Amanda Ripley : Homeland Security for Grown-Ups

Amanda Ripley : Blog : Homeland Security for Grown-Ups:

"Terrorism is a psychological war as much as a physical war. To win such a war, it is essential not to overreact. That is the crux of the matter. If you overreact, you become a force multiplier for the terrorists."

And if you multiply that force, and you are in the business of making the public safe^TM, you profit from it and gain power.

Is aviation security mostly for show?

Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com:

"There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant 'bring 'em on' rhetoric. There's a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats.

We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice -- not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer."

I think this is an excellent article by Bruce Schneier. It takes courage to be free. Too many would rather just be safe^TM.

gdocbackup

Project Hosting on Google Code - gdocbackup

"GDocBackup exports all documents from Google Documents to local hard-disk. Runs on NET 2.0 / Mono (Win, Linux and Mac)"

Solstice

Solstice

RCA Digital Voice Recorder in Linux

Using an RCA Digital Voice Recorder in Linux

"Despite the .VOC extension, they are not Creative Labs Sound Files. RCA-VOC is an undocumented proprietary format starting with the signature 'VCP162_VOC_File', not 'Creative Voice File'.

On March 28, 2008, I finally solved this format..."

Code as Design

Developer Dot Star: Code as Design: Three Essays by Jack W. Reeves by Jack W. Reeves

"The following essays by Jack W. Reeves offer three perspectives on a single theme, namely that programming is fundamentally a design activity and that the only final and true representation of 'the design' is the source code itself"

Fluent in 3 months

Fluent in 3 months

My posts will be aimed at learners of any language, but I will be using those that I know as an example, including the one I happen to be currently learning. I will also be talking about specific languages.Now that I can see how easy it is to learn languages, I am constantly travelling to new countries and staying there (for around 3 months usually) and immersing myself in the language, although it can just as easily be done in the comfort of your own home with the right tools and attitude.

Access and PowerShell

Creating an Access database - Richard Siddaway's Blog

"In this series of articles I’ll show how to work with data contained in Access databases using PowerShell."

Digital Pickle

Digital Pickle - Digital Imaging Services

"We scan and digitize photos, slides, and negatives of any format using high-end commercial scanners that produce unmatched image quality."

LyX

LyX - The Document Processor

"LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG). LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface."

extpascal

extpascal - Project Hosting on Google Code

"ExtPascal is an Object Pascal (Delphi, FreePascal/Lazarus) wrapper/binding for Ext JS, a complete GUI Ajax framework, made in JavaScript, for Rich Internet Application (RIA) development."

FastSpring

FastSpring

"FastSpring provides an all-in-one e-commerce payment processing, merchandising, and fulfillment solution."

AllChars

AllChars

"AllChars provides a quick, easy-to-remember way of creating accents... and special characters... in most Windows programs."

See also: Compose Key

Via: Derek Sivers

dynaTrace AJAX Edition

Diagnose and Prevent AJAX Performance Issues - dynaTrace AJAX Edition

Jack PC

Jack PC Thin Client - Chip PC Technologies:

"The Jack PC's patented technology enables converting a standard LAN jack into a fully managed desktop PC, offering VDI support and connectivity to any type of popular Terminal, Citrix or Legacy server."

Bootable Floppy ISO

I had a bootable floppy disk saved as an IMG file that I wanted to make into a bootable ISO image (don't ask why). I did so on Ubuntu using the following command (it'll probably wrap here but it's a single line):

mkisofs -pad -b bootdisk.img -R -o bootdisk.iso bootdisk.img

bootdisk.img is the source IMG file.
bootdisk.iso is the resulting ISO file.


Source: http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/floppy_image_on_cd.htm

Spoon

Deliver your apps instantly on the web - Spoon App Streaming:

"Spoon lets you create web-hosted versions of your existing Windows apps that run instantly from your web site, with no install."

nano nowrap

To make the nowrap (-w) option default when starting nano, edit (or create) .nanorc in your home directory with the line:

set nowrap

More info at The GNU nano editor FAQ

Firefox - Bookmarks - Parent Folder

I've been wishing for this functionality in Firefox, but not enough to go looking for it - until today. Found a couple add-ons that help when organizing the bookmarks library:

Go Parent Folder - Adds a "Go Parent Folder" option to the context menu in the bookmarks library. Opens the parent folder of the current bookmark in the folder tree (left pane).

