Archive for the ‘Computer’ Category
Monday, March 8th, 2010
C++ is big - it has been said that any given programmer only ever uses about 40% of the language's features. The trouble is that it is a different 40% for each person. Exceptions are a great example of this, some people swear by them while many coding standards specifically ...
Posted in Computer | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Listening to some people, the lack of Flash on the iPhone/iPad is some sort of crime against nature. There are numerous complaints about it online - all bemoaning the inability to play their favourite Flash games or view video. These complaints miss the point entirely - there are two simple ...
Posted in Computer | 4 Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
I have been doing some iPhone development lately. Nothing too amazing, just some test apps to get a feel for the system. Now, some people will tell you that Cocoa Touch is an API sent from God and frankly it is pretty good (especially given what passes for UI on ...
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
In C++ if you have a variable that you say is of type "Person" (for instance), you can be fairly certain (more or less) that it always actually contains a Person (or perhaps a subclass of Person. If you have a container of Persons, then you know (more or less) ...
Posted in Computer | 5 Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
I don't usually do a lot of Python programming, but I always enjoy it when the opportunity arises. Python is in no way a "clean" language, it has all sorts of warts and limitations that mean that it tends to not get used for big projects. Despite this (or maybe ...
Posted in Computer, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Remember kids - winners don't do drugs.
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Posted in Computer, Culture, Links | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
I love the Settlers of Catan board game, so when an iPod version appeared in the App Store for $6.49 I grabbed it straight away. Dubbed "Catan - The First Island", the app includes everything in the core game, I assume more games based on the Catan expansions are on ...
Posted in Computer | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
I love MacOSX, and one of the best features is the almost ubiquitous built-in dictionary. So it is surprising that I after 3 years I have only just now discovered how to switch the dictionary from the default American English to British spellings. For some reason this is not part ...
Posted in Computer | No Comments »
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Remember Space Ace? The massive machine at the back of the greasy arcade you used to frequent? The one that played a cartoon that you had to react to? The one that cost twice as much as any other game? Of course you do. Well now it is back, and ...
Posted in Computer, Games | 3 Comments »
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
I have just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Usually this is a simple procedure, but this time something went wrong - attempting to view the blog threw up a blank page!
Luckily I could still get to the admin pages, so I knew my database was still OK (of ...
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Safari 4 has been out for a couple of days now, and I must say I am enjoying using it. On the Mac, Safari has always had a great overall browser experience but Firefox always managed to stay my weapon of choice for viewing the Internet. This may change, ...
Posted in Computer | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
The Secret of Monkey Island consumed a lot of my time back in the day, it is one of the best (and funniest) games ever produced. I have wondered for a while now why some of the old adventure games haven't been dusted off and republished for the new consoles ...
Posted in Computer, Culture | No Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Back in the day there was no standard way to publish video on the web. You could put any kind of video file you wanted on the server, but there was no guarantee that your readers would have the correct plugin required to view it. Everyone had to have a ...
Posted in Computer | 36 Comments »
Saturday, May 9th, 2009
My previous blog entry on TXTing provoked this response from my friend Lloyd:...[I] figured out that longest word typed with only the upper letters in the QWERTY keyboard is not only TYPEWRITER but also includes several 3 other words: PERPETUITY, PROPRIETOR and REPERTOIRE. The longest in the middle line is: ...
Posted in Computer, Culture, my projects | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
The question came up at work: what is the longest English word you can TXT using only a single key on your phone assuming no fancy predictive text?
Using a list of my favorite 147948 words (the same dictionary used in WordMap) and a few lines of python the answer is ...
Posted in Computer, Culture, WordMap, my projects | 5 Comments »