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Recent Posts

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726
General Software Discussion / Re: preparing for a phone interview: best books on algorithms/programming practices?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 01:04 PM »
Oh, I never checked his site, and I have code complete

A great book on the craft and practice of programming is "the pragmatic programmer" - I have given that one a few times to people who had "migrated" into coding from some other beginnings, as it is very down to earth and introduces a lot of things without the academic weight. It creates a lot of "aha!" moments.

But I wouldnt who does pointed technical over the phone in a first interview is not being fair (unless the position is first line tech support!)... I would tend to ask more circumstancial questions that show to me that the person knows what they are talking about, so make them talk about projects or things like "what is the coolest thing you have done <insert language or technology here>" or "what is your pet peeve" or "why would you pick X / why would you NOT pick X" etc.

Codinghorror is cool, we get a laugh out of it quite regularly in the office  :P
727
General Software Discussion / Re: preparing for a phone interview: best books on algorithms/programming practices?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 10:04 AM »
the oberon pdf is worth skimming through for a nice intro to each of the techniques - and if you ever learned pascal, well, this is in the family
728
Living Room / Re: Looking for web based or book based help on Windows / Linux servers
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 09:54 AM »
I have 2 great books to help people pick up linux/unix quickly

Unix for the Impatient
and
UNIX System Administration Handbook (or its sibling Linux Administration Handbook)

They are accessible and cover a lot of things in a practical, useful way
(didnt want to link to any one store so borrowed pics from amazon instead)

When it comes to servers / security I have a few more, will check my librarything inventory and post an update
729
General Software Discussion / Re: Spam filtering
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 04:29 AM »
Popfile needs about 10 minutes set up and then training, which can be time consuming

I must say that blue squirrel "spam sleuth" worked pretty well out of the box although it worked better with more features tweaked, the config took a bit of time when adding sites and word filters. I works in layers, first using a combination of whitelists, blacklists, your address book, word filter rules (a lot of them come with it), character & structure rules, plus a bayesian training option (train on existing pots of email after about a week). What it does is use some of the cheap options to do a basic filtering, then anything in the "not sure" middle it can apply further tests, or do challenge response. It can also automatically complain for spam, but i turned that off.
730
Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com Yearly Fundraiser for 2007 - Advice Requested Please
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 02:53 AM »
I want a "I support DonationCoder" button for my website :D
731
General Software Discussion / Re: preparing for a phone interview: best books on algorithms/programming practices?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 02:51 AM »
Depends on the languages you know

I have "algorithms in perl" and its actually more about perl than algorithms so only if you know perl. Not found a decent java one ever.

I had a great book about algorithms in C or C++ which I used to learn even though I barely knew C - but I cannot for the life of me remember which it was - should go through covers at amazon later ;)

a couple refs I have bookmarked

http://www.oberon.et....ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf  (ok, i am from that university - you probably dont know the language but it is clean and procedural...  almost like pseudocode. The quick descriptions are math-ey but clear - he has a very clean thinking)

http://www.softpanor...gorithms/index.shtml - a bit of a mish mash and you could waste hours which you probably dont have, but if you know what to focus on

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/ - nifty graphics and links to multiple source codes in multiple languages

http://www.nist.gov/dads/ - 3 line definitions, might be good for a last minute cheat while on the phone ;)
732
Living Room / Re: Anyone Getting a Spamalanche Lately?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 29, 2008, 02:32 AM »
its just gone back to normal today for me
733
General Software Discussion / Re: Opera Browser Power-User Mods
« Last post by iphigenie on January 28, 2008, 06:35 PM »
Some Opera tricks I have found useful

1) how to export notes
http://www.dayf.de/w...peraNotes2RSS_Online
(i use notes a lot, both as a way to store info but also as a "quick paste" snippet storage (paste from note  :-* )

2) custom buttons
http://operawiki.info/CustomButtons
http://homepage.hisp...-bu-browser-adv.html

3) http://www.aimwell.o.../Help/Tips/tips.html




734
Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners
« Last post by iphigenie on January 28, 2008, 05:36 PM »
He, I know... If you are super happy to have gotten one or especially several pieces of software... donate a tad extra back to the site or your favorite person on it... 

especially if you missed the fundraiser :)
735
General Software Discussion / Re: Spam filtering
« Last post by iphigenie on January 28, 2008, 05:33 PM »
On the free/open source side I used popfile and was always impressed by its abilty to not only spot spam, but also learn the difference between private, work and commercial emails for prefiltering. I also had trouble at some point getting it to work on a new machine.

