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Recent Posts

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151
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany
« Last post by housetier on January 13, 2011, 07:30 AM »
Just to give an update:

Baby Cody is *still* at the tailor's to get his vest made... I am a little disappointed it takes that long. He has good company though: the tailor has two cuddly und curious cats at home, so he won't be lonely.

I wish, however, we could get him on (under?) the quadrocopter already to fligh about c-base!

I'll update as soon as I see him again.
152
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs
« Last post by housetier on January 13, 2011, 07:27 AM »
Very good, I'll try and come up with a t-shirt design. This makes everything much easier :)

I am sure it'll include Cody and "donationcoder" somewhere, and I don't think I can help but include "c-base" somewhere too. Maybe designing this as an community effort on c-base side will raise awareness.

153
N.A.N.Y. 2011 / Re: NANY MUGs
« Last post by housetier on January 06, 2011, 01:25 PM »
I have an offer to make as well: I want to make and send a t-shirt to every NANY paticipant. mouser said it'll be too expensive, but I thought about grouping them by country and have someone in that country take care of further delivery.

This will take a while to organize...

The design of the shirts is also not done yet. To keep production effort minimal only rather simple designs are acceptable: I will have to cut the designs in foil, put it on the shirt and iron it for fixation. This has to be repeated for every shirt and color. Anyway I am willing to handle productions and the first round of distribution.

So how about we start a new thread to gather all the needed information: how many shirts of which size to send where. That thread would also be the place to check all the details I have overlooked and to answer questions and raise concerns.

The shirts will be free, and I hope to be able to cover most of the shipping expenses with donationcredits.
154
Developer's Corner / Programming Contest in German Freezine
« Last post by housetier on December 13, 2010, 05:06 AM »
I know y'all are busy with NANY but there is a programming contest in a free German online magazine, to which I want to draw your attention.

freiesmagazin.png

They manage to make a new issue each month using free software such as LateX. I wish I had more time to take part in this; but maybe some of you guys want to take a shot at it - there is win to be had!

Here are the German instructions, but despite being a German magazine they also provide English instructions.


I know 6 days is kinda short, but you guys might also be kinda smart ;)
155
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany
« Last post by housetier on December 02, 2010, 05:13 PM »
After talking about each other's favorite authors and genres I showed him my desk. Alas, I shouldn't have!

No sooner did he see my technical books that he immediately started arranging them all neatly, mumbling about "what a mess" and the like:

cleaning-up.jpg


Because the journey was so long and stressful, and because he already had to do so much work shortly after being freed he relaxed a little on my couch.

relaxing.jpg

I will take him to work tomorrow and show him snowy Berlin on the way. On the weekend we will visit c-base. And I hope I can arrange a helicopter flight or a jet plane flight for Baby Cody. And I have a suprise for him as well, but I won't tell yet! ;)
156
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany
« Last post by housetier on December 02, 2010, 05:06 PM »
Since Baby Cody isn't shy (very much unlike me) he introduced himself and proudly presented himself:

proud-display.jpg


I barely had time to take this snapshot before I saw my library and immediately flew over to inspect what I have there. It's good to see he has a similar taste ;)

lotsa-books.jpg
157
Adventures of Baby Cody / Baby Cody arrives in Berlin, Germany
« Last post by housetier on December 02, 2010, 04:57 PM »
Cody has arrived!

At least that's who I assume to be in the package, because customs was kind enough to show what's inside:

another-bird.jpg


Baby Cody was VERY eager to finally get out, after having endured such a long time in the envelope, being tossed this way and that, stamped, shipped, lugged, hurled; everybody would try to get out! So he poked through the envelope:

breakout-1.jpg

A little later he was almost free:

breakout-2.jpg
158
Living Room / Re: Anyone want TheFedsAreWatching.us?
« Last post by housetier on November 29, 2010, 02:53 PM »
I want it!
159
General Software Discussion / Re: Small Linux kernal patch = big improvement in desktop experience
« Last post by housetier on November 28, 2010, 03:37 AM »
I wish I knew what the alternate method does. Afaic, it doesn't matter which method I try: they both do things I do not fully understand, and both aren't explained anywhere.

