Traveling Thoughts

As a programmer it’s always fun to see the stuff that people come up with for code review metrics. What makes the code good, what makes it bad (all of which I think is relative to the person reviewing it because none of us can really agree on anything out in the programmer world, there’s agreeing with the bosses just so you can keep your job but knowing deep down in your heart that you really don’t agree and that there could possibly be a better way to do something than what they were proposing, but that’s really not agreeing, I digress.)

I was sent this little comic by my x-supervisor and I think any programmer will find it humorous.

orignally found on OSnews

And at the rate of all the disagreement that goes on between programmers, it might be completely valid of us to say that this is the only valid measurement of code quality. One of my coworkers and I completely agree that our code is awesome right up until we read through it and have to go fix it because we’re the ones sitting there going WTF long before it gets to the QA process.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s having to pay for a “pro” account so that I can view answers to the questions I have. The questions have been asked and the answers have been divulged so why are they not shared? I think that’s a bunch of bull crap. Knowledge should be free. Does the problem lie in the fact that knowledge is power and so there is a group of elitists that think they shouldn’t have to share it unless one can pay for it? This, in a sense, reminds me of the medieval hierarchy of social classes where I’m the peasant that can’t even begin to ask the lords a question, but if in some case I as the peasant can climb to a level of lordship I can be among them and learn from them and perhaps, even seek council among the nobles. Is my knowledge to be limited by my purchasing power? *sigh* I digress.

This whole thing is brought on by a Google search for an answer to a .NET question that resulted in me being sent to Experts Exchange. I have no clue how Experts Exchange works, but I do know that I end up there far to often for me to have to worry about paying to see answers that I’m not sure will even answer my questions. I’m sorry, $100 a year isn’t worth the one or two searches I do a month for the questions I have that I can generally find an answer to just as easily as I can end up on the EE site.

Today though, something dawned on me, something I was going to try, something that if it didn’t work I could click on the next link and most likely have my answer for. I clicked on the Google Cache link and managed to circumvent the Experts Exchange system. By clicking on the cache link, all the answers to my question showed up where as if I had clicked on the normal link, all the answers were covered up with a message from The Anarchist:

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To anyone that sees this post, know that at the time of this post’s creation, you don’t have to pay to access the information on Experts Exchange, you can view it for free. Remember, when it comes to Experts Exchange, google cached is your best friend.

Ok, so Apple doesn’t say Merry Christmas, but Apple does say Happy Holidays, and I’d like to thank Apple for saying so. I bought my first Mac yesterday, a MacBook to be exact, and while I’m enamored by the beauty of it, and I love the little pictures at the bottom of the screen that make opening a program that much more fun, I’ve got a slight learning curve to adjust to.

First, I was shocked by the single click mouse, I panicked to be completely honest, I was sure I was going to die if I didn’t have right click anymore. I did find that I could enable right click, and that I could enable click on the touch pad, that was another thing, when I booted up my beautiful MacBook, neither click by tapping touch pad nor the right click (which is actually called secondary click in Mac verbage, were enabled)

I’ve also realized that none of my PC software is going to load on the MacBook, which really isn’t a problem, except for Adobe Photoshop and all my video games…but I can adjust right…I mean, I’m sure I can get Kings Quest for the Mac somewhere…

I was intially freaked out that I couldn’t find Word on this computer, but then I found it, and found out that it’s a 30 day trial, but that’s cool, because I found out that if I order Office:Mac 2004 by Jan 13th then when Office:Mac 2008 comes out they’ll send it to me for only $6.99. That I can handle…

Also, iMovie doesn’t like the mpeg movies that my digital camera produces, most likely because they’re not mpeg4 videos, so I may need a new digital camera in the future…but not the near future, cause I just bought the MacBook and I can’t justify all new toys in the name of one toy requiring them right away.

And there’s got to be an easier way to get to my applications without going to the finder and clicking on the applications folder…but I guess learning that comes with time, and I’ve got time, I’ve got the lifetime of this little MacBook to figure out how things work. I can handle it.

For those of you interested in specs, this is how this MacBook looks on paper, or the screen rather:

• Intel® Core™2 Duo mobile processor with 800MHz frontside bus, 4MB shared L2 cache and 2.2GHz processor speed
• 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM for multitasking power, expandable to 4GB
• Slot-loading SuperDrive multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support records up to 8.5GB of data or 4 hours of video using compatible DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media
• 13.3″ TFT-LCD widescreen display with 1280 x 800 resolution
• 120GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
• Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared video memory
• 1 FireWire port (400 Mbps) and 2 high-speed USB 2.0 ports; built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) wireless interface
• Built-in AirPort Extreme Card and antenna for wireless networking (802.11n); 10/100/1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet
• Built-in iSight Web cam, stereo speakers and omnidirectional microphone; Apple remote included
• Weighs 5 lbs. and measures only 1.1″ thin for easy portability; lithium-polymer battery for up to 6 hours of battery life
• Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” preinstalled; software package included with Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, iChat, Safari, iCal, Photo Booth, Xcode developer tools, iLife ‘08 (with iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand) and more

I bought a little bag for it to go in:

Cause I want to keep it nice and pretty.

