I have a pair of Plane Quiet headphones which look almost entirely unlike either the Kensington or the Sony that someone else mentioned. I have no doubt that Plane Quiet is simply re-branding some other manufacturer's stuff, but the particular model I have is neither of these two.
In general, I like them. My "office" is in a converted cleanroom. Hard walls and floor and a monster ventilation system designed to keep a positive pressure in the room. Plus there's an environment chamber running all the time. The headphones seriously reduce the ambient noise. Subjectively, I'd say that 2/3rds of the reduction comes from the over-the-ear design, and about 1/3rd comes from the active cancellation. Sound quality is good, but I'm not a major audiophile.
You know of a free native Windows XServer? Do tell! I'll gladly use it instead. Simple is good.
One nice thing about the XLiveCD is that it runs a rootless server; each window is displayed as a separate Windows window, basicly using the Windows GUI as the window manager. That's just gravy, though.
Take a CD to work and use X on any machine with a CD drive
Yes, but use X to do WHAT exactly? Click on pretty buttons over and over again? If I can't have cygwin on disk, able to manipulate files, save scripts, etc, what's the use, really? The few Unix apps that are worth the trouble of running in an X11 window on a Windows box, already have native ports.
We have some stand-alone test equipment such as an HP logic analyzer which can export their displays via X-Windows. It's much nicer using them this way rather than from the front panel. I have Cygwin and X installed on my PC, but that doesn't help me much when I'm using the equipment at someone else's desk. This CD is perfect for that.
It's also perfect to hand to other engineers who want to be able to use the equipment this way, but who don't give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys about running any other Cygwin or Unixy stuff.
Once they get into the workforce, there is a prevailing myth among the plebes that spelling and grammar don't matter, as long as the message is right.
This myth prevails because it's what students are taught in school.
We had a big argument about this in one of my college English classes. The professor and nearly 90% of the class took this stance. I (and possibly one other student) took the position that the way you express your message counts; that poor expression obscures the message and good expression can clarify it.
Of course, expressing yourself well can cover up a number of flaws in the message. I quickly learned that, despite what she said, that professor graded well-written bullshit papers highly. The (unintentional, but important) lesson is that you can't let yourself be blinded by a smooth presentation.
This makes it really easy to track large blocks in nested #if..#endif directives, and makes them read more like regular if..else statements. And yeah, I know, preprocessor directives are ugly as sin, but they're sometimes necessary. Most of what I write is code for microcontrollers, and it must be portable from one target platform to another. I can't afford to waste memory or execution time to evaluate conditionals at runtime when they can be done by the compiler instead.
When I was brewing (haven't dusted off the ol' brewpot in years) my signature beer was Double Jeopardy Espresso Stout. All the alcohol, twice the caffeine!
Start with an Oatmeal Stout recipe. Substitute a good dark roast coffee (medium grind) 1:1 for the oatmeal. Brew as normal. When adding the hops near then end of the boil, toss in a handful of No-Doz (or cheap generic substitute). I used about twenty 200mg tablets per 5-gallon batch. Ferment, bottle/keg, and drink. Cheers!
Amen! I use it to play music, I dont look at the damn thing. I know some people love skins, for me I dont need it, just need to hear the music not see the colors!
Paranoia is a great beer-and-pretzels game. It sounds to me as if you and your group are taking it way too seriously. It's not really the kind of game suited to epic campaigns; it's more of a sci-fi version of Toon.
I have come to notice that I was wrong - businesses are still as dumb as they where years ago and they still trust MSFT.
I'm the senior firmware developer at my company. I've been beating on our IT guy to set up a machine as a Subversion server so I can give it a test drive. He said, and I quote, "Why would you trust a free piece of software? Why don't you use Visual SourceSafe instead?"
You just can't argue with logic like that. Oh, I tried, citing numerous problems I've personally had using VSS in the past. Neither of us convinced the other, but he is setting up the server for me. And I'm not using VSS!
I'd love to get something like this. I have a short commute, and basically a covered motorcycle (something I can use in rain and snow) is what I'm looking for.
But no where on the Myers site does it say how much the bloody thing costs! Sure, they'll take your $1000 deposit towards the purchase, but they don't say what that final price will be. In fact, their reservation process page says this:
5. The purchase price of the vehicle will be established by Myers Motors at the time of purchase and the reservation deposit will be automatically applied to the purchase price of the vehicle.