So I switched to the "paid" side I used the blue squirrel "spam sleuth" tool for a while, and that combined a lot of different approaches (multiple filters, bayesian, challenge response etc.) in a nice package, but it was a bit high maintenance to manage. (another one i almost bought was spameater, again quite a good mix of methods)

Now I am on imap so I just use what comes with the service
736
Living Room / Re: Anyone Getting a Spamalanche Lately?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 28, 2008, 04:03 AM »
I have noticed that - my spam folder in fastmail has just gone from 100 or so a day to 700 a day.
737
Official Announcements / Re: January 2008 Software Drawing Winners
« Last post by iphigenie on January 27, 2008, 10:21 AM »
That's a lot of very happy people  :Thmbsup:

I would suspect that the only reason some people won more than one is that there were not that many entrants for all the categories, and hey, in the end that is only fair.

I only picked I think 5 that I wanted to win, I could have picked more but I know I am a software addict so I watch myself... I made sure to only list things that I actually knew I would use (partly because I dont want to regret it when i see the giveaways for the next few months...) so I am super happy I won one of them   :-*
738
Living Room / Re: What's Your Favorite Smilie?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 26, 2008, 08:10 AM »
on a forum I manage i spent a stupid amount of time finding smileys, i have a list of about 70 which are great occasional smileys.


I found those in publicly shared smiley repositories so they should all, to my knowledge, be ok to use

my favorite:

 <img src="http://phoenix-guild...ys/default/llama.gif"/>

(although nosh's first choice is one i like a lot, and use a lot)

lemme see if i can figure out how to post a link

http://www.phoenix-g...dex.php?topic=5827.0

(this is also smf so i can package them and send them if someone wants them)
739
Living Room / Re: POWDER - A Roguelike RPG
« Last post by iphigenie on January 21, 2008, 06:24 AM »
This post just got me on a whole nostalgia trip across about 20 sites about roguelikes and made me download about 5 or 6.
You wasted my Saturday  :Thmbsup:
740
Living Room / Re: What should I do with my audio CDs?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 04:48 AM »
I ripped most of my cds and stored them in the basement in boxes.

I always thought that CDs look quite ugly (DVDs are even worse) and CD racks are often awful, so as soon as I could afford the time and storage space I did it.
741
General Software Discussion / Re: Easy photo editor
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 01:27 AM »
to qualify what i say, it is actually acdsee 8/9 which had a very clever mini editor. The forums tell me that 10 doesnt fare so well. I dont know since I have acdsee 9 and acdsee pro 2 (totally different editor)

I have about 6 full blown graphics programs on my machine, and I have used a lot more, and yet the first time I tried the editor you get when you double click on an image in acdsee, cause I was lazy and just needed to tweak contrast, I was very impressed by the way they were doing it, and the quality of the results.
742
General Software Discussion / Re: What's the best program for cooking and recipe management?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 01:16 AM »
A relatively unexplored category!  :) I'm thinking a must-have feature for a software like this would be to connect to an online repository and contribute or download specific recipes to the local database with ability to modify it further.
-nosh (January 17, 2008, 02:31 AM)
That would be incredibly useful! There are so many great foodblogs out there but no really easy way to do advanced searches across many of them. I get hungry just by thinking about how much more good food I could've eaten with such a tool at hand!  ;D
-Nod5 (January 17, 2008, 11:37 AM)

It is one of my projects that always gets put off to do a website app which is a recipe organiser, sharing etc.

The bit I had started on was a recipe "scanner" that would try to recognise patterns. This is so a recipe could then be automatically put in a structure when being stored, and then it can be displayed in a choice of languages or styles. This is all I ever started but maybe, one day...
743
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Coollector 2.0: freeware for movie lovers
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 01:11 AM »
I think the use of affiliate deals is a great way to finance a tool like that  :Thmbsup:
744
Living Room / Re: ASUS eee PC - Any owner?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 01:08 AM »
one of my web designers bought it with windows on it and was quite amazed with it. I thought the active screen was quite small compared to the size of the case, but then for the price...

It seems a tad small for a screen for it, but I was pondering how it would do as a home music player (with an usb drive for the music files) and was waiting for him to bring it back so we could try
745
Living Room / Re: Article: The Economics of Open Source Donations
« Last post by iphigenie on January 18, 2008, 01:04 AM »
Trying to think about it, I dont think I have ever donated to an open source project. Unless you count buying official CDs straight from the freebsd guys. Or time submitting bug information.  :huh:

I have donated to freeware authors, I have donated to websites I find worthy, but I dont think I have ever donated to open source.

