Paul Irish believes that by 2020, web designers will be forced to support 76 variations of Internet Explorer between the nearly annual release schedule IE is on lately and the compatibility modes each of these IEs will have for previous versions of Internet Explorer. 1 IE6's entrenched position came from the fact that (a) it was the latest version of Internet Explorer for a huge amount of…
The general consensus is that the one of the best ways to learn how to program better, beyond learning the basic syntax is to just go ahead and write some programs on your own. Another consensus is that the best type of program to write is one that scratches your own itch. Yet another consensus is that it is best to avoid the "Not Invented Here" syndrome of writing everything from scratch and…
So, for quite some time, I've been meaning to buy a smartphone to replace my current dumbphone and iPod Touch 2G combination. It had worked fairly well for most of the last few years, with a few exceptions, but I was getting tired of carrying around 2-3 devices with me (depending on if I needed a camera or not) and iOS 4 was very problematic. I was left to choose between a stable, responsive…
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur. C. Clarke As a programmer, and a computer nerd, I obviously know more about how they work than if you just grabbed a random person off the street. As such, it's always interesting to see how people with less knowledge about computers use them. 1 To a lot of people, they click some buttons on the screen, and then the…
First of all, yes, I am picking on Arch again. But, something to keep in mind is although I've been complaining about Arch a lot over the past few months, I'm still using it, and I haven't been pushed enough to replace it. The big negatives I complain about are countered by big positives also, such as the ability to have the latest up to date programs far ahead of other…
This post is a response to the view of Hacker News outlined in this blog post on MattMaroon.com , read that post first for context. The main points are summarised up below, but I suggest you still read the original post. Vocal, small groups can cause certain topics (e.g. the TSA) to become too popular. Votes are used to represent agreement, not value added. The community repeats the same views…
So, I've had my blog and my twitter account for a while, and sometimes the constraints imposed by both formats has led to thoughts that didn't really have a place. Too long for Twitter, not long enough for a full blog post. To top that off, Twitter lost all my tweets from when I started using it to about a month ago, further making me want to bring my content under my own control. This…
Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition (2010) 1 Mac OS X Lion (presumably 2011) Windows 3.1 (1992) Liked this post? Follow me on Twitter (@MachaSign) 1 Originally misidentified as Unity for Ubuntu 11.04, see comments.
While working on my Haskell IRC bot , I needed some information on the actual IRC protocol. Much of this information sadly isn't available in any centralised format, and much of the information that is there is just a copy/paste of the RFC. There are two formal descriptions of the IRC protocol, an older one ( RFC 1459 ) and a newer one ( RFC 2812 ), though the actual protocol as used by…
I was helping someone who is just beginning to program over the past few weeks, and it led me to actually write a blog post I'd been saying I should write for a long time, about how I got where I am today as a programmer. This is mostly from memory, so some of the timing may be wrong. My first experience with anything even close to programming was when I was around 12. I had gone through all…
It used to be the case that when I wanted to learn more about programming, I would go down to the book store, buy a book about the language I was using and read it through. However, the problem with these books is that after a while, you only really want the last 5 or so chapters, detailing the bits of the standard library you are going to use. The language docs are usually a pretty good…
I've been on a bit of a buying spree with games lately. Firstly I bought EVE Online. I played the trial of that on the recommendation of two friends who have been playing the game for about a year. After about 6 days into the trial, the game was looking fun, so I bought it, and began to play it. I got most of the tutorial missions done and the combat ones in particular were quite enjoyable.…
Recently, Linode upped the RAM on all their packages by an average of 42%. My own VPS went from 360mb to 512mb. And yet, the first I heard about it was a RT on Twitter. Considering it's quite a considerable upgrade, almost doubling the RAM, you'd expect them to be shouting it from the rooftops. Most other hosts I have had before this sure would have. Yet I didn't even get emailed…
I was talking to Sirupsen on MSN on the subject of simplicity a few days ago. We both agreed that we liked simplicity, yet when we were giving examples, it became clear that we certainly didn't even have the same definition of simple. The biggest contrast came when we discussed Linux distros. I used Ubuntu as an example of simplicity, while he used Arch . Two very different distros both in…
If you've read my blog for a while, you may have noticed that I have mentioned OpenTTD a few times. It's one of my favorite games, and it's well worth playing. If you haven't played it, you can get it from the official website . It used to be a case that you needed a copy of the original TTD game to play it, but with OpenGFX, that is no longer true. There is a tutorial for the…
