Archive for the ‘Computer’ Category
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 »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
I have been quietly impressed with the progress web browsers have been making in recent years towards the goal of supporting a wide variety of applications. The promise of web-apps rivaling traditional desktop applications seems within reach after nigh-15 years of ballyhoo. Most recent browsers have extremely fast Javascript support ...
Posted in Computer, my projects | No Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
I have quite a lot of books. I am not a book hoarder, I quite often do purges of books I don't intend to read again, but my bookcases are always overflowing. I have tried various methods of keeping track of what I have read, but nothing really seemed that ...
Posted in Computer, Culture | 4 Comments »
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
The standard C++ iostreams library is very good (well, some would say sort-of good) at reading and writing a file's contents, but it does so in such a way as to completely ignore file names. I am sure there was a good reason for this omission, but whatever it was ...
Posted in Computer | 3 Comments »
Friday, March 13th, 2009
Apple has a new iPod out and that means a new version of iTunes. Along with support for the new device, there are a couple of interesting new features.
The first is autofill, a feature that I have been waiting for since I a got my first iPod. Up until now ...
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
I mentioned this picture once before, but I thought it deserved another outing. The reasons are clear:
It contains Robocop
It contain Richard Nixon
It contains Richard Nixon meeting Robocop
Richard Nixon looks amazingly happy
Robocop looks a little perturbed
The logo behind them is for The Boy Scouts of AmericaBoys Clubs of America
While you are ...
Posted in Computer | 4 Comments »
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
A former colleage of mine (Hi Nigel!) frequently wore the greatest geek tee-shirt I have ever seen to work. Ineptly reproduced here, it summarizes the realities of software development - when deciding what to implement technical considerations are often overruled by more prosaic influences.
Take this comment by another old colleage. ...
Posted in Computer | 3 Comments »
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Living on a spherical planet can sometimes be a real pain in the neck. It makes what should be a simple concept, Time, inordinately complex. Timezones, daylight savings, leap years (and worse: leap seconds) all conspire to destroy any simple abstraction. So boost provides a complex one.
First up is the ...
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
A while ago I created a font of my handwriting using a for-pay font-making website. For various reasons I was never terribly happy with the results, although I thought the small amount of money I was changed was a fair price. I kept using the font, waiting for something better.
That ...
Posted in Computer | No Comments »