But then the only open source stuff I use are the large, old, server-ey projects which have funding from large corporate sponsors or a company behind it extracting money from support contracts.

Ah yes, there was postfix! I did donate a tad to that.

But still, I should think about the few open source small projects I still use and support them a little. After all I complain enough most open source lack polish because volunteer programmers hate the parts of the job which are usability and tying loose ends etc. So supporting the few I use which are polished (winmerge, peazip...) is a good idea. And I should get the company to donate/buy support for some they use, perhaps.

746
General Software Discussion / Re: Best password manager?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 16, 2008, 04:39 AM »
As a form auto-filler, roboform is great. I remember using it when we were testing our websites a lot - it would fill the checkout form on an unknown (to it) website without a hitch and that would save a lot of hassle.

I dont remember being impressed by it as a password manager, so I wonder when so many people rave about it. Does it have more features as a password manager than i noticed?
747
Living Room / Re: Browser Zoom Functionality...
« Last post by iphigenie on January 16, 2008, 03:55 AM »
it's very handy when on a small screen, such as your typical projector
748
Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Coollector 2.0: freeware for movie lovers
« Last post by iphigenie on January 16, 2008, 03:28 AM »
Quick question: i see it can track movies you own, want to buy etc.

Can you also track movies you have rented/seen without polluting your collection (i.e. it is easy to make the difference between owned, wanted and "just" seen)?

So few book/film cataloguing tools support anything like this, if yours does I'll be downloading it tonight and will rave about it for weeks :)
749
General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager
« Last post by iphigenie on January 16, 2008, 03:11 AM »
I tried the UP edition and it was just way too much for me - it has everything and the kitchen sink!- I spent about 2 hours removing stuff (especially stuff that seemed to be in czech?) then decided I was too much of a "no clutter" person. I love the idea of everything integrated (that is "low clutter") but when you have to scroll 2 screens on the "network connections" page to find your drives below all the "stuff" then that is clutter.

I think it was a major shame that the "network connections" is the place where all extensions can be added - it does create clutter and does not allow for much orgaisation. Almost everything ends in there and you end up removing useful things just because they are in the way too often - they are useful now and then but they push the stuff you use every day down the list and that is a pain. This is of course a TC design decision, not TCUP's fault.

I did like the way certain things were integrated, a lot, but too many things were integrated and it was not easy enough to remove them. So I noted down the programs I liked best and will try to integrate them myself, looking at the code etc.

It did remind me how customisable total commander is, although it also brought another point to me: that i havent bothered to learn any software extension syntax in ages. Not even when I have niggles and "i wish"-es which I am sure some scripting in some of the software I own could help. The problem is, which one. There are so many, they all claim to be wonderfully extensible and configurable (and yet experience tells me most will fall short), they all have a very clumsy "language" (why does almost every developer think he can create a "language"?)

Every tool nowadays seems to come with its extension syntax, your file manager, your editor, your email program, your browser, your utilities, your games etc etc etc. As a result, in the end, I end up not trying to figure out a single one - too many, too different, and which to choose, usefulness too uncertain. So in the end I bother to learn none. Not total commander extensions, not ahk, not the modified javascript in wirekeys etc etc etc.

And the same seems to go with frameworks and new languages. I tend to shrug them off and think "if it is still here in 2 years maybe i'll pay attention". Maybe it is that so much that gets raved about turns out to be not-much-new when looked at closely. I'm turning into a cynical old coder, pretty soon I'll be quirping "LISP had this already in the 60s" anytime someone mentions something new (although first I should really properly learn and understand lisp... on my todo list since... well... not the 60s but it feels forever anyway)

Oops, this is turning into a rant and doesnt belong here. Maybe I'll post a rant in a new thread later  :-\

Anyway I am very grateful to TCUP for refreshing my memory as to how to fix/modify my total commander, and making me discover aimp2  :Thmbsup:
750
Living Room / Re: is someone stealing my bandwidth?
« Last post by iphigenie on January 15, 2008, 05:14 PM »
I think the chances of someone sitting in a car outside my house using my bandwidth to cause criminal harm is rather low, especially in our day and age where there are so many free wifi networks everywhere.

I also had to chuckle when this appeared in my feedreader today. This is a great security blog, and here's the post of the day...

http://www.schneier....my_open_wireles.html

He's even making me consider removing the limitations I have  ;)
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