It seems every week there are people claiming that yet another area of computing is dead. IE6, Windows, netbooks, desktop apps, the list goes on. Yet 9 times out of 10 these proclamations are very premature. Because while power users normally use the latest and greatest of everything, ordinary users don't. Ordinary users don't use n-1 either. Ordinary users use whatever was on their…
So, after a few weeks of using Arch, I've gotten my system to the state that I don't want to reinstall it instantly. So this post is a list of problems I've encountered and what I did to fix them for anyone who has these problems again. The first problem I came up against was during installation. To install, I needed wifi, and to use the wifi, I needed some drivers from the AUR, and…
So, I've been using Arch Linux the past few days, after reading Sirupsen's post on it . He was quite positive of it, and he'd pointed out Vim to me, so I was prepared to take his advice again. Besides, what with the upgrades, downgrades, beta versions, etc, my Ubuntu installation was pretty much a wreck at this stage, and needed to be reinstalled anyway. And the last x64 disc I had…
One of the most annoying recent developments in gaming is Ubisoft has, and EA plans to, implement a always-on internet requirement for their DRM in the games, including single player games. This means that even for single player games, you need to be online to play it. Which is very annoying, to say the least. Yet I frequently see people online saying that you must have a always on internet…
Twitter is, depending on who you ask, the greatest invention, or the greatest timewaster of recent times. I certainly use it a lot, and it provides around 40% of the traffic to my blog, so evidently others do too. But, whenever I use it, I have a tendency to wonder: is this really a valuable use of time? Most of the time I use it, I am just timewasting. I might be putting off tidying stuff, study,…
During the last week, I finally did something I've been meaning to do for the last while, and bought myself a VPS as up until now, I've been on shared hosting. On the advice of compwhizii , I went with Linode . While there was nothing wrong with my previous web host, Web Hosting Buzz , they were a full $5 a month dearer for their entry level VPS packages, and unlike Linode, did not give…
On the advice of Sirupsen , I have been trying out vim during the last few weeks. Up until now, my editor of choice has been gedit on Linux, or Notepad++ on Windows for most stuff. I have also used VS on Windows, which while good for C#, it doesn't really help writing multi-platform programs. And I've used Eclipse a bit, back when I used Java for a while. But, most of my programming is…
Still doesn't make this any less funny. <Snakeman^Engineer> Do I sense some hatred towards Windows Vista originating from your direction? <Chrysalid^Revenge> Oh no, not at all * Chrysalid^Revenge stands up in a medieval recitation pose <Chrysalid^Revenge> "OS X for the Mac users, pretentious in their coffeeshops <Chrysalid^Revenge> Gentoo for the nerd-lords in their mother's basement…
Linux and wi-fi. They normally go together like a square peg and a round hole. Every wireless adapter I've had the past few years has had at least some problems running under Linux. Ranging from my USB WPN111 putting an end to my first foray into Linux ("screw this - no internet, it's too much effort, I'm going back to Windows"), about 2 years ago, to my current laptop's random…
One of my online friends has started learning programming in C++ and Python a few months ago. While he seems fairly competent in it, he was complaining that he feels he hasn't acheived anything worthwhile in it. He said he just can't think of anything useful to make. This reminded me of when I was starting out (and again when I was starting out with Javascript, and again with PHP, and…
Lately I have been working on one of my oldest pieces of code again. This code is that of a website I created for my school about 2 years ago, when I had just started programming. Given that (a) it's written by a beginner (me two years ago) and (b) it's PHP, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that the code is bloody awful. Even for a basic CRD app (I hadn't programmed the U…
A while back I decided to build a PC from parts for the first time. Why didn't I ever do so before? (a) Lack of money, and (b) Worry I'd screw something up. Of course, what kind of computer nerd would I be if I never built my own? So first things first, the specs (some components old, the rest ordered from komplett.ie ): MSI G41M-F Motherboard Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 (2.5Ghz) Geforce 210…
Auto updaters are great. They keep Windows secure, they save me having to manually install each time with Firefox, they're completely transparent with Chrome and on Linux, the whole system's updates are controlled through the one interface. Some are less ideal. Paint.NET prompts you to update on startup, usually when you've just turned it on for a quick edit (and you can't use…
The biggest change to programming for me this year (apart from spreading out from just PHP and Javascript) is that I now use source control for most of my projects. I started out on subversion because it was widespread, easy to use (with TortoiseSVN, I was still a Windows "everything must be GUI" user at the time), and there was a handy tutorial for it published for it on a blog I happened to…
My latest programming project is a todo list manager written in Python. Features Add, Remove and show items Manage multiple lists Lists are stored in JSON It also has a GUI, but that needs a lot of work. As always, the source code is available on my github . Unusually for my projects, it is already fully functional (though as I said, the GUI needs a little work).