Show Parent Folder - Makes a "Parent Folder" column available in the bookmarks library search results (right pane).

rsnapshot

rsnapshot

"rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems. Using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available. The disk space required is just a little more than the space of one full backup, plus incrementals."

AutoMapper

AutoMapper

"AutoMapper uses a fluent configuration API to define an object-object mapping strategy. AutoMapper uses a convention-based matching algorithm to match up source to destination values."

log4net

Apache log4net

"log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime."

Radiolab

WNYC - Radiolab

Via Seth.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

MAP: Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

"The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is a powerful inventory, assessment and reporting tool that can securely assess IT environments for various platform migrations and virtualization without the use of any software agents."

BlogScope

BlogScope: analyze the blogosphere

"BlogScope is an analysis and visualization tool for blogosphere which is being developed as part of a research project at the University of Toronto."

Source for this post and the previous on IceRocket: The REAL real time search

IceRocket

IceRocket real-time search

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

Smashing Magazine: 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

DelphiFeeds

DelphiFeeds.com

"This site collects many different feeds from blogs, newsgroups and other Delphi sites. We publish short excerpts from these postings or articles on the DelphiFeeds.com front page"

Simple Test for PHP

Simple Test for PHP

"Amongst software testing tools, a unit tester is the one closest to the developer. In the context of agile development the test code sits right next to the source code as both are written simultaneously. In this context SimpleTest aims to be a complete PHP developer test solution and is called 'Simple' because it should be easy to use and extend. It wasn't a good choice of name really. It includes all of the typical functions you would expect from JUnit and the PHPUnit ports, and includes mock objects."

Disk2vhd

Windows Sysinternals: Disk2vhd

"Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online."

simplejson

Project Hosting on Google Code: simplejson

"simplejson is compatible with Python 2.4 and later with no external dependencies. It covers the full JSON specification for both encoding and decoding, with unicode support."

gdatacopier

gdatacopier on Google Code

"GDataCopier provides two command line utilities (the syntax of which largely resembles scp) that allow users to

* list documents on the Google document system
* export and import documents on the Google document system

Our target audience are system administrators (on Unix like platforms) who are looking to automate off site backups of their Google documents."

Herding Code

Herding Code

I haven't listened to this podcast yet but will soon. No link dump will be needed for this one - they have a nice big list of links from the show. That I like.

Lifehacker - Mastering Wget

Geek to Live: Mastering Wget

Hanselminutes 181 - Mono

Link dump from Hanselminutes 181 with Joseph Hill and Scott Bellware:

Hanselminutes - Show 181

Mono

Intel Software Network Blogs: Joseph Hill from Novell talking about Mono

Interview with Joseph Hill – Mono

Scott Bellware

Monospace - The Open Source and Cross-Platform Conference for Mono and .NET

Apple: iPhone Dev Center

MonoTouch

Open Source Initiative: Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)

Wikipedia: Shared source - Ms-PL

Mono.Addins

MonoDevelop

Wikipedia: MonoDevelop

Mono Tools for Visual Studio (MonoVS)

MoMA - Mono

---
(16:20) Bellware: "I'm hosting a conference not because I'm an expert but because I want to have some time with some experts."

I like Scott Bellware's ideas on conferences that are much more about learning and teaching than pushing a vendor's products. They seem to be popular.

devLink

CodeMash

---
Miguel de Icaza

Introduction to The Objective-C 2.0 Programming Language

Mono on the Wii

UNITY

Moonlight

---
Some "Getting started with iPhone development" links:

ZD-Net: Ed Burnette’s Dev Connection

Quite Useful: Getting Started With iPhone Development

mobiForge: Getting Started with iPhone DevelopmentmobiForge

iPhone Development: A Primer for Non-Mac Development Shops

Now, if I just had toy money for a Mac and an iPhone...

RunAs Radio 128

Link dump from RunAs Radio show 128 with Buck Woody:

RunAs Radio - Show 128 - Buck Woody

Carpe Datum - Buck Woody's Blog

CodePlex: SQL Server Central Management System

Bill Ramos on SQL Server

Microsoft Office Online: OneNote

Around 20:40 Buck mentions Compaq "T1100" tablet PC. Wonder if that's the TC1100?
YouTube - HP Compaq TC1100 Tablet PC Introduction

sqlcmd Utility

Enterprise Policy Management Framework - Home

Lara Rubbelke

LE1700 Tablet PC - Powerful and Full-featured Tablet Computer - Richard's tablet (er, slate) PC.

