Keep this in mind the next time you have to work on somebody else’s code:

So I am a bit lucky in that my father is a very experienced programmer who also gave me the bug. One of the first things he said to me when I started programming for more than just fun or OSS, was that he never judged other programmers code. He would correct it, point out flaws in it, but always with a suggestion of how to do it better. The reason for this is that in the world that we have to live in, of deadlines, PHBs and evil marketing folks who spring new features on a development team right before a release, you never know why someone’s code is the way it is.[...]

source: mprorock on reddit

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents. The iPad may be a boon to traditional eduction, insofar as it allows for multimedia textbooks and such, but in its current form, it’s a detriment to the sort of hacker culture that has propelled the digital economy.

Perhaps the iPad signals an end to the “hacker era” of digital history. Now that consumers and traditional media understand the digital world, maybe there’s proportionally less need for freewheeling technological experimentation and platforms that allow for the same. Maybe the hypothetical mom doesn’t need a real computer. As long as real computers stick around for people who do need them, maybe there’s no harm in that.

Wherever we stand in digital history, the iPad leaves me with the feeling that Apple’s interests and values going forward are deeply divergent from my own. There’s nothing wrong with that; people make consumer decisions every day based on their values. If I don’t like the product that the iPad turns out to be once released, I’m free to simply not buy it. These things have a way of evolving, and I won’t preclude the possibility that Apple eventually addresses concerns about the openness of the device.

For now, though, I remain disturbed. The future of personal computing that the iPad shows us is both seductive and dystopian. It’s not a future I want to bring into my home.

Source: http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html

This quote (emphasizes are mine), perfectly reflects my concerns with regards to computing, but also our society in general, and the closed, proprietary direction some companies and people want to take us into. I belief that this direction will turn out to be a dead-end street and I hope we can prevent this from happening before causing it too much harm. This also highlights my arguments in favor of: sharing, openness, free software, accessibility and the right to play, destroy(mostly accidentally, sorry), create, tinker and experiment. In my humble opinion that is the only way to learn, innovate and work towards new, sustainable ways of living on this planet.

Most webdevelopers I know are no fan of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It has become a lot better with Internet Explorer 8, but still Internet Explorer usually doesn’t play nice and in general it is hard to debug issues on Internet Explorer.

So here’s a song (see also the embedded movie at the end of this post) by a guy who definitely has experienced these issues and wrote a song about Internet Explorer being mean again. This one is for al you web developers out there. Have a nice weekend! (more…)

“In pseudocode we use indentation while in most languages they have begin, end delimiters. Curly braces or something like in Java or C for example. But we use indentation. The whole idea of pseudo code is to get the algorithms as short as possible, while still understanding what the individual steps are. In practice there’ve been languages that use indentation as means of showing the nesting of things. In general it’s a bad idea because when things move from one page to another for example you can’t tell what level of nesting it is. Whereas with explicit braces it is much easier to tell. So there are reasons why this is a bad notation when you are doing software engineering, but it’s a good one for us ’cause it keeps things short and thus fewer things to write down.”

By: professor Charles E. Leiserson in Analysis in Algorithms

This rough howto describes how I succeeded in pairing my Apple Wireless Keyboard (bought late oct 2009, the two batteries type) to my Macbook(2,1) running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) with the help of the awesome Blueman application. I presume Blueman is already installed (I used the PPA) and working fine.

I did not make any notes, but I’ll try to describe my process as accurate as possible. Oh, before you start make sure the keyboard works and has batteries installed.

• Switch the wireless keyboard on by using the switch on the side.
• - Use Search in the Blueman interface to find the keyboard. If it can’t find it try the switch. The keyboard is probably switched off already.

If i’m not mistaken the led on the right side on top of the keyboard started to blink after which it appeared in the list of bluetooth devices.

• – Now you can add the device to your trusted devices and pair it. Without pairing the keyboard might be connected to your system, but it won’t work as an input device.

The pairing is the most annoying part.

• – You need to type a PIN number which you first have to type in on another (wired!) keyboard and afterwards you need to type the same PIN in on the Apple wireless keyboard.