And beyond the few pieces of software that I need to get for it, I really only need a thing to go over the keyboard when I close it because I’m anal and don’t want to destroy the screen.

*rubs hands together* Yes, my MacBook is a beautiful thing :)

If I knew how to play poker, this probably would’ve been the coolest thing ever, but I don’t know how to play poker and didn’t feel like loosing my one poker chip in learning to play so I just watched, I watched as they auctioned off cool toys, a digital camera, xbox360 and an iPhone, I did not watch them play poker, god forbid I actually watched something from which I would learn.

So, what was so cool, b5media, who I know nothing about other than the fact that they had poker chips all over the place. There were at the other advertisers booths, we could get them for wearing a b5media t-shirt, knowing the answers to trivia questions, knowing passwords, trading swag, there were all kinds of ways to get your hands on the chips. Me, because I’m a dork, wanted them (the chips) for collectors purposes, and come to find out, I don’t have a complete set, I’m missing one, I’m missing the $250 chip, I have the $500 chip (yellow) and the $1000 chip (blue)

With our chips, we could play poker, but I already mentioned that didn’t I? And of course, by playing poker, we could win more chips, or loose them all, and then with our chips we could participate in auctions and win stuff. That’s all I know about b5 media, I know nothing else, I don’t even know the name of the chick that I asked if I could have a blue chip just because I wanted a blue chip to go with my yellow chip for my random collection of stuff at home. I also know that she didn’t want to go home to Canada with all the ball caps that she had brought down to Blog World Expo. That’s all I know, if they had a booth and were giving a pitch, I completely missed it.

So there I was, with my one yellow chip in hand, wondering how I was going to get a blue chip when the auction began, and this auction resulted in the most expensive iPhone ever:

sold for $278,000 (actually how ever much money that guy had, but that was the last going price)

If you got to go for free, that’s cool, it was probably worth your money ;P If you’re stupid like me and didn’t snatch up your free ticket when you had the chance, then you’re probably feeling that it wasn’t worth your money, and that’s what this post is about.

I feel as though Blog World Expo was more for the corporate bloggers than it was for the private bloggers. With me being a private blogger. Or perhaps I’m the wrong kind of private blogger and wasn’t interested in what there was as far as booths are concerned. While there was a lot to see and a lot of people were willing to tell me what they had to sell, I just wasn’t all that interested. There were a few things that did catch my eye and made me stop and listen and did pull me in and are worth discussing.

Utterz
SnagIT
Jing
coComment
mindtouch
b5 media

Yes, that’s another list, but beyond that list, there’s not much about Blog World Expo that’s worth me talking about. I didn’t attend any of the sessions I registered for, and actually, I was so bored out of my mind that I don’t think I spent maybe, 2 hrs there, max.

There was one more mentionable, but they’re so beyond mentioning that you’ll get a special in-depth look at what they had to offer. IZEA, they’re special, they really can’t be grouped with the others that I’m going to talk about. More on that later.

And since I realize that it’s possible that you as a reader may not be a blogger and you might just be scratching your head wondering what I’m talking about, Blog World Expo was a trade show and conference created for the industry of blogging. It was supposed to give me the strategies, tools and technologies I needed to stake their claim in the blogosphere. I don’t think I gave it a chance, maybe that’s why I’m so indifferent about my Blog World Expo experience.

I just have to take a moment to give some love to an application called Restoration. What happened was I was an idiot. Instead of ctrl-clicking files that I needed to delete, I made a mistake of shift-clicking. And in the midst of that shift-clicking were some files that I didn’t want to delete (like the horse photo in my horse of the apocalypse post)

I was panicked, I really really really wanted to blog about that horse today. It was what consumed me this weekend, a project, a golden project, it even gave me nightmares last night. So, I deleted the glowing horse and had to recover it. Thank God for Google. I found the Restoration app and was able to recover my photo and was ecstatic about it. In fact, there was like 25 photos I could’ve recovered.

I was writing some documentation for some changes I made in some software at work. In the abstract of the documentation I put:

…has recently undergone changes to increase functionality and relieve frustration.

After some discussion with a co-worker we decided that it should be effective and efficient and thus the final product is:

…has recently undergone changes to increase functionality and improve efficiency.

I think the first one was funnier, but this is a professional document so it kind of has to be clean…and to the point…