One thing that really bugs me is badly formatted code. I’ve nearly written a PL/SQL indentation program a number of times, but have never actually? completed it.
But this time it’s different. I figured that most of the pretty printers out there are very poorly written and work only on one particular programming language. However, most languages are very similar to one another. They all have comments, blocks and ‘if’ statements.
I liked Bruce Schneier’s article in Wired entitled The Scariest Terror Threat of All. Most articles we see these days are asking for more surveillance and intrusions into our private lives in order to fight the “War of Terrorism,” but this one explains why all that effort is misdirected.
[G]ood terrorist ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can figure out how to cause terror. The hard part is execution.
A friend recently pledged to post to her blog at least once a day. It’s quite a target; does that much really happen in our lives to post anything insightful that frequently?
In my case the answer is “no.” I’m not nearly interesting enough, but A is doing a fine job so far as long as you don’t mind that it’s an average rather than actually a daily occurrence! That’s not to say that nothing interesting ever happens to me. Take this, for example. It happened shortly after I moved to London.
Did you notice the new little box on the left side of the screen? It’s from a new Amnesty International campaign all about freedom of expression especially on the Internet. They call it Irrepressible. I’m happy to do my small bit to help undermine censorship by publishing fragments of censored text, and I also signed the pledge. I urge you to do the same.
I’m upstairs in bed. Just having a lazy Sunday morning, there’s no rush to get up but I do feel the need for some liquid refreshment. An English man and his tea. But, then again, just lying here is so very relaxing.
B points out that the tea isn’t just going to make itself. I note that this isn’t entirely true. According to quantum theory, it is possible for elementary particles to be at opposite ends of the universe from one moment to the next. One can, therefore, conclude that, while unlikely, it is within the realms of possibility that a mug of steaming, hot tea could materialise out of no-where onto my bed-side table.
I’m not sure how true it is, but I always assume that doctors must have no fun at parties. Every time they’re introduced to someone the response is bound to be, “Oh, I have this strange tingle on my elbow…?” or “I have this pain in all the diodes on my left side.” Even lacking the title, working in IT as I do, I get the same kind of thing. “My PC blue-screens when…” or “How do I do [something esoteric] in [some weird application I’ve never heard of]?” It’s the curse of knowing something about computers.
We had a power-cut last night. Pretty much the only electronic thing that worked in the flat was my iBook G3, a 2001-era 600Mhz model with a DVD-reader and no disc writing ability. After sending a few emails I closed the lid, putting it to sleep.
Ironically, this morning it was pretty much the only gadget in my flat that wasn’t working. I opened the lid and found the Spinning Beach-ball of Death. Perhaps because of its age this is not unusual. What was unusual was that after a few seconds it stopped spinning. On restarting rather than a nice, grey Apple logo I found a Finder icon and a question mark flashing on the screen. Not good.
It’s nice to see an article about Apple that’s not about the iPod! This time a reasonably sized Japanese company has switched most of it’s 2300 PCs over to Mac’s.
It’s a sensible move if you ask me! Given the ease of use, lack of virus and availability of MS Office I’ve never quite understood why Mac’s are not in wider use. I guess we need more conversions like this to reassure people that it’s not a foolish move.
In the West we take having clean, running water so much for granted that when we can’t drench our gardens in the stuff we complain like the world is about to end. And this is in the London area where most people don’t even have gardens!
Maybe it takes something like World Water Day to make us realise how lucky we are.
Some people seem to think that I visit new places just so that I can increment my Country Count. I guess going to three countries in one weekend a couple of years ago doesn’t do much to dispel that accusation, but it’s not true. What can I say? I like to see new places.
create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands
Having said that, hopefully I’ll hit my thirtieth country this year!