CustomGuide - Free Computer Training Quick References, Cheat Sheets

SSWUG.ORG - SQL Server Worldwide Users Group

jwz - that "duct tape" silliness

jwz - that "duct tape" silliness:

"So I guess to the extent that he puts me up on a pedestal for merely being practical, that's a pretty sad indictment of the state of the industry."

Ubuntu Release Cycle

The Ubuntu Release Cycle

[Update 2010-09-08]

The above link seems to no longer work. The release schedule is listed here:
Releases - Ubuntu Wiki

SongBeamer - Components for Delphi 2009

Components for Delphi 2009 / Tiburon - songbeamer.de

"Here is a collection of components for Delphi 2009"

CohPy Link Dump

Attended the first meeting of the Central Ohio Python Users Group yesterday evening.

Here's a link dump from my meeting notes:

cohpy.org (Site was not up yet but here's the link anyhoo.)

Meeting was at TechColumbus.

Group was organized by Eric Floehr.

Eric's web sites: ForecastAdvisor, ForecastWatch.

Group page at meetup.com.

---

jonEbird - Jon Miller presented...

Welcome to Apache Hadoop!

Google: MapReduce

Doug Cutting - Wikipedia

Doug Cutting's Blog - Free Search

HDFS Architecture

Apache - HBase

Apache - Hive

Apache - Pig

Apache - ZooKeeper

Python - Built-in Functions - Map, Reduce.

Sort Benchmark Home Page

Jim Gray, Microsoft Research Home Page

YouTube - Cluster Computing and MapReduce Lecture 1

Yahoo! - Hadoop Tutorial

Slicehost - VPS Hosting

Plone CMS

Plone Consulting — Six Feet Up, Inc.

PyOhio

26.1. pydoc — Documentation generator and online help system — Python v2.6.2 documentation

py2exe

Pyinstaller

blip.tv - PyOhio videos.

---

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

Scalable Vector Graphics - Wikipedia

Firefox Add-ons Collections

Just ran across the collections of Firefox Add-ons on the Mozilla site.

Here are a couple I want to check out (on a Virtual Machine first):

Web Developer's Toolbox - Already use a few of these add-ons.

Reference Desk - Looking for ways to speed up and organize research on the web.

FLOSS Weekly

The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte provides bad dental advice: FLOSS Weekly

...well, I suppose weekly is better than never. Oh, it's NOT about dentistry.

Lending money to family

Ask the expert: Lending money to family members - Sep. 15, 2009

"If an unreliable family member is asking you for a loan, proceed with caution."

I'd say if ANY family member is asking you for a loan, proceed with caution.

Hanselminutes 177 - Richard Campbell

Hanselminutes 177 - Hanselminutiae-seven with Richard Campbell

Enjoyed this one enough to make some links for future reference. Actually, I enjoy most of the Hanselminutes podcasts. I just happened to have time today to blog some links for this one.

Microsoft ResponsePoint

Syspine

3:05 "I'm going to Google that with Bing" - Scott

5:09 Scott's son picks up the phone and promotes the use of a home PBX for those making podcasts.

Kindle DX

Apple Newton

NDC 2009 - Norwegian Developers Conference

devLink

TechEd

Book: The Paradox of Choice

Subway

I agree with eating at a familiar chain restaurant when on the road. It's not just the familiarity, I've gotten sick after trying local specialties several times while traveling. Then again, don't miss out entirely, take care of business first then sample the local fare.

Channel 9 - Death of the Professional Conference Speaker

"Love runs down."

I think the people doing the smaller conferences will move on. It's only natural that their interests will change over time and not necessarily in unison with the communities they are in now. As that happens new conferences and communities will form around new "movers and shakers" and people will continue to learn and share (and show off their chops).

Channel 9 - Chris Sells on Managing People and Your Time

42:00 "I used to measure my productivity in interruptions per hour." - Richard

I have even more respect for Richard after hearing his story of posting his interruptions-per-hour metric outside his office for the boss and others to see. Excellent.

I'd recommend trying the On Air sign before testing the shotgun theory.