So I'm supposed to tie up $1000 on a deposit without knowing the final purchase price? You've got to be kidding.
(The Phoenix site does mention "$14,900 retail price and up", but there's no link from the Myers site.)
I also worry about a company whose "Values" statement (sorry, can't link, part of a Flash presentation) contains "Glorify God" and "Share our financial success on behalf of God's kingdom" as bullet points. It wouldn't stop me doing business with them, but it is a little off-putting to us non-believers in the market. Which cult are they a member of, anyway?
I wasn't trying to argue one against the other. They're both good ideas. Send out lots of resumes. And, schmooze the social network. The two aren't mutually exclusive, they complement one another. Get your interviews any way you can.
For someone fresh out of college with no work experience, there's absolutely no reason to have a resume that's more than one page. No offense, but you probably haven't done anything worth taking that much of the reviewer's time.
List your coursework and your strengths. Describe some of the relevant projects you've done for class. You can list summer-job type work experience, but if all of it was just flipping burgers don't dwell on it. On the other hand, if you've interned or done anything related to your field, play it up!
If you've done anything applicable outside of schoolwork, be sure to list that! That's what's going to catch someone's eye. When I'm looking at resumes I give top priority to people who have technical hobbies. It shows that they really like this stuff, and aren't merely going to be punching a clock.
Also, make sure you send out resumes. Lots of resumes. To anyone and everyone. I graduated in 1988 with a BSEE degree from a respected university. Jobs were easier to find then, but I still ended up sending out over 400 resumes. That netted me only a handful of interviews, and a huge pile of FOAD letters. You know how I got my first real job? Through a friend-of-a-friend, who happened to have also graduated from my school ten years before. That's right, in the end good ol' social networking gets you the most action.
All I can say is keep at it. Definitely get involved in some sort of activity related to the work you want to do, if only to keep your knowledge fresh. Send out lots of resumes. And especially, chat up your friends and see who's hiring.
Pick any web developer and ask them whether they have more problems making websites work with IE or making them work with Mozilla. They'll ALL tell you that IE is a pain in the ass and doesn't comply to standards.
You must not have met many web developers. There are plenty of them who believe that IE is the be-all and end-all. If it works in IE but not another browser then that other browser is broken.
Now if you'd said any good web developer, I might agree with you.
Internet Explorer: Proving that Sturgeon's Law is highly optimistic.
This has always interested me when people say this - Why "the wife", why not "my wife"? It sounds like she's more of an object, like "the dog", or "the car". Saying "my wife" seems far more personal.
Of course, it could be argued that saying "my wife" is demeaning, as it implies possession. Just like "my dog" or "my car". You could say "the lovely independent person with whom I share my life", but that might imply she doesn't have a life of her; that you're the center of her world. And "lovely" is also a value judgement, implying that you wouldn't want to be with her if she were ugly.
No matter what you say, you'll manage to offend someone...
For those of you in SE Michigan, Br. Guy is going to be speaking at the Cranbrook Institute of Science this weekend. He's a fascinating public speaker and all-around great guy.
Playing against my 11yo son, I find Diddy Kong tremendously frustrating. It's not so much skill based as it is memorization based. If you haven't memorized the tracks and know all the secret shortcuts, you're screwed. I refuse to play it with him any more. On the other hand, I still like to play Mario Kart with him. MK relies less on secrets. He still beats me, but I don't feel like it's because I didn't know some crucial hidden game element.
Robotron is the epitome of good, hard games. The thing's insanely difficult, but you never feel you're being cheated. It doesn't hide anything from you. All the enemies are in plain view, all the time. I suck at the game, but I know it's because I suck. There's never a point where I say, "WTF? Where did *that* come from?"
On the other hand, there's skirmish mode in Starcraft or Warcraft III. The AI just plain cheats. It gets to build units faster than you do, then it simply overruns you before you've had a chance to build up. Also, in tight battles it can target spells with insane speed and precision. It doesn't have the human problem of trying to pick the spellcaster out of the crowd, click him, select a spell, then find and click the target. The AI can whup me any time, and it's not because I suck. It's because I'm good, but not godlike.
At Penguicon, CmdrTaco and Hemos said they'd really love to do a "Car Talk" type show on public radio. I think that'd be great; I miss Geeks In Space. Maybe this is a good time to approach the new G4/TechTV overlords?
When I was writing video games for a living, Hecker's physics articles in Game Developer magazine really helped me out. He knows what he's doing when it comes to this stuff. And, at least as important, he knows how to teach others to do it too.