You won’t see a thing, but after you have typed the PIN correctly you should get a notice that the device has been paired. You might have to use Blueman setup to make sure the wireless keyboard is used an input device.

ps: I also added this rough howto to the Blueman wiki. Please update that version if you encounter any issues with my howto and know how to fix it. Oh and feel free to leave me a comment to notify me

“Taken less literally, it’s just gibberish, a completely nonsensical way of thinking about the problem, like teaching a drawing class where you cover pentagrams.”

Bram Cohen (inventor of the p2p Bittorrent protocol) has an interesting view on subclassing in object oriented programming.

Ik communiceer veel per email. Om overzicht te houden heb ik al vele systemen (oa GTD) gebruikt. Uiteindelijk ben ik uitgekomen op het volgende systeem:

Ik gebruik 1 inbox voor alle email adressen die ik heb. Alle mailinglisten, nieuwsbrieven en dergelijken  worden eruit gefiltered en een eigen mapje onder de map mailinglists opgeborgen. Aangezien deze emails geen directe acties van mij verwachten is dat prima. Heb ik geen zin om ze te lezen dan doe ik dat niet. Heb ik zin om alles weg te gooien dan kan dat. Alle andere email blijft in mijn inbox en behandel ik. Mijn inbox is dus ook mijn todo lijstje. Email die verwerkt is wordt gearchiveerd.

Mijn archief is opgedeeld per jaar.Voorheen gebruikte ik een archief per project maar dat vond ik niet prettig werken. Om de correspondentie van een bepaald project te vinden gebruik de zoekfunctie van mijn email programma Thunderbird. Bij projecten die langer dan een jaar duren dien ik dus meerdere jaren te checken. Aangezien het merendeel van de projecten die ik doe niet langer duren dan twee jaar blijft dit beperkt tot het doorzoeken van mijn archief op twee jaren. Wat dan enorm helpt bij het vinden van de juiste email is het goed gebruiken van heldere en beschrijvende onderwerp regels in de email. Sommige mensen hebben de neiging om continue te reageren middels een reply en dan niet het onderwerp te veranderen. Dit maakt het voor mij lastig om bepaalde emails snel te vinden, maar ook voor de verzendende partij om zijn of haar emails terug te vinden.

Daarom een kleine maar mijns inziens een gouden tip: pas altijd de onderwerp regel aan, zodat deze de inhoud reflecteert. Daarbij is het verstandig om altijd even de naam van een project erbij te vermelden. Dit maakt het werken met email een stuk makkelijker en efficienter! Zie ook dit bericht op Lifehacking wat ingaat op de voordelen van het goed gebruiken van de email onderwerp regel.

(foto gelicenseerd onder CC-BY-SA bron: Biscotte)

(source: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/party/2000/mozilla2.gif)

I’m an avid user of Mozilla Firefox for browsing the web and Mozilla Thunderbird for reading up email when I’m not in a commandline Mutt kinda mood. Out of the box these applications are already great to use, but by installing some add-ons it gets even better. So I made a list of all the add-ons I regularly use.

Frankly, without these add-ons I would not be able to do my work as a web developer nor would I enjoy the web as much as I do. In fact, without the Thunderbird add-ons I would not be able to keep track of appointments nor would I be able to archive emails in a sane and time saving manner. In other words these add-ons are lifesavers and perhaps you might find them just as useful as I find them. So have a look at:

• Burobjorn Webdeveloper Tools
• Burobjorn Powertools
• Burobjorn Email Essentials

I plan on updating these collections with future add-ons when I come across new add-ons.

If you know of great add-ons which should be part of the above mentioned collections feel free to leave me a comment below. I won’t promise to make them part of it, but if I find them useful to me I will add them. Otherwise you can easily create your own collections at Mozilla and ignore me

Cool comic by XKCD documenting the workflow employed by me and most of my fellow geeks/nerds/hackers when attempting to help someone with computer issues while not knowing anything about the application at hand. Learn this by heart.

Nice videoclip combining Lego and chiptunes by Swedish ubergeeks Rymdreglage into something reminiscent of the demoscene. Found at waxy.org