Snippets Anywhere with AutoHotkey

Rob Henrys' Blog : Snippets Anywhere with AutoHotkey:

"Most snippet solutions work only within one specific application; however it’s sometimes desirable to have a solution that can work across multiple applications, this is where AutoHotkey can help. I’m going to describe an AutoHotkey script that will allow you to seamlessly add and use text snippets in any application. The script is made up of three parts: defining a snippet from the script, adding a snippet to the script, and reloading the script after a snippet is added."

AutoHotkey

xUnit.net

xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET

xUnit.net Contrib

Brad Wilson

James Newkirk

MRT - Malicious Software Removal Tool

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Start / Run: MRT

Script#

Script#:

"Script# brings productivity to Ajax and JavaScript development. Script# is a free tool that enables developers to author C# source code and subsequently compile it into regular script that works across all modern browsers..."

WebDev Notes

XFN

Microformats

CSS Optimiser

HTML forms: fieldset, legend, label.

Box model: width, height refer to content area.

IE5/6 box model different. Don't add padding to elements with defined width.

Edit Icons and Cursors in Paint.NET

Evan's Freeware Site has a plugin for Paint.NET that enables editing Windows icon and cursor files.

Squid

Squid

Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages.

Squid offers a rich access control, authorization and logging environment to develop web proxy and content serving applications.

Squid User's Guide

SquidGuard

DansGuardian

Hanselminutes 176

Hanselminutes 176

Udi Dahan is an Enterprise Development Expert and also the author of NServiceBus. Udi educates Scott on how a service bus works, and how it fits into a world of brokers, workflows and services.

Udi Dahan

NServiceBus

MyTelescope.com

MyTelescope.com - Getting Started:

"Using our observatories to take your own astronomy images is easy! Once you have registered and purchased credits, simply book a telescope, connect to the observatory and start controlling: point the telescope at objects such as galaxies, nebula, binary stars and take pictures."

Groovy and Grails

Groovy and Grails - Java | SpringSource:

"The combination of Groovy and Grails offers productivity benefits rivaling Ruby on Rails, but on the proven, scalable, and seamlessly integrated Java platform."

We need a history lesson about Nazis

We need a history lesson about Nazis - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com:

"It's important to remember that the Nazis are passing out of living memory; U.S. soldiers of that era are said to be dying at the rate of 1,200 a day. Which makes it too easy, I think, for a nation of notorious historical illiteracy to remake the Nazis as some kind of all-purpose bogeymen for slandering political enemies and scoring cheap rhetorical points."

Hanselwood

Hanselminutes 175 - Scott Hanselman interviews Jeff Atwood.

ASP.NET MVC

CruiseControl (did a quick search but didn't find if it is CruiseControl or CC.NET that Jeff uses).

LINQ to SQL (database as model)

reCAPTCHA

DotNetOpenAuth - .NET OpenID

Post/Redirect/Get model (2)

"Bad neighborhood in the code."

YSlow (see also Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site)

Minify: YUI Compressor (see also JSMin)

Scott likes the idea if a Content Delivery Network, Jeff not so much.

Gravatar caching: 1, 2, 3

What was Stack Overflow Built With

DocX

DocX - Home:

"DocX is a .NET library which allows developers to manipulate Word 2007 files, in an easy and intuitive manor. It does not use COM libraries nor does it require Office to be installed in order to function."

Thanks to Jon Kruger for the link.

HootSuite

HootSuite:

"HootSuite is the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success."

Marvell SheevaPlug

I want. I want.

Marvell: Plug Computing

PlugComputer Community

Linux for Devices - News: $100 Linux wall-wart launches

Sansa m250 with Ubuntu 9.04

Ubuntu 9.04 did not let me see the files on my Sansa m250 mp3 player. It detected it as a media player but I could not see its file system. I got it to work based on info in item #7 in this forum post by editing this file:

/usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe/10osvendor/20-libgphoto2.fdi

I used gksudo nautilus to open a root file manager session. Then I made a backup copy of the above file in a directory under my home directory. Next I opened the file in gedit, commented out the section pertaining to Sansa devices, and saved the file.

Instead of restarting hal I just restarted the machine.

Now when I connect the Sansa player I can see and copy files as I please.

Podcasts

Generally computer geeky:

IT Conversations - Stack Overflow be here.

Software Engineering Radio - An extra shot of geek.

Dvorakish:

Cranky Geeks - Yeah, I'm cranky too.