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Which is why I only look at underage kiddie porn. It's illegal, so they can't tax it!
Damn Mary-Kate and Ashley for getting old!
I have a pair of Plane Quiet headphones which look almost entirely unlike either the Kensington or the Sony that someone else mentioned. I have no doubt that Plane Quiet is simply re-branding some other manufacturer's stuff, but the particular model I have is neither of these two.
In general, I like them. My "office" is in a converted cleanroom. Hard walls and floor and a monster ventilation system designed to keep a positive pressure in the room. Plus there's an environment chamber running all the time. The headphones seriously reduce the ambient noise. Subjectively, I'd say that 2/3rds of the reduction comes from the over-the-ear design, and about 1/3rd comes from the active cancellation. Sound quality is good, but I'm not a major audiophile.
You know of a free native Windows XServer? Do tell! I'll gladly use it instead. Simple is good.
One nice thing about the XLiveCD is that it runs a rootless server; each window is displayed as a separate Windows window, basicly using the Windows GUI as the window manager. That's just gravy, though.
We have some stand-alone test equipment such as an HP logic analyzer which can export their displays via X-Windows. It's much nicer using them this way rather than from the front panel. I have Cygwin and X installed on my PC, but that doesn't help me much when I'm using the equipment at someone else's desk. This CD is perfect for that.
It's also perfect to hand to other engineers who want to be able to use the equipment this way, but who don't give a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys about running any other Cygwin or Unixy stuff.
We had a big argument about this in one of my college English classes. The professor and nearly 90% of the class took this stance. I (and possibly one other student) took the position that the way you express your message counts; that poor expression obscures the message and good expression can clarify it.
Of course, expressing yourself well can cover up a number of flaws in the message. I quickly learned that, despite what she said, that professor graded well-written bullshit papers highly. The (unintentional, but important) lesson is that you can't let yourself be blinded by a smooth presentation.
There's no excuse, ever for indenting the braces as well as the code. We all know that this is the proper way to indent.
(Come on, Malda, the <ecode> tag really needs to preserve spaces at the beginnings of lines, too!)
One thing I've found is that this style helps with grotty #ifdef statements. I like to put superfluous braces around them, too.
This makes it really easy to track large blocks in nested #if..#endif directives, and makes them read more like regular if..else statements. And yeah, I know, preprocessor directives are ugly as sin, but they're sometimes necessary. Most of what I write is code for microcontrollers, and it must be portable from one target platform to another. I can't afford to waste memory or execution time to evaluate conditionals at runtime when they can be done by the compiler instead.
Who cares about the performance of the Counter Strike source? It's the binaries that count, man!
When I was brewing (haven't dusted off the ol' brewpot in years) my signature beer was Double Jeopardy Espresso Stout. All the alcohol, twice the caffeine!
Start with an Oatmeal Stout recipe. Substitute a good dark roast coffee (medium grind) 1:1 for the oatmeal. Brew as normal. When adding the hops near then end of the boil, toss in a handful of No-Doz (or cheap generic substitute). I used about twenty 200mg tablets per 5-gallon batch. Ferment, bottle/keg, and drink. Cheers!
Right on, man! That's what the drugs are for...
Paranoia is a great beer-and-pretzels game. It sounds to me as if you and your group are taking it way too seriously. It's not really the kind of game suited to epic campaigns; it's more of a sci-fi version of Toon.
Cool! Finally a game which really shows off the Dreamcast's graphic abilities! (Now to see if I'm moderated "funny" or "troll"...)
I'm the senior firmware developer at my company. I've been beating on our IT guy to set up a machine as a Subversion server so I can give it a test drive. He said, and I quote, "Why would you trust a free piece of software? Why don't you use Visual SourceSafe instead?"
You just can't argue with logic like that. Oh, I tried, citing numerous problems I've personally had using VSS in the past. Neither of us convinced the other, but he is setting up the server for me. And I'm not using VSS!
What? No mention of Googlebar? For shame, forevergeek!
I'd love to get something like this. I have a short commute, and basically a covered motorcycle (something I can use in rain and snow) is what I'm looking for.
But no where on the Myers site does it say how much the bloody thing costs! Sure, they'll take your $1000 deposit towards the purchase, but they don't say what that final price will be. In fact, their reservation process page says this:
So I'm supposed to tie up $1000 on a deposit without knowing the final purchase price? You've got to be kidding.
