The Caffeinated Penguin

musings of a crackpot hacker

WordPress

| March 1, 2009

So, I've been redoing this site, (work in progress here) and have become enamored with WordPress. Despite being written in PHP, there's a lot of really nifty features to it, especially when it comes to uploading pictures and such. Therefore, in addition to redoing my site in WordPress, I will also be moving this blog [...]

Haiku

| February 27, 2009

Haiku OS Based on BeOS Now seems very retro.

Windows 7 Beta

| February 27, 2009

Now, I will grant you that I was running it in a VM, but: SLOOOOOOWWWWWWW The base install is 9gb, but aside from a DVD burning app and some games, I can’t figure out what is using up all the space.

Bill Gates Rant

| February 24, 2009

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp Heh. apt-get install kino Done.

Codey things

| February 23, 2009

Building desktop apps with JavaScript and GTK bindings. Neat idea, but JS? Eww. Stab me in the eye, why don't you. Vala – C#-ish syntax which compiles down to native code for the GTK+ widget set. (Article). You lose the cross-platform-ness of .NET, but get the performance and maturity of the GTK+ widget set. It's [...]

NEIN! Bad programmer!

| February 23, 2009

It's folks with “good ideas” like this which is why there is so much bad code out there. (1) Keep youre[sic] code on the same level of indentation as much as possible. Indenting is cheap, easy and helps you discern what code is in what blocks. Additionally, any decent modern editor will automatically indent for [...]

You've got to be f-ing kidding me.

| February 22, 2009

Bill to prohibit cursing in public. Slightly absurd.

Dollhouse

| February 22, 2009

So, a show about meat puppets is interesting and all, but if this gets more episodes than Firefly, I'm going to be pissed. It's a good show and worth watching, but I like the first couple episodes of Firefly better so far. I do like the “will be back in 60 seconds”, “will be back [...]

Customer service – ur doin it right

| February 22, 2009

I know that folks (including myself) like to complain about poor customer service and bad products. However, I'd like to turn that around, and talk about some good companies and good products. First, I'm a bit of a battery and flashlight whore, and I've ordered a lot from BatteryJunction, and not had a problem until [...]

Singularity

| February 22, 2009

I recently finished the podiobook of Singularity. The story, overall, is very good. I like the science and political intrigue aspects of it, and while someone with more physics than I would likely find fault with the science, it worked for me. This is likely the result of him actually talking with physicists about the [...]