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I’m at CodeMash today and tomorrow. If your interested in the happenings I’ll be tweeting it.
The BlackBerry Curve As A Bluetooth Modem On Ubuntu
It turned out to be extremely easy to use the BlackBerry Curve’s tethered modem support from Ubuntu. This allows the device’s dial-up networking capabilities to be used to access the internet. This will work with either a Bluetooth or USB connection. The instruction for using Bluetooth can be found here.
Unfortunately my BlackBerry is a corporate phone and using the tethered modem costs an extra $15 per month. So I’m out of luck at least for now.
Northeastern Ohio Tech Book Club
A new book club for Northeastern Ohio techies has been formed. The idea, first proposed on Twitter by Corey Haines, is to get together on a regular basis to discuss and debate some book. If your a techie, you like to read and your in the area then consider joining. Details are still TBD.
Our first book will be Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin. Our first meeting will be soon!
I’m A CrackBerry Addict
Last year when my manager mentioned getting a BlackBerry I really didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to have it be a drain on my productivity. It also seems like a ball-and-chain. Now my calendar is so hectic that I just went ahead and got one.
I now have a shiny, new 8330 and I couldn