No Agenda - Crackpot and Buzzkill IN THE MORNING - Cracks me up.

Microsofty:

.NET Rocks! - Carl rocks too. He's a REAL musician.

Hanselminutes - Scott IS THE Hanselman!

RunAs Radio - IT is geeky2.

Deep Fried Bytes - Microsouth.

Ubuntu LAMP

Installing Apache MySQL PHP on Ubuntu.

PHPSecInfo

PHP Security Consortium: PHPSecInfo:

"PhpSecInfo provides an equivalent to the phpinfo() function that reports security information about the PHP environment, and offers suggestions for improvement."

CakePHP

CakePHP: the rapid development php framework:

"CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications."

Ubuntu 8.10 Freezes After Login Screen

Ubuntu 8.10 Freezes After Login Screen - Benaiah’s Computer Experiences

This fixed problem with Ubuntu 9.04 on my ancient Dell Optiplex GX110 where, on reboot, after changing the screen resolution, GNOME would freeze with a faux pointillism version of the desktop.

Jinzora

Jinzora:

"Jinzora is a web based media streaming and management system, written in PHP."

UltraVnc Single Click

UltraVnc Single Click:

"UltraVNC SC is a mini (166k) UltraVNC Server that can be customized and preconfigured for download by a Customer. UltraVNC SC does not require installation and does not make use of the registry."

Sounds interesting. Check it out.

Selenium with Python

Trying the Selenium web application testing system with Python.

Started by installing Selenium IDE in Firefox. That lets you record and playback interaction with the web site under test. It also formats the test script in a number of languages you can use to automate the tests using Selenium RC. I'm using Python.

The Selenium RC Server is written in Java so the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) must be installed on the system hosting the tests.

Selenium RC documentation

Selenium Python Client Driver Configuration

Python unit testing framework

Python HTMLTestRunner

Python — Unit testing framework

26.3. unittest — Unit testing framework — Python v2.6.2 documentation:

"The Python unit testing framework, sometimes referred to as “PyUnit,” is a Python language version of JUnit, by Kent Beck and Erich Gamma. JUnit is, in turn, a Java version of Kent’s Smalltalk testing framework. Each is the de facto standard unit testing framework for its respective language."

Watir

Watir - Overview:

"Watir is an open-source library for automating web browsers. It allows you to write tests that are easy to read and maintain. It is simple and flexible."

"...support for Firefox also requires a plugin."

Selenium

Selenium web application testing system

iMacros for Firefox

iMacros for Firefox - Script your Firefox Web Browser

Windows Forms to Windows Presentation Foundation Converter

Windows Forms to Windows Presentation Foundation Converter:

"This project is intended to help developers learn how their Windows Forms knowledge can be translated into Windows Presentation Foundation. It does so by taking Windows Forms projects and performing a basic translation of the source code and project file into a corresponding WPF Project."

Firefox Extension Development Tutorial

Firefox Extension Development Tutorial :: Overview

Lifehacker - How to build a Firefox extension

Lifehacker - How to build a Firefox extension

The Levelator

The Levelator from The Conversations Network:

"Do you believe in magic? You will after using The Levelator to enhance your podcast. And you'll be amazed that it's free, now even for commercial use."

Firefox Add-ons - Send Tab URLs

Just installed Send Tab URLs Firefox Add-on:

"Send a list of browser tab URLs to email, Web mail, or the clipboard"

ArtistX

ArtistX - eXtra ordinary art tools:

"ArtistX is a free live GNU/Linux DVD which turns a common computer into a full multimedia production studio.
It is based on Ubuntu GNU/Linux and contains nearly all the available free audio, 2D and 3D graphics, and video software for the GNU/Linux computing platform."

The site has a big list of free graphics, audio, and video software packages.

PowerShell - Cmdlet Development Guidelines

Cmdlet Development Guidelines

Coding4Fun : Twitterlight: A Silverlight Twitter client

Coding4Fun : Twitterlight: A Silverlight Twitter client

electric-guitar.co.uk - Guitar lessons and dictionary of guitar chords

electric-guitar.co.uk - Guitar lessons and dictionary of guitar chords:

"electric-guitar.co.uk offers a coherent course of introductory guitar lessons that is free, simple to follow and effective."

Silk Icons

famfamfam.com: Silk Icons:

"...a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format."