(The Phoenix site does mention "$14,900 retail price and up", but there's no link from the Myers site.)
I also worry about a company whose "Values" statement (sorry, can't link, part of a Flash presentation) contains "Glorify God" and "Share our financial success on behalf of God's kingdom" as bullet points. It wouldn't stop me doing business with them, but it is a little off-putting to us non-believers in the market. Which cult are they a member of, anyway?
I'm still having trouble with the concept that someone would want to copy the Beastie Boys' music...
I wasn't trying to argue one against the other. They're both good ideas. Send out lots of resumes. And, schmooze the social network. The two aren't mutually exclusive, they complement one another. Get your interviews any way you can.
For someone fresh out of college with no work experience, there's absolutely no reason to have a resume that's more than one page. No offense, but you probably haven't done anything worth taking that much of the reviewer's time.
List your coursework and your strengths. Describe some of the relevant projects you've done for class. You can list summer-job type work experience, but if all of it was just flipping burgers don't dwell on it. On the other hand, if you've interned or done anything related to your field, play it up!
If you've done anything applicable outside of schoolwork, be sure to list that! That's what's going to catch someone's eye. When I'm looking at resumes I give top priority to people who have technical hobbies. It shows that they really like this stuff, and aren't merely going to be punching a clock.
Also, make sure you send out resumes. Lots of resumes. To anyone and everyone. I graduated in 1988 with a BSEE degree from a respected university. Jobs were easier to find then, but I still ended up sending out over 400 resumes. That netted me only a handful of interviews, and a huge pile of FOAD letters. You know how I got my first real job? Through a friend-of-a-friend, who happened to have also graduated from my school ten years before. That's right, in the end good ol' social networking gets you the most action.
All I can say is keep at it. Definitely get involved in some sort of activity related to the work you want to do, if only to keep your knowledge fresh. Send out lots of resumes. And especially, chat up your friends and see who's hiring.
You must not have met many web developers. There are plenty of them who believe that IE is the be-all and end-all. If it works in IE but not another browser then that other browser is broken.
Now if you'd said any good web developer, I might agree with you.
Internet Explorer: Proving that Sturgeon's Law is highly optimistic.
Of course, it could be argued that saying "my wife" is demeaning, as it implies possession. Just like "my dog" or "my car". You could say "the lovely independent person with whom I share my life", but that might imply she doesn't have a life of her; that you're the center of her world. And "lovely" is also a value judgement, implying that you wouldn't want to be with her if she were ugly.
No matter what you say, you'll manage to offend someone...
How can they tell a picture of dark energy apart from a picture where they just forgot to take the lens cap off?
For those of you in SE Michigan, Br. Guy is going to be speaking at the Cranbrook Institute of Science this weekend. He's a fascinating public speaker and all-around great guy.
Actually, yes. Look up Ultracode. It's a barcode with two spacial dimensions plus a color dimension.
Playing against my 11yo son, I find Diddy Kong tremendously frustrating. It's not so much skill based as it is memorization based. If you haven't memorized the tracks and know all the secret shortcuts, you're screwed. I refuse to play it with him any more. On the other hand, I still like to play Mario Kart with him. MK relies less on secrets. He still beats me, but I don't feel like it's because I didn't know some crucial hidden game element.
Robotron is the epitome of good, hard games. The thing's insanely difficult, but you never feel you're being cheated. It doesn't hide anything from you. All the enemies are in plain view, all the time. I suck at the game, but I know it's because I suck. There's never a point where I say, "WTF? Where did *that* come from?"
On the other hand, there's skirmish mode in Starcraft or Warcraft III. The AI just plain cheats. It gets to build units faster than you do, then it simply overruns you before you've had a chance to build up. Also, in tight battles it can target spells with insane speed and precision. It doesn't have the human problem of trying to pick the spellcaster out of the crowd, click him, select a spell, then find and click the target. The AI can whup me any time, and it's not because I suck. It's because I'm good, but not godlike.
At Penguicon, CmdrTaco and Hemos said they'd really love to do a "Car Talk" type show on public radio. I think that'd be great; I miss Geeks In Space. Maybe this is a good time to approach the new G4/TechTV overlords?
When I was writing video games for a living, Hecker's physics articles in Game Developer magazine really helped me out. He knows what he's doing when it comes to this stuff. And, at least as important, he knows how to teach others to do it too.