Of the Top 11 Geek Phobias, I’m almost positive I have at least two of them:Codexplodaphobia - Fear that the one line of code you changed will completely screw up the program or entire application. Wipadiskaphobia - The fear of erasing your holiday photos from the camera before you copied them to PC. Almost definitely Wipadiskaphobia!
I stumbled across a post tonight about the tyranny of email. It’s overall point is about how to best manage your time and getting things done. I’ve read several blog posts of this type, but this is the first one that’s really hit home. It’s probably the point that gets made about needing three hours to actually get anything done:I maintain that programming cannot be done in less than three-hour windows. It takes three hours to spin up to speed, gather your concentration, shift into “right brain mode”, and really focus on a problem. Effective programmers organize their day to have at least one three-hour window, and hopefully two or three. (This is why good programmers often work late at night. They don’t get interrupted as much…)I find this to be completely true. I do my best work at night when I can completely zone out and focus on what needs to get done. I’m also very guilty of always having my email open so I can be that guy that responds to all emails in under five minutes. Definitely not a good idea for productivity. This is the same reason that I take vacation and spend it working on things at work that I haven’t been able to get done because I just haven’t had the time to sit down and focus on them - things like implementing Sharepoint, programming utilities, researching the latest technologies - all get pushed to the side by little interruptions throughout the day. ...
It seems like somebody else has experienced many of the same frustrations with cmd.exe that I have, and found the same limited alternatives as I have. I’ve played with Monad, the Windows Command Shell that’s going to be in Longhorn, and didn’t find it much friendlier. Granted, it’s still in “preview”, so it can’t be judged yet. Being a command-line freak, though, I would appreciate a more robust shell. Give me a Z Shell any day over cmd.exe!
Well now I know what my next car mod will be. I was listening to Chris Pirillo’s non-podcast (noncast?) when I heard Scoble mention J.P. Stewarts Car PC. A quick google later, and I had found what he was talking about - J.P.’s Car PC Weblog. I’ve always wanted to drop a server in my trunk and use it as an mp3 server, but my acquisition of the mp3 playing Alpine alleviated the need for that. J.P.’s solution looks awesome, though - GPS, Streets and Trips, and a wireless access bubble around the car. If only I had a garage to do that in this winter…
Nice! The Sysinternals guys have an RSS feed for tool updates. I was just thinking today when I realized my Process Explorer was quite out of date how I could keep up with updates since they seem to be constantly updating their software. Procexp is definitely my favorite and it’s replaced my Windows task manager. One of my favorite features is the ability to mouse-over the CPU usage history and see what process was utilizing the most CPU at a given point in time. That and the ability to determine what process has any given filehandle open makes procexp an invaluable tool! ...
Due to the planets being out of alignment, I didn’t make it into work this morning until 8:45. I was all gung-ho and ready to go and I hopped into my car, hit the garage door opener, and looked up to see a black Dodge Neon parked right in front of the garage. I cursed out loud as one of the tenants tends to do this from time to time. ...
I’ve finally added an RSS Feed to my site! It may not have a lot of features, but it does validate and it even has full text. Now all you aggregator folk out there can pull in the content of my site without ever going to my homepage. Maybe now I’ll get some readers who may be mildly interested in the occasional musing of an infosec guy in Chi-town. ...
In light of Fall starting to whip into Chi-town, I’ve updated the Random Pic with a bright yellow sunflower. Enjoy!
Now this is a useful service! Google SMS Goodbye 411…
Microsoft did a horrible thing for online standards when it allowed Internet Explorer (IE) to accept javascript code that wasn’t fully compliant. Sure, things are easier for developers…at first, until somebody wants to use a different browser. For example, I ran into some code today that set the value of a text input in a form:date_input.value=‘10/07/2004’ That’s pretty easy and intuitive, but it only works in IE. Want to get it to work elsewhere? Here’s the updated code:document.getElementsByName(‘date_input’)[0].value=‘10/07/2004’ ...