Windows Sysinternals

Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources:

"The Sysinternals web site was created in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell to host their advanced system utilities and technical information. Microsoft acquired Sysinternals in July, 2006. Whether you’re an IT Pro or a developer, you’ll find Sysinternals utilities to help you manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications."

ICECAP

ICECAP:

"ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public."

ADOdb Database Abstraction Library for PHP

ADOdb Database Abstraction Library for PHP (and Python) for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Firebird, Interbase, LDAP, Access, VFP, DB2 and many other databases:

"ADOdb is a database abstraction library for PHP. There is also a Python version"

Java Anti-Patterns

Java Anti-Patterns

Build your own solar-powered water pumping station

Build your own solar-powered water pumping station by Jeffrey Yago:

"There are many remote applications where a solar-powered water pump is more cost effective than installing a conventional grid-connected AC pump."

Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar, Vol. 1-3

Ciarcia’s Circuit Cellar, Vol. 1-3

"Many electronics enthusiasts have fond memories of Steve Ciarcia’s first run of Circuit Cellar articles in BYTE magazine. Since Circuit Cellar headquarters still gets inundated with requests for these columns and subsequent Circuit Cellar books (all out of print), Steve has agreed to make these books available online."

Fire And Motion - Joel on Software

Yes, this is an ancient article written way back in 2002. Still applies today and I might want to read it again, hence this post.

Fire And Motion - Joel on Software:

"Maybe this is the key to productivity: just getting started. Maybe when pair programming works it works because when you schedule a pair programming session with your buddy, you force each other to get started."

This American Life - The Giant Pool of Money

This American Life - The Giant Pool of Money

Hanselminutes 158 - Joel Spolsky

Hanselminutes: "Visiting Fog Creek Software and Joel Spolsky"

Joel on How Microsoft Lost the API War

Joel on Unicode

spolsky on Twitter

Raymond Chen - The Old New Thing

Michael Kaplan - Sorting it all Out

Long Zheng - I Started Something

Jeff Atwood - Has Joel Spolsky Jumped the Shark?

Video: Channel 9 - Hanselminutes Tour of Fog Creek Software

New release of n-Track Studio

Version 6.0.4 of n-Track Studio Multitrack Audio Recording and Editing Software was released on 2009-04-17.

Stoicism 101

Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs

G-Scripts

Nautilus File Manager Scripts: Welcome to G-Scripts

nautilus-open-terminal

I figured there'd be something like this available:

Ubuntu Tutorials : nautilus-open-terminal : terminal quick launch

Just installed on a couple Ubuntu boxes. Looks like it'll be handy.

100 Must Have Cheat Sheets For Web Designers & Developers

AntsMagazine: 100 Must Have Cheat Sheets For Web Designers & Developers:

"Cheat sheets are really helpful and easy way to remember things. In this list we have got the most used cheat sheets for web designers and developers, this list covers all areas of designing and developing."

SoX - Sound eXchange

SoX - Sound eXchange:

"SoX is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.) command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats. It can also apply various effects to these sound files, and, as an added bonus, SoX can play and record audio files on most platforms."

Sox on Wikipedia.

Linux Journal article about Sox.

Gag me with a SYS-CON

I suppose there are some good tech articles at the SYS-CON MEDIA site. I'm not sure because every time I go there the distracting animated advertising and annoying pop-ups cause a gag reflex and I just leave. Maybe it's just me.

Kicked by the XAML

Been meaning to dig into WPF but that hadn't made it to front of the queue, which means when it comes to XAML I don't have a clue. Well, while checking out the samples for the Windows Speech API, I ran into an exception when starting a C# sample. The error message told me as much as "there's something wrong with this whole wad of XAML but I'm not going to say exactly what and where."

This sort of error is discussed here:

WPF trick: Debugging the XamlParseException

WPF: Debugging the XAML (continued) / Expression Blend training

Might as well start digging into this WPF/XAML stuff now.

Just Talk It Out

From Practical eCommerce: Voice Recognition Software: Just "Talk It Out":

"If you have Windows Vista, you already have some of the best voice recognition technology in existence just waiting for you to take advantage of it. Why not harness that software (perhaps the best and coolest part of the dreaded Vista operating system) to speak your blog post rather than type it?"

