Hard wired, soft coded, confused

"Is it really sensible to try to soft code everywhere when, whether you like it or not, the host environment is going to make its own hard/soft configuration changes?" -- Hard wired, soft coded, confused

From Personal Computer to Impersonal Chameleon

Booting from something you carry around in your pocket. There is a trend there I think. A trend that could take the "personal" out of the PC box and into your pocket which, arguably, is where it belongs in this day and age : From Personal Computer to Impersonal Chameleon.

Testing - the pain, the power, the money

"The first big dirty secret of coding is that to do it well, you need to spend as much time coding around your core code as you spend, coding the core code itself." -- Testing - the pain, the power, the money

Feed the need

Bloglines is down this a.m. and boy do I feel...incomplete. I start the day with coffee and a read of my feeds. I'm only half the geek I normally am... Is there a 12 step recovery program for RSS/Atom addiction?

IronPython in Action

I have been reading IronPython in Action over the last few days and enjoying it, even though I'm not much of a .NET developer at the moment. Its main strength is the down-in-the-details treatment of building real .NET apps. It covers the basics well but does not shy away from more advanced stuff, both at a language level - like meta-programming - and at a .NET level, like DLR/Silverlight.

I don't know what my next big Windows app will be but I'm pretty sure it will be developed in IronPython with this book open beside me. Recommended.

Firefox+OpenOffice on Linux verus Firefox+OpenOffice on Windows

Today I ambled around an interesting difference between Linux and Windows w.r.t. Firefox+OpenOffice. Methinks I'm missing something but here is what I'm seeing:

- On Windows, I can enable Mozilla Plug-in in OpenOffice 3 and get OO docs to open read-only in a Firefox browser window. I can then click to open a full frame window in edit mode.

- On Linux, I can do the same but with mozplugger installed I can go a step further. I.e. I can open OO docs read/write in an embedded browser window. No need to click to enable editing, no need for an external window.

Is this an example of Firefox+OO being a more powerful combo on Linux than it is on Windows or am I missing a trick?

Name games

"Wordy names are hard. Good wordy names are really hard. Good, short, sort-friendly wordy names are fiendishly hard." --Name games