I think this is beyond my level hack-fu ;)
160
General Software Discussion / Re: Small Linux kernal patch = big improvement in desktop experience
« Last post by housetier on November 22, 2010, 02:20 PM »
I'll wait for the kernel patch because I did not understand what this alternative does and I didn't have the attention span to find out.

Until then I'll live with mediocre desktop performance :)
161
Developer's Corner / Re: Downloading Eclipse... ...noisufnoC
« Last post by housetier on November 16, 2010, 02:27 PM »
Installing netbeans is much much simpler than installing eclipse though. I have never had any problems.
162
Developer's Corner / Re: Downloading Eclipse... ...noisufnoC
« Last post by housetier on November 14, 2010, 06:54 AM »
I am also very confused by all these options.

They say eclipse is a framework upon which applications can be built. So it's like a "transportation vehicle" with varying characteristics: motorbike, car, pick-up truck, and so on.

You need to know what you need, to get what you want or so... I think eclipse.org could do a better job of presenting their products.

For PHP development I have turned away from eclipse and towards the commercial version of PhpStorm from jetbrains. At work we use both eclipse and netbeans, and more and more collegues are dumping eclipse in favor of netbeans (especially after that bloody helios release).

Back in the olden days when I earned my money with Java programming, I had a superb IDE called Together from TogetherSoft. It was later bought by Borland and incorporated into their JBuilder, which by now is also built on top of eclipse I believe. Together was the best IDE I have ever encountered, even after this many years I haven't seen anything close.

Back to eclipse: You can start with the most basic download, and get all the other components by its plugin feature. But sometimes (often?) it is not really clear what a component does, even after reading its description.
163
DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for November 2nd, 2010 - "MegaLetter"
« Last post by housetier on November 11, 2010, 01:47 PM »
Wow finally I got around to reading the newsletter. Thanks for all the work.

Thanks to all you guys making DC the most pleasant part of the internet.
164
Living Room / Re: The Internet by 2020?
« Last post by housetier on November 11, 2010, 12:59 PM »
By 2020 we will have an internet controlled by police and corporations. Maybe by 2050 we will have control back in our hands, or not, but "they" won't have control either because it will have become too big to handle.
165
The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time
« Last post by housetier on November 11, 2010, 12:41 PM »
When I need to be more productive I sleep more and work less. Of course this only works because my direct supervisor thinks alike :)

For me productivity is not only about Getting Things Done as in writing lines of code but also about the (subjective) quality of the work: is it nicely formatted, is the in-code documentation adequate, did I really remove all debug and test code? I spend a great deal of my working hours formatting code and writing documentation. I even do this for code from my colleagues. However, I still get features implemented myself :) It's not like am just mopping up after the others.

Our management once tried Fear Driven Development as a means to improve performance. For about a day: by then almost all developers had threatened to quit. Now we have several buffers between management and us; in turn we can work quietly and concentrated. So far we have met any deadline although we loathe them. The more "they" let us, the better (read more productive) we become.

Which brings me to the next topic: I think it is so very much easier to increase productivity by building a good team than by any other means. All other means tend to wear off after some time and the increase in productivity vanishes.

In short, I don't want to be productive, I just want to do good work :)
166
Living Room / Re: Email Security
« Last post by housetier on November 11, 2010, 12:24 PM »
I do not trust firefox to keep my sensitive information secure so I told to never store passwords or even form data. (I also disabled history for the address bar.)

Instead I use a command line tool that can put username and password into my clipboard. So I go to a website wher eI have to login; if I don't know the password I turn to my password safe and have put the pass into the clipboard. It watches the clipboard as well, so as soon as I have pasted the passwod into the form (or somewhere else) it erases the memory.

This is a complicated process, but it is the only one I find security acceptable. The password safe itself is strongly encrypted, even when it is loaded into memory. Only for a short time is the password in cleartext, and there is no way to avoid that.

When I am certain that no one else can use a program I also let the program store credentials, but only if I am certain is uses good encryption for this data.

Security is a process, so at any given time I might find it necessary to use a different password safe or never have any program store credentials. Security is also a lot about the user's mindset: you should be careful and aware, but never paranoid.