Cory Doctorow: You shouldn't have to sell your soul just to download some music

From the Guardian: Cory Doctorow: You shouldn't have to sell your soul just to download some music:

"The same companies that spent decades telling lawmakers that they were explicitly not the guardians of the morality of the young – that they couldn't be held accountable for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, for gangsta rap, for drug-fuelled dance-parties – did a complete reversal and began to beat their chests about the corrupting influence of downloading on the poor kiddies."

Sphinx

Overview — Sphinx v0.6 documentation:

"Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation, written by Georg Brandl and licensed under the BSD license. It was originally created to translate the new Python documentation, and it has excellent support for the documentation of Python projects, but other documents can be written with it too."

The Access Web - The Evils of Lookup Fields in Tables

The Access Web - The Evils of Lookup Fields in Tables

Yes, they are evil.

I don't know JACK

But I hope to get to know JACK, as I work on a few audio projects, as time permits.

JACK : connecting a world of audio:

"JACK is system for handling real-time, low latency audio (and MIDI). It runs on GNU/Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OS X and Windows (and can be ported to other POSIX-conformant platforms). It can connect a number of different applications to an audio device, as well as allowing them to share audio between themselves. Its clients can run in their own processes (ie. as normal applications), or can they can run within the JACK server (ie. as a 'plugin'). JACK also has support for distributing audio processing across a network, both fast & reliable LANs as well as slower, less reliable WANs."

List of applications supporting JACK.

QjackCtl - JACK Audio Connection Kit - Qt GUI.

The Jack Rack project.

JAMin - JACK audio mastering.

Also, a couple digital audio tools that work with JACK:

ReZound graphical audio file editor.

Ardour digital audio workstation.

Note to self: check 'em out.

Open Source Project Management Systems

]project-open[ - Open-Source Project Management Software

Onepoint Project

Sed for Windows

Sometimes all you need is a little text stream pattern matching and substitution. Maybe I don't need to write another one-off utility in C# or Delphi for Win32. Maybe I just need a little Sed for Windows.

Ubuntu Live CD Customization

LiveCDCustomization - Community Ubuntu Documentation

VHD Mount without Virtual Server

VMblog.com: VHD Mount without Virtual Server

VirtualBox

This weekend I'm going to check out VirtualBox:

"VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)."

I'll probably start with these simple instructions: Using VirtualBox to run Linux from within Windows.

I also plan to check out the VMKnoppix live CD.

(As if I need more stuff to do;)

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I've been using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and notice a lot of similarities between it and VirtualBox. Maybe that's because they share a common ancestry. Virtual PC was originally developed by Connectix and was later sold to Microsoft (see Microsoft Virtual PC: Version History). VirtualBox came from Innotek which, before being acquired by Sun Microsystems, worked with Connectix on Virtual PC technology.

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Rich Green: On Snowglobes, xVM and Freedom

Virtual Steve: Weblog: This Isn't Your Dad's Desktop Virtualization

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1

Notes from updating Virtual PC 2007 to SP1:

Download: VPC 2007 SP1

Q: Which version is installed?

A: Product version shows in Virtual PC Console / Help / About Virtual PC...

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007: 6.0.156.0

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1: 6.0.192.0

psake

Introducing psake - James Kovacs:

"psake is a build automation tool written in PowerShell. It avoids the angle-bracket tax associated with executable XML by leveraging the PowerShell syntax in your build scripts. psake has a syntax inspired by rake (aka make in Ruby) and bake (aka make in Boo), but is easier to script because it leverages your existent command-line knowledge."

The PowerShell Guy : PowerTab

The PowerShell Guy : PowerTab:

"You will find the overviewpage for PowerTab here,and you can find the link to the latest version of the PowerTab scripts here."

PowerShell Community Extensions

PowerShell Community Extensions:

"PowerShell Community Extensions (PSCX) is aimed at providing a widely useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell that members of the community have expressed interest in."

Windows PowerShell Blog

The Windows PowerShell Blog also has a downloads page that links to downloads for the different versions of PowerShell.

EclipseNSIS

EclipseNSIS - Home:

"EclipseNSIS is a plugin for the Eclipse platform which enables editing, compiling and testing Nullsoft Installer (NSIS) scripts. The EclipseNSIS InstallOptions Editor plugin is an add-on to EclipseNSIS which enables editing of InstallOptions scripts."

NSIS

Main Page - NSIS:

"NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a professional open source system to create Windows installers. It is designed to be as small and flexible as possible and is therefore very suitable for internet distribution."