A lot of this I did not know, but now that I do it explains some of the silly things that kept happening on my brother’s computer when the staff accidentally dragged the wrong thing around the screen. I accept the fact that you can way-overuse the drag and drop metaphor.
The we have the Six dumbest ideas in computer security. Funny, and true.
Of course nothing could be complete without 10 more CSS tricks you may not know, a collection of CSS tricks to work around broken browsers and do some funky retro-kitch.
The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme
habla español?
It turns out that ABC in the good old USA will be releasing all their new prime time shows in both the Spanish and English languages. This means a lot, as it implies that they are finally accepting the fact that there is a reasonably sized Spanish only speaking audience that they need to address.
Of course when we compare it with the muppet in Ireland who insisted that the Irish language is now a full language in the EU. This means that every document has to be translated to Irish. There must be a translator who can speak Irish in most major meetings that are being held in Brussels. As a side note, many meetings are held using only English and French, as these are the two ‘base EU languages’.
Previously to this, Irish was a second-tier language, some documents were translated to Irish, and there was no need to have an Irish translator at any of the meetings.
Honestly, I think it is one of the biggest wastes of money that the EU has to go through. There will probably be no Irish job created for this as most Irish translations are performed in the lower-cost translation countries such as Spain.
Another side-effect is that all the place signs in Gaeltacht areas are only in Irish. All very fine and well you might say, the locals will know the names themselves and the tourists will be able to guesstimate the translation from their maps which are all in English. The problem is that a lot of Irish place names have no connection to the English name. The English names are colonial names, the Irish names are the real place names. Virtually every sign in the country is bilingual until you reach the Gaeltacht, then it all fades to pure Irish.
Mick and Theresa’s Party
Well I was at Mick and T’s combined 10th wedding anniversary and Mick’s ‘answer’ birthday party. If you have to ask what the answer birthday is then I sugggest a swift belt of a towel. The images are still being uploaded – sadly the internet is slow for uploading pictures.
Wired up again
Well the holiday was fun. I got tanned and burned – silly me. The Cure was great, it was about 2.5 hours long, which made for a nice long concert (from 7.30 pm to about 3am). I’d recommend the ice cream and the crêpes.
What’s on your desktop
It happens – the brother in law peers over my shoulder to verify that I’m not playing a game while I should be programming – like he could really tell the difference based on a lot of the games I play these days. In response, I decided to list what’s on my desktop, and the reasons for them being there.
- My Computer, My Network Places, My Documents – ease of navigation
- My Bluetooth Places – bluetooth makes me so happy
- Firefox, Explorer, Thunderbird – web, and email
- Skype – cheap calls
- w.bloggar – web logging
- PE Resource Explorer – occasionally my projects don’t compile so good
- Acrobat Professional – Lot of PDFs
- Nullsoft Install System – for making those all important installers (still learning this)
- Nunit GUI. One of these days I’ll actually write those tests I’ve been promising myself
- IDA. The intelligent disassembler. Really good disassembler. This one is old, but I can’t afford a new version (~€320 + vat at last check)
- Code-Work, my projects folder. Practically everything lives here. It’s not on my desktop, it’s a folder-link
- Visual FoxPro 8 – upsizing some code to SQL server. The venerable Fox needs to die, as it has not kept up with the times.
- Visual Studio.NET – I write a few bits and bobs in Microsoft C, C++, C#
- Delphi 2005 – Best Delphi yet, sadly it’s got the nastiest price tag also. God be with the days when pascal cost $60
- Netbeans 4.1 – the gui designer alone is worth the download
- Palm OS Developer Suite – I caved, cscope just didn’t cut the mustard – pocketcity
- Simcity 3000, UK Edition – reference for pocketcity
- Copernic Desktop Search – partial word search; ’nuff said
- El Bin of Recycling
Making virtual folders. When you create a shortcut to a folder the start menu do not expand them on hover. This is remedied by creating a real folder, then making a desktop.ini file containing the following:
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID2={0AFACED1-E828-11D1-9187-B532F1E9575D}
Flags=2
Follow this with a shortcut called target, which points to the real directory. You can place this folder anywhere. When it’s on the start menu you have the right pointing triangle, which indicates that it’s a real folder
I.C.E.
Here’s one from the UK. When people have been in accidents one of the things that are found are mobile phones. Typically their small form factor makes them more survivable in a lot of cases. The suggestion is to put a number in their, listed under ICE (In Case of Emergency). It’s a realy simple suggestion, that helps people get in touch with relations and next of kin when something happens – as after all people can have huge quantities of numbers in their phone book, with no idea for the emergency services as to who is to be contacted.
Hari Potta
Read the latest book, primarily because I had to – after all once you’re about 3/4 the way through a series you are hardly going to stop. The year-on-year requirement of the books appearing is telling. The pace is getting very slow while the content is getting unnecessarily long.
fish of the Day
Went visiting the nun in Kinsale today. It was miserable in kerry – drizzle, clouds, general grumpiness but once we got over the protective fog layer into Cork the weather was wonderful. I just got back and it’s still cloudy here. I tell you; west Cork has the weather.
MIT Blog Survey
To use the Bart Simpsonism… the questions kind of make you think; but in my case they make me think about my internet life.
Talk to people weekend
This weekend seems to have been the talk to people weekend. I got a two phone calls from across the world, and an email from another person. I feel so loved! Plus that and I think I’ve drank more in the past 4 days than I have in the past 6 months, means that the conversations must have been surreal (I lie, I was not drunk when I talked to them); but I was drunk when I replied to the email. I’ll just warn people right here and now – never, ever drink and dial.