There is no 100% security, there is only the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to get to your data. Hence you cannot buy "Security" like a remedy for headaches. Personally I believe just by being more aware you can greatly decrease the risk to losing control over your data.

Oh yeah, like it was mentioned in the OP, I never never never use the same password twice. Not even for the smallest most unimportant throw-away account. There might be good reasons to reuse passwords, but they are most likely bad reasons. And doing something (or not doing something) for a bad reason is not being careful.

OK back to topic: If an email service does not provide TLS I do not use it.
167
Living Room / Re: Anyone have any experiences (good or bad) with Wireless USB?
« Last post by housetier on November 11, 2010, 12:07 PM »
I have a wireless mouse with a super tiny usb-thingie to go into the computer. Does that count as wireless usb?

If so, the experience has been perfect. I got exactly what I expected: plugin the usb-thingie, put batteries in mouse, turn on mouse, and it works.

If not, sorry for needlessly reanimating this thread ;)
168
General Software Discussion / Re: 25 Ubuntu tips for beginners
« Last post by housetier on November 10, 2010, 12:56 PM »
And I am here for the more advanced stuff.
169
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: Request for BC - January 2011
« Last post by housetier on November 09, 2010, 11:49 AM »
Since he is on his way to my place atm, I will try to send him your way in time :)

170
Developer's Corner / Re: Diff before commit
« Last post by housetier on November 04, 2010, 11:34 AM »
I always diff every single file before commiting. I don't make exceptions, I have caught many mistakes this way.

Since I also commit often, the changesets are small so it is easily and quickly done.

I find it difficult to believe for someone to know of all the changes that were made. I know that not double-checking will lead to mistakes: our company hired subcontractors and we regularly had to remove their debug statements and such from the code (only if we saw them).

In our team we do several things:
  • branch early
  • branch often
  • commit early
  • commit often
  • push early
  • push often

Of course before you can push you have to pull, but our git server will remind us :)

I was praised for the quality my work and got a raise recently. I will continue to double check every change, every file. "diff" can save you a lot of trouble!
171
Adventures of Baby Cody / Re: A Map of where Baby Cody Visits?
« Last post by housetier on October 16, 2010, 06:59 AM »
I hope I can put a pin in Germany on the map soon. I just asked Josh to send Baby Cody over. I want to show him the Berliner Underground and some of the hacker scene here :)
172
Developer's Corner / Re: Challenge: algorithm for counting progressively/exponentially
« Last post by housetier on September 16, 2010, 02:15 PM »
Excellent, that gives me an idea for the first of the challenge.

Thank you very much!  :-*
173
Developer's Corner / Challenge: algorithm for counting progressively/exponentially
« Last post by housetier on September 16, 2010, 01:56 PM »
I have tasked myself with writing a function that will count up to a number in a dynamic fashion, that means it'll start with large steps that become smaller and smaller as the counter reaches the target. So while at first it would start counting in the thousands, at the end it would only increment using 1.

However, it seems I have lost all mathematical ability since leaving school. I cannot for the time of my life come up with the algorithm! There is only half-ideas and flashes, but nothing like "start like so, then for every iteration check this and that, calculate the increment by whatever and increment"; I can design and implement complex applications, but I cannot see this one algorithm.

When plotting the counter value it should look similar to this image (taken from a wikipedia article about Sigmoid functionsw), more precisely like the upper right quadrant: it increases steeply at first and then flattens ever more.

So here goes the challenge:

Can anyone tell or show me the algorithm (easy, I think) and can anybody explain this algorithm to me, maybe step by step.
174
Living Room / Re: Forum registration explosion
« Last post by housetier on September 14, 2010, 01:15 PM »
These accounts might lie dormant for a while before they start posting spam content. Maybe they even ask questions before to gain reputation.

In extreme cases they might produce posts that will steal other users' credentials if not filtered properly by the forum software.

I assume spam until proven otherwise.
175
Living Room / Re: What are your favorite RSS Feeds?
« Last post by housetier on September 01, 2010, 01:17 PM »
These are a few of what I once tagged as 'hack' in my feedreader:


I cannot say how on-topic they are, or even if they are still active...
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