warpedvisions.org

Expand your mind. No really, I dare you.

Why programmers should play Go. A good argument for stretching your thinker in weird and wonderful ways. I’ve played my share of Go over the years, and while I can’t claim to be good at it, I can say that it has changed how I think. The important thing to remember, though, is that the stretching isn’t just a result of learning the game, it’s also the result of thinking about the game, and reflecting on the patterns of play and tactics.

HOWTO run Firefox2 in Ubuntu 8.04. If you’re already running Firefox3, the Firefox-2 symlink will not start the right version of Firefox until you shut down FF3. Now I can test sites in FF2 again without booting my 2k VM.

A great introduction to reverse engineering Win32 applications, including a tutorial on hacking the built in Mine Sweeper game.

A great A List Apart article on the often misunderstood topic of Javascript member binding. Javascript is one of those powerful languages that is treated like a Basic-ish Java. It’s not. It’s more like a Perl-ish Lisp.

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. –Bjarne Stroustrup

What’s the best thing about your favorite operating / windowing system? What’s the best thing about your least favorite system? I was thinking about it this morning, considering the most inspirational design in each of the systems I’ve used. While not every vendor finds that balance of excellence, releasing a functional system is itself a difficult problem.

Windows XP/Vista: I love how the login/desktop locking system works. It supports multiple users properly, making switching between them trivial.
Gnu/Linux + xorg + Gnome: multiple desktops + Compiz. It’s a developer’s dream, like a desk the size of a large room. Enough room for a dozen editor windows, without having to navigate a mess of windows or tabs.
Apple’s OSX: It’s a brilliant looking desktop, with the best font rendering, colour and monitor management (nailing multiple monitor support). It does other things well, but I’m always impressed with its affinity to photo/video/music productivity.
*nix: I love how the unix philosophy wreaks of pragmatism. It’s simple, decoupled, and completely bent toward scaled production uses.
Nintendo’s Wii/DS/etc.: In a word, casual. Simple, predictable, and fun to the bone.

So what do you love about the systems you’ve used?

A good example of storyboarding as used in movie production, using a Coen Brother’s flick as an example. Storyboarding applies to user interface design too, beating out notations like UML in terms of utility.

Subversion 1.5 was released this week. Added in this release: less suck!

PHP + Firebug == FirePHP. A simple API for logging to the Firebug console directly from PHP. Sound like fun?

In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them. – J. von Neumann