https://definingterms.com/ Recent content on Defining Terms Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sat, 28 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0500 https://definingterms.com/2013/08/03/pivotal-tracker-git-hook/ Sat, 03 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2013/08/03/pivotal-tracker-git-hook/ At work we use Pivotal Tracker to manage some of our projects and we like to use the Post-Commit Hook Integration. Basically, if you put the Pivotal Tracker story number in your commit message, it will associate the commit with the story. It’s a nice feature that makes it easy to tie your code changes to features. The problem is that I often forget to include the story number in my commit message. https://definingterms.com/2013/03/23/pitfalls-of-ruby-mixins/ Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2013/03/23/pitfalls-of-ruby-mixins/ Multiple Inheritance Mixins are Ruby’s way of dealing with the multiple inheritance problem. If inheritance expresses an is-a relationship, the problem occurs when a class is more than one thing. For example, it’s easy to express that an Employee is a Person by making the Employee class inherit from the Person class. But what if Employees are also EmailReporters, who can email their status to their manager? How do you express that? https://definingterms.com/2009/11/25/windows-shell-bug/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/11/25/windows-shell-bug/ At work, we build one of our projects with Makefiles. In one of these Makefiles, we have this line: IF NOT EXIST "$(OUTDIR)" mkdir "$(OUTDIR)" This should create the output directory if it doesn’t exist. The line would hang the build on my development box from time to time, so I decided to track down what the problem was. It turns out, IF NOT EXIST will sometimes hang if there are quotes around the filepath, at least on Windows XP. https://definingterms.com/2009/08/19/engineyard-sha-1-competition/ Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/08/19/engineyard-sha-1-competition/ A few weeks ago, EngineYard held a programming competition. Basically, the contest was to see who could get a SHA-1 hash closest to a given hash. I thought it might be fun to see how well I could do with a minimal implementation, so I coded up something in C. My goal was not to write the most efficient program possible, but to see what results I could get from a reasonable design and no major optimizations. https://definingterms.com/2009/08/18/c-the-ternary-operator-and-mono/ Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/08/18/c-the-ternary-operator-and-mono/ The Quiz One of my coworkers recently sent out this C# programming quiz: static void Main(string[] args) { object x = null; object y = (short)4; x = (y is System.Int32) ? (System.Int32)y : (System.Int16)y; Console.WriteLine(x.GetType()); } What is printed out? Try it. Explain why you were wrong. If you run the code, you get this output: System.Int32 The code snippet as it stands doesn’t make it clear exactly where the unexpected behavior is. https://definingterms.com/2009/04/21/moving-from-apache-to-nginx/ Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/04/21/moving-from-apache-to-nginx/ I’ve been having problems with too much memory usage on the 256 slice I use to serve my web pages. I was using Apache and mod_php, and the Apache processes were growing large enough that I could only have 4 of them running at once, which killed any hope of decent concurrency. I decided to switch to using PHP with FastCGI and after some research decided to go with nginx. The switch has now been made and page generation is faster, the server can handle greater concurrency, and memory usage is under control. https://definingterms.com/2009/04/11/secure-passwords-not-allowed/ Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/04/11/secure-passwords-not-allowed/ For quite a while now, I’ve been using a tiered password system for all of the websites where I have accounts. I knew this was bad practice, but it was easy. Recently there have been a number of stories about websites’ databases being leaked, which made me seriously consider doing something better. Password managers have never impressed me much, both because of the security issues of storing all of your passwords in a central location and the danger of losing the database and not being able to reconstruct it. https://definingterms.com/2009/04/02/dinosaur-remix/ Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2009/04/02/dinosaur-remix/ I like Dinosaur Comics. Since the drawings and panels are the same in every comic, I thought of the idea of trying to mix and match panels from different comics to see what comes out. It turns out, Ryan North had already done something similar, but I decided to implement my idea anyway. Here’s the result: Dinosaur Remix Dinosaur Remix lets you randomly mix together panels, but also lock in certain panels to make a comic you like. https://definingterms.com/2008/10/03/translation-hacks/ Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/10/03/translation-hacks/ Not so long ago, the only help available when translating text from one language to another was a dictionary and a grammar book. That’s how it was when I started learning German. Now, there are a number of tools online to help you in your bilingual quest, but you have to be clever to get the most use out of them. My examples will be in German, but these techniques can be applied to most languages that have a strong online presence. https://definingterms.com/2008/03/31/simple-canvas-example/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/03/31/simple-canvas-example/ Here is a simple example of drawing pixels (rather than paths) to a canvas element with JavaScript. The algorithm goes left to right and draws across the canvas, and for each pixel column draws two blue pixels, one for the top half of the circle and one for the bottom half. Then, because this results in sparse drawing for the far left and right edges of the circle, it does another pass from top to bottom, doing the same thing with red pixels. https://definingterms.com/2008/03/25/rt-update/ Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/03/25/rt-update/ I wrote a few weeks ago about how Rotten Tomatoes did a redesign of their site that broke my primary use case. Since then, they have done an update that makes things a lot better for me, though it’s still not as convenient as the original design. Right now, if you hover over any of the tabs for different groups of ratings, you get a popup that tells you that group’s percentage of positive reviews. https://definingterms.com/2008/02/22/windows-live-skydrive/ Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/02/22/windows-live-skydrive/ I haven’t really gotten into the whole online backup thing. I’m not sure I want to spend a week uploading my files on my cable Internet connection, only to depend on some company keeping my files safe and private. But, yesterday it was announced that Microsoft’s new online backup/file sharing service has come out of beta. It’s free and all you need is a Windows LiveID. I have one of those, so I thought I’d take a minute to try it out. https://definingterms.com/2008/01/29/night-watch/ Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/01/29/night-watch/ I saw Night Watch a few days ago. The film wasn’t bad; it had great cinematography and decent effects. Sadly, the story was a dim shadow of the one in the book, but I suppose that’s to be expected. The most interesting part of the movie, for me, was the subtitling. I watched the DVD with the Russian audio and English subtitles. The subtitles were beautiful, dynamic, and surprising. The font was nice to look at and easy to read, even on my 27” SDTV. https://definingterms.com/2008/01/20/rotten-tomatoes-redesign/ Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/01/20/rotten-tomatoes-redesign/ Rotten Tomatoes recently did a site redesign. It looks a lot shinier, but it broke my primary use case. Here’s what I used to do when I went to the page for a particular movie: Read the fresh percentage for All Critics. Read the fresh percentage for the Top Critics. Compare the two percentages. Why do I use RT in this way? Because I have found that if the All Critics percentage is fairly high (over 75%) and the Top Critics percentage is significantly higher (at least 7 or 8%), then I will very likely enjoy the movie. https://definingterms.com/2008/01/16/maximize-zoom-and-the-art-of-window-management/ Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2008/01/16/maximize-zoom-and-the-art-of-window-management/ A while back, Jeff Atwood wrote about the “maximize” behavior in Windows and Mac OS. The subject: There’s a button on the top-right of each window in Microsoft Windows that resizes the window to fill the screen. There’s a green button on the top-left of each window in Mac OS with a + on it, that Windows users often think will cause the window to fill the screen, but it actually resizes the window to its “best size”. https://definingterms.com/2007/04/25/penguicon-reading-list/ Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2007/04/25/penguicon-reading-list/ Many of the Penguicon panelists referenced extra reading materials over the weekend. I wrote many of them down, and I hope to read what I can. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find enough time to read these days, but I hope to get better at that. Here’s the list, broken down by the panel or presentation where they were mentioned: Life Extension: Good News, Bad News, Weird News - Christine Peterson RealAge. https://definingterms.com/2007/03/05/code-poem-at-the-astronaut-collective/ Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2007/03/05/code-poem-at-the-astronaut-collective/ Last week, for Austronaut Collective 12, someone (not I) submitted a code poem. It was written in Python and I think it’s pretty cool. Currently the indentation is not being preserved on the web page, and since Python is whitespace sensitive this breaks the poem. But I’ve contacted Cooper, the guy who runs the Astronaut Collective, so hopefully it’ll get updated soon with proper whitespace. Update: Since the poem layout hasn’t been corrected on the Astronaut Collective site, I’ve posted it here: impulse. https://definingterms.com/2007/02/13/pictures-of-ann-arbor/ Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2007/02/13/pictures-of-ann-arbor/ Last May I walked around downtown Ann Arbor with Micah and Olivia for an afternoon and took pictures of many of the businesses and landmarks. Today, I finally uploaded them to ArborWiki. With about 45 pictures, I think I just about doubled the number of images on the site. Example articles: Nickels Arcade Jimmy John’s State Theater https://definingterms.com/2007/01/03/code-poetry/ Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2007/01/03/code-poetry/ A few months ago I was at a party and ran into the guy who runs the Astronaut Collective. Caroline Miller was also there (work) and we started having a conversation about code poetry. Unfortunately, I don’t think they really got it. Neither of them are programmers and they were more familiar with digital poetry like Puppy Flowers and UBU WEB, so I don’t think they understood the difference between code poetry and digital poetry. https://definingterms.com/2006/01/22/visual-studio-and-openafs/ Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2006/01/22/visual-studio-and-openafs/ Since I’m learning C# for work, I decided to install the Visual Studio .NET 2003 on my home computer, which I got for free from the U of M MSDN subscription. Unfortunately I struggled for several hours trying to get it to work. The setup would make it through the prerequisites, then at the screen that said “Setup is loading installation components. This may take a minute or two.” the progress bar would make it all the way to the right, the window would lose focus, and it would just hang. https://definingterms.com/2005/02/24/eula-cracking/ Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2005/02/24/eula-cracking/ Today I was looking around on Fravia’s excellent site and I came across an interesting page. The true purpose of this page is to describe how to rid the Opera web browser of advertisements. However, the really interesting thing is the idea of cracking the EULA before you agree to it. The writer suggests renaming the “I Agree” button to “No Thanks.” Then, you can click that you don’t agree to the EULA, but are still able to install. https://definingterms.com/2004/12/08/db-mail/ Wed, 08 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2004/12/08/db-mail/ Today I realized that I use my email accounts as databases. Essentially, I store large amounts of important information in my email Inbox and Sent folders, and when I want those pieces of information, I search my email. For example, if someone emails me directions to a meeting place, I won’t take those directions and put them in some other location for future reference, I will simply look up the email (and possibly print it) when I need the directions. https://definingterms.com/2004/12/03/google-come-lately/ Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2004/12/03/google-come-lately/ I knew that there were precedents to Google Desktop (notably the cool Beagle Project from the Ximian guys, among others), but I didn’t know that there were stable, released apps that did the same thing years earlier. Today I came across an O’Reilly Network article that talks about ZOË, a program that indexes your email for you, and lets you search it. Get this: it runs a web server and search interaction happens with web pages. https://definingterms.com/2004/10/20/tiny-fun/ Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2004/10/20/tiny-fun/ While Googling for info on TinyURL, I found a fun page that arbitrarily selects a TinyURL link and displays it. Check out what people are linking to! https://definingterms.com/2004/10/11/mat/ Mon, 11 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2004/10/11/mat/ After wearing grooves into my last desk, I decided I should get a mouse pad. Secretly, I also hoped it would make me a Counter-Strike god, of course. So, I went to Newegg and checked out their selection. I knew I wanted a large one, since I’ve had problems with running off the edge while playing games before, so I went for one of the cheapest big ones that didn’t have some gamer‘s name on it. https://definingterms.com/2004/02/09/fox-eats-bird/ Mon, 09 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000 https://definingterms.com/2004/02/09/fox-eats-bird/ The newest version of the Mozilla standalone browser was released today. The browser was formerly known as Firebird, but due to a naming conflict with a certain relational database server it has been renamed Firefox. Along with the new name comes a new logo that I think is pretty cool. Unfortunately, the Firefox window still does not display the correct icon in some operating systems (Windows 98 for one) so you have to add the icon manually.