Published by marco on in Programming
This article was originally published on the Encodo Blogs. Browse on over to see more!
The first publicly available version of the Encodo C# Handbook is ready for download! It covers many aspects of programming with C#, from naming, structural and formatting conventions to best practices for using existing and developing new code.
Here’s the backstory on how and why we decided to write a formal coding handbook.
Here at Encodo, we started working with C# less than a year ago. We... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
When non-Americans can corner an American abroad, they more often than not end up following this line of questioning: “I can understand, in some way, how you guys elected Bush the first time—avoiding, for now, a discussion about what we mean by ‘elected’—but how in the name of the sweet baby Jesus did you guys elect him a second time?”
The short answer is: Americans care about policy issues—just not when they’re actually voting. They’ll be happy to answer poll questions that show concern... [More]
Published by marco on in Miscellaneous
Up and Then Down by Nick Paumgarten (New Yorker) is a well-written look into the world of elevators and the companies that create them. It mixes research with the story of a man who was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. Some interesting tidbits from the article:
The Daily Show did an extremely silly tribute to fallen British soldiers recently, with Jon Oliver reading a list of heroes and Jon Stewart caught completely unawares[1]:
Britain's Fallen Soldiers by John Oliver & John Stewart (Daily Show)
The list of names is extremely silly and transcribed below[2]:
Published by marco on in Miscellaneous
Op-Chart: Making Money Hand Over Fist (New York Times) is another in a long line of really slick, interactive, infographic presentations. Because of the extreme noise on the trading floor, traders use hand signals to indicate buy/sell interest, prices, amounts and status information.
“An oil trader demonstrates the hand signals used on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Text and graphics by Ben Schott, a contributing columnist.”
Published by marco on in Tips & Tricks
These days, all USB drives are plug-and-play with Windows XP: you plug it in, Windows recognizes it and shows it in the Explorer, usually with a drive letter like F, G or H. Sometimes, however, the auto-detection of the drive letter goes awry and the drive doesn’t show up in the Explorer and you’re hard-pressed to access it.[1]
If this has happened to you, you should first verify a few things:
Published by marco on in Quotes
“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. […] The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and... [More]”
Top 5 Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos (Wired) reported on a Theo Jansen, an amazing Dutch sculptor. However, some of their video links aren’t working anymore, so here are some fresher ones below.
Theo Jansen − Animaris Rhinoceros (YouTube) This sculpture weighs two tons and is made of steel and cloth—but a strong wind can push it along, articulating its huge legs in elegant slow-motion.
Kinetic Horse Sculpture (YouTube) This is a kinetic origami, powered by a central motor with a single offset axle moving its four legs. The carefully folded joints coupled with the single... [More]
Published by marco on in Quotes
“And you know what? There is something really evil about taking thousands of the world’s smartest young people and using them to sell online text ads more efficiently. Really. Think of all the really interesting and important things that this pool of brainpower could be addressing.”
The whole post is one of his best—on par with this classic about Hill & Bill aka “the Clintstones”: The big secret meeting, complete waste of time by FSJ (The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs).
Published by marco on in Miscellaneous
Though the article, What Every American Should Know About the Middle East (Daniel Miessler), has already done a decent job of summarizing Arabs, Islam and the Middle East[1], there’s still probably too much text[2], so here’s a summary of the summary[3].
Published by marco on in Quotes
“And I think that you have to cut some slack – and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you – we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“My objective [as a photographer] was not to allow my positive feelings toward [the soldiers] as individuals to cloud the fact that they were prosecuting a genocidal war.”
The author of the article—John Pilger—met Griffiths in Vietnam and continued to work with him through Iraq until Griffiths’ death in March of 2008.
Published by marco on in Sports
Sportswriters Swoon Over DC Ballpark by Dave Zirin (Common Dreams) brings news of the opening of the new baseball park in Washington DC in a deal that moved the Montreal Expos south to the USA. Apparently, the mainstream media coverage was nothing short of effusive—gushing, even—about the new stadium, which was almost wholly financed by taxpayer money. From the article:
“$611 million of tax payer money in a city that has become a ground zero of economic segregation and gentrification. $611 million over majority... [More]”
Published by marco on in Sports
The next Olympics will be in China—everyone who’s anyone knows that by now. Some objected to the selection of China a long time ago, citing human rights violations; some objected to the selection of Russia for the next winter Olympics for similar reasons. None of the objecters seem to understand that the marketing—which emphasizes a wholesome gathering of nations striving for peace through competition—is wholly separate from the business of the Olympics, which emphasizes making money for... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
The timing is poor for linking to this article, Club Gitmo: What it’s really like behind the wire. by Jacob Laksin (Weekly Standard) because it’s reads so much like an April Fool’s joke or an article from the Onion. The tour the writer claims to have received from the base staff sounds nothing like those given to members of the Red Cross or Amnesty International or the UN. He makes Gitmo sound like a pleasant place to spend some time to unwind. Consider this description of the chair on which detainees (read: prisoners) are... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
“Audacia Ray, former sex worker and editor of the sex worker magazine $pread, has pointed out that the public doesn’t even seem to understand what exploitation really means. The woman who did sex work for Spitzer has had her picture and personal history splattered all over the media in an incredibly insulting way. Nobody seems to realize she’s being degraded far more now than she ever was when Spitzer was her client. And she’s not getting any retirement savings out of it, either.”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“Bottom line, if you are so ignorant or confused that you think Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran are training and arming radical Salafi Sunnis to blow up Shiites in Iraq, you really should not be president.”
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
…you don’t talk about policy. Instead, you write long articles defending Obama against “absurd allegations that he has no specific policy initiatives” without mentioning a single one of them yourself. The article The Obama Generation − He’s No Pied Piper by Bethany Woolman (Common Dreams) is a typical, information-free example—packed with adulation, but containing no substance.
“Obama’s presidential campaign is inspiring a new generation of leaders. […] the true genius in the Obama campaign […] is [in] inspiring our... [More]”
Published by marco on in Quotes
“The Economist flatters readers who aren’t quite intelligent enough to realize how shallow it is into thinking that they are more intelligent than they are because they read it.”
Nail. On. The. Head.
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
The word “bailout” sounds so crass; it is to be avoided at all costs. Far better to dress up an announcement of corporate socialism in language the layman will interpret as sound financial planning, to make a statement to imbues on with a feeling that there is nothing to see here—just very knowledgeable people managing the very complex economy to the very best of their abilities to ensure as well as possible for you, the little guy. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like that, but, despite all... [More]
Published by marco on in Miscellaneous
Learning by example in Bush’s America leads to the list in Everything I Know I Learned Since Jan. 20, 2001 by Neal Starkman (Common Dreams). Some examples are cited below.
“Rich people hire everyone else to work for them, making our economy robust.
“Scientists’ opinions are neither better nor worse than anyone else’s.
“The fall of communism is the best evidence that providing everyone in this country with free health care is doomed.”
There are a lot of versions of this, but this one is pretty neutral and to-the-point.
Here’s a neat (rhyming) poem for those learning English (or think they already know everything they need to know), found on I thought I had it ruff, er rough! by David Bogner (Treppenwitz)[1]
“I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh* and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?“Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead -
For... [More]”
This is a cool presentation of English accents. I can verify most of the American ones (I guessed the state before she said it), and the British/Irish/Oceanian ones sounded about right too. It’s about two and half minutes long.
21 Accents by Amy Walker (YouTube)
The Sarah Silverman & Matt Damon Sitting in a Tree… (earthli News) video soared to over 8 million views on YouTube. Kimmel, Silverman’s boyfriend has responded with a video of his own.
Jimmy Kimmel is F@cking Ben Affleck Response to Matt & Sarah (YouTube)
It features Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, Macy Gray, Robin Williams, Josh Groban, Huey Lewis, Harrison Ford, Joan Jett, Perry Farrell and many other famous faces. Looking forward to Silverman’s response.
Published by marco on in Programming
Microsoft recently released documentation for their binary office formats in both PDF and their own XPS format. The PDF for Word weighs in at 2.8MB and has 210 pages. Why are the Microsoft Office file formats so complicated? by Joel Spolsky, provides a lot of good reasons for why the formats are so complicated (most rooted in history), like speed, complexity of the task, purely internal formats (until now), etc.
Where Spolsky veers off the path (and he almost always does) is in reaching a bit too far with his... [More]
Published by marco on in Technology
Webkit, the rendering engine on which the Safari browser is based has been quite aggresive in its support for advanced CSS3 features. Since the engine is used in many Apple applications and on all of their platforms (e.g. the iPhone and iTouch), the need for slickness there drives innovation everywhere.
The trend lately has been to move to flashy effects done with JavaScript libraries that can manipulate the DOM and address elements using CSS selectors. There are many top... [More]
Published by marco on in Quotes
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
About a week ago, the Obamians released a black and white video (YouTube) supporting their candidate. It features an acoustic guitar as accompaniment to snippets of Obama’s most inspiring words[1] as spoken by him and sung or intoned by various other famous persons. It was pretty schmaltzy, but not horrible. Since McCain didn’t come up with a video response of his own, the crew of Election08 threw one together for him, using a very similar style. This one’s a lot shorter and a lot funnier; it starts going... [More]
Published by marco on in Public Policy & Politics
There are a lot of online surveys to help voting Americans figure on which of the candidates in the quickly dwindling field they should pin their hopes. Though USA Today has taken it on the chin over the years for their vastly over-simplified graphics—usually prominently featured on their front page—their Candidate Match Game (USA Today) is tour-de-force of design. It compresses a huge amount of information into a very understandable form. It also has only 11 questions, which vastly increases the... [More]
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