Over the last 2 years, I've done a lot of personal programming projects. Some of these are available on my github , but any information about them is spread among Twitter and a few forums (some of which no longer exist). So over the next month, I'm going to blog about a few of these. I've chosen the name "The Playground" for the category because it accurately reflects both the…
One thing that alwasy gets on my nerves is when I go to a website to read an article and the web page turns out to just be a summary of the article with the full article in a PDF. 99/100 times, this results in me leaving the page and finding the information elsewhere. There are other variations of this: "See our website for information", and the information is a PDF file is another common…
During the last week, I got Halo 3: ODST. It's the first new Xbox game I've gotten in a good while. I haven't played Halo 3 much since the release of COD4, so before I got it I played through Halo 3 so I'd have something to compare it to. The actual campaign is kind of short, but it's well polished. The first thing I noticed about was the price. At €45 it's a welcome…
One of my favourite old games is Theme Hospital by Bullfrog. I still have my original disc, and play it a lot. It has a lot of charm, but it's not always simple to get running. So I'm writing up this guide on playing Theme Hospital on a modern PC. It has been re-released a couple of times, but my disc has both the Windows and DOS versions on the one disc. First of all, if you are running…
Recently, I've set up contacts to sync between my iPod Touch, PC and mobile phone (Sony Ericcson k750i). It's a feature that's been in all my last few phones but not one I've bothered with for a simple reason: My phone makes phone calls and texts, while my PC sends emails. There was no crossover. However, with the addition of my iPod Touch to the collection, which can send both…
As usual, I'm falling behind on blogging. One of the reasons for that is I am currently learning C++. A while back, I had a brief exploration into C++, and learnt the basic syntax, then moved on and didn't do anything related to it for 6 months. The majority of my programming has been done in Javascript, Java or PHP, though I have looked into other languages. Since Java and C++ are quite…
The Wii. A console that half the world 's gamers love, and the other half think is a waste of money. Having outsold every console ever, many declare Nintendo the ultimate success but how many people still play it after buying it? Nearly everyone I know has a Wii. Only one of them still uses it. My Wii is slowly gathering dust, even when my 360 was out of action. So if no-one enjoys the Wii,…
My iPod Touch is a great music player. But one of the most annoying inconsistencies in the UI is that it is capable of sorting The Black Parade under "B", but it cannot tell that Minutes to Midnight and Minutes To Midnight refer to the same album. I mean, even my mobile phone (a Sony Ericsson k800i) was able to tell that they are the same album. (And my old mp3 player, and that managed to have…
Back when I first installed Linux, when I had said I had a 60GB partition to use, the advice I got was: Match your swap partiton to your RAM, use 10GB for /, and the rest for /home . Yesterday, I started getting errors everywhere. So I turned it off and on again. When that didn't work, I actually read the errors. "No Space Remaining". I go "WTF, I only used about 12GB". So after…
I've done a good bit of programming in PHP and Javascript, but up until recently, my desktop programming experience has been limted to calculators and other similar simple programs. However, that is changing as my current programming project is an IM client and server written in Java. The name is Machat (hey, I'm not very inventive) and the source code is under the GPL and available at…
Many gamers will point to some video of a game on Youtube, and go "Look at how great the graphics are, this is so much better than game . In your face 360/PS3/PC gamers (delete fanboys platform of choice). You've lost.". This always makes me laugh for a number of reasons: A lot of those videos are pre-rendered. They might be the intro clip, or other movie clip, not actual gameplay.…
Sometimes with video games, the pricing can be ridiculous. Not always ridiculous as in too high (but it often is) but ridiculous because they defy logic. One example of this was around 6 months ago, the Orange Box for 360 was priced at €30 pre-owned, the same store sold it new for €20. Another example was during Zavvi's closing down sale. They claimed to have amazing offers. They did but not…
So yet again, I am starting a blog. I've tried general blogs before and never stuck at them, but since I've done a few smaller blogs, internal to forums and stuff, and managed to stick with them, I think the time is ripe to have another go. I'm not limiting myself on topics which I'll post on, but they'll probably all end up being on the same topics. So I suppose I should…