Rantzilla

(require 'cl)

2010-05-07T08:02:00.002-04:00

Most, if not all, .emacs files I've read worth reading have (require 'cl) somewhere near the top.

Ask Dr Aybabtu: How to make a Gnome behave civilly

2010-04-30T08:35:00.002-04:00

Dear Dr Aybabtu,

I installed Fedora 12 and I can't get the mouse to behave properly. WTF?

Frustrated in Ft Collins,

Foo

Dear Foo,

Allow Dr Aybabtu a Clintonian moment without blue dress collateral damage: I feel your pain. Dr Aybabtu will not editorialize about the reasoning behind Fedora 12's removal of access to the One True Way of dealing with WIMP interfaces, namely that the focus follows the mouse. And no, focus does *not* mean changing the stack order, raising, or anything other than focus. Fortunately, you can put it back. From the mighty command line, issue:

yum install control-center-extra

You may need to sudo that, or do it as root. Then, navigate the Gnome menu thingie at the top of your desktop (or wherever the hell you've put it):

System->Preferences->Windows

Check the box labeled:

Select windows when the mouse moves over them

Under *no* circumstances check the box labeled

Raise selected windows after an interval

Surely madness and damnation lie down that path.

Whatever you do, do not seek advice about this on slashdot or other places on the interwebs, because you'll get answers like "use blackbox" or "I have Steve Jobs' sweat on my iDork and I will never ever wash it!", which may be interesting enough, but not the answer to the question.

HTH,

Dr Aybabtu

Bocce at Leon's

2009-09-01T07:51:00.004-04:00

Nothing works up a thirst like house hunting, and what a better way to slake a thirst than a pint of Victory Hop Devil at Leon's Full Service?

Leon's has a bocce court, which puts it in a special place in my heart. This is from a match I was having with my friend Beth.

I won't say who was green...

Bind and my memory of it are not in sync

2009-09-01T07:39:00.002-04:00

The PostScript bind didn't work the way I remember it working. It only works on operators, not procedures. bind replaces the name by the operator, which saves a look-up at execution. There are times when I want to replace things late, but there are times when I would like to replace things early. PostScript with macros, anyone?

transition

2009-07-28T07:30:00.003-04:00

Right now, a coffee maker is obeying a timer, grinding beans in a kitchen in a house that used to be my home. It's still a home, just not mine. Presently, a woman, once the love of my life, will glide blearily into the kitchen and grope for a cup. She'll smile, thinking of a man that is not me.

And, you know, that's OK.

Naughty, naughty, naughty!

2009-06-24T22:57:00.002-04:00

It's not really naughty, but I just caved into something that I wish I had caved into *years* ago; getting a fountain pen that not only works, but kicks ass. I am so doomed, because I now need -- yes need! -- more pens to sling the ink that needs slinging. The pen: Lamy AL-Star, medium nib. AL is periodic table, not American gazetteer, BTW... The colors: r, g, b, c, m, y, k -- I have k -- and all of the glorious combinations their mingling might produce!

Windows Rules to Live by: The Registry

2009-05-27T17:33:00.002-04:00

Never deploy code that writes to the Windows registry without having tested sister code that removes what was written from the registry.

Thought for the Day: Unit Tests

2009-05-27T13:46:00.002-04:00

Keep your documentation close, but your unit tests closer.

Ah! Post unit test build complete!

Back at it...

GeoPDF Now OGC Best Practice

2009-02-05T18:00:00.002-05:00

After many long years, GeoPDF is open and an OGC best practice. I would have like to have seen this go down in 2003 when I first wrote the specification. It would have been very different, since it would have been designed for external consumption (too many naught bits hang out in the LGIDict specification, but it had to get done in about a day and a half...), but it should have been open from the get-go, IMO. A little gruntle for the ranting set, too...

In Praise of Mavericks

2008-07-10T07:51:00.002-04:00

Col. Michael Wyly's AFJ article made me think about what "professional" means. John Boyd, mentioned in the article, was an interesting cat.

C++ Frequently Questioned Answers

2008-04-27T15:18:00.001-04:00

The C++ FQA is priceless.

Artistic License

2008-04-21T19:37:00.002-04:00

Go forth and take (get) your artistic license. Be sure to click on the license itself so you can take in the grandeur that are the codes.

Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Months

2008-04-19T13:01:00.003-04:00

We'll almost no matter what you do, you can't learn programming in 10 months. However, Eli Bendersky shows one how to make the most of your first 10 months of the process. I'll leave it to
Peter Norvig to explain why learning to program is takes more than a few weeks with a "21 days" book...

When ever you hear...

2008-04-09T21:44:00.002-04:00

"linux", substitute "mobile". Pictures get a whole lot more interesting...

Phil Baugh: Country Guitar

2007-10-26T20:10:00.000-04:00

I was doing time on the connector when what wafted through the aether on WRFG? Phil Baugh's Country Guitar. I don't know why, but it really struck my fancy

New Acronym: WTFW?

2007-08-29T20:42:00.000-04:00

Do you ever wonder from whence something came? I do. I love thesarui, e. g.

WTFW?

Where TF Whence?

QOTD

2007-07-25T09:25:00.000-04:00

Software can't solve the dumb-ass problem. -- Dr Aybabtu

Duff's Template

2007-05-11T08:27:00.000-04:00


template <class T>
void
duff(T* to, T* from, T count) {
  T n = (count+7)/8;
  switch (count % 8) {
    do {
    case 0: *to = *from++;
    case 7: *to = *from++;
    case 6: *to = *from++;
    case 5: *to = *from++;
    case 4: *to = *from++;
    case 3: *to = *from++;
    case 2: *to = *from++;
    case 1: *to = *from++;
    } while (--n > 0);
  }
}

How to Make a Grown Hacker Cry

2007-04-20T08:26:00.000-04:00

From Yaml for Ruby:


Man 1: What's Yaml?
Man 2: It's for writing data structures in plain text.
Man 1: And?
Man 2: And what? That's not good enough for you?

Top Tech RD

2007-04-18T20:36:00.000-04:00

Note to self: Top Tech RD spenders. Got some Adobe verbiage in there...

Cool Timeline Web API

2007-04-09T16:03:00.000-04:00

MIT Simile.

Key to World Domination

2007-04-09T15:40:00.000-04:00

Note to self: read this. Key to PSan's Big Idea...

Google Talk

2007-04-03T10:17:00.000-04:00

Note to self: investigate Google Talk

Oh! It is very wonderful!

2007-02-02T08:14:00.000-05:00

How indenting with a tab key! What's all this now? Emacs Enviroment to Eclipse, or EE2E. Here is some cut-and-paste right off of the main project page:

How to use EE2E

Push a TAB key!
Then, it will indent!!
This is the most important function of EE2E.

Click the tab (ok, here) to understand how very wonderful indenting with a tab key!

Or something like that.

Ruby Rant

2007-01-30T19:52:00.000-05:00

I haven't gotten a really good rant on for a while, but I can still recognize a good one when I see one:

ie_hack: Internet Explorer is the worst piece of crap to have ever been written, with the possible exception of Windows itself. Since IE is unable to parse proper XML, we have to provide a hack to generate XML that IE’s limited abilities can handle. This hack inserts a space before the /> on empty tags. Defaults to false.

Chortle.