build. If there were tags for every public build and they were visible and easy to put on the blog entry... Well some day perhaps.
    It is a valid point, and I shall endeavour to do that from now on.
  • RMS never ceases to amaze me in how he takes theories (conspiratorial, political or otherwise) and treats them like facts. "Israel's real nuclear weapons", says he. It is commonly accepted that Israel does have a nuclear arsenal, but no-one knows for sure, myself included. Admittedly RMS's never purported to be unbiased or politically-correct, but it bothers me never-the-less.
  • Fellow Israeli developer-blogger Oren Ellenbogen mentioned a few weeks ago a subtlety in the usage of interfaces in C# I was not aware of. I've since used explicit interface declarations with great success, however one caveat is that you can't use the interface members even from a private scope (i.e. from a member method within the class implementing the interface). So use this feature with caution - it can reduce messiness (particularly where intellisense is concerned), but often at the cost of forcing you to add lots of unnecessary casts.
  • Software patents are taking an increasingly alarming foothold in common business practice. Litigation has always been part of business, but when Creative sues Apple for patent infringement over the iPod's navigation interface, to me it means things have gotten completely out of hand. Face it, people: one-click shopping, song navigation in menus etc. should not be patentable. It's ridiculous, any UI-designer with more than 3 IQ could've come up with that concept. Yes, Creative went to market first, but that is completely irrelevant; just imagine if someone patented the "ability to close a user interface component by clicking a button" - none of us would be able to close windows. Does that make sense to you?
  • This little hard-drive hack is really damn cool.
  • The Blizzard vs BnetD case is worrisome to say the least. I'm not versed in the particulars of the case, but assuming the BnetD programers did not actually reverse-engineer Blizzard proprietary code they should not have had a case. I wonder how this case compares to the Microsoft vs Samba litigation - I reckon I should do some further reading.
  • I've been playing with Total Commander for several days now. Originally I couldn't stand the software, but admittedly it gives Servant Salamander a serious run for its money, and has quite a few features SS does not.
  • I promised Oran (one of my colleagues) that if he found an IBM Model M keyboard for me I would try it out for a week. He managed to find one and I've spend a couple of hours on Sunday cleaning it up, and have been using it since. It's a very nice keyboard; the buckling spring key design has terrific tactile response and typing on it feels great. There are several things I do not like about it, though: for one, it's missing the Windows keys which I've grown accustomed to using (Left Windows key + D or L two dozen times a day...); the right shift occasionally gets stuck; finally, it's a little big for my hands so certain keypresses are far less convenient than they were with the trusty Microsoft Natural Elite. It doesn't seem that the new keyboard has improved my errors/character rate any, but it is a little early to tell. That said, it's amazing that a keyboard manufactured in 1991 can favorably compare to a modern, ergonomic keyboard. My model is a 1391408, in case you were wondering. All in all, I still miss the old Microsoft Natural classic (I've used one from 1996 to about 2001 when it crashed on the floor one too many times. It's still working, by the way, just missing some keys.)
  • I came home from a pub last night and made the mistake of turning on the TV. Twelve Kingdoms episodes 14 and 15 were on. No sleep for me tonight. Do yourself a favour and watch that show; I own it in its entirety on DVD and it was some of the finest money I've ever spent. Other anime favorites include Trigun, Full Metal Alchemist and Cowboy Bebop. If you're curious about anime, NGE might be a good primer, although I have my gripes with it.
  • Finally, I've made a list of all my DVD movies on IMDB, but unfortunately there is no way to link to it externally. I'll find some other catalogue, or write one on my own.
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 3:07:48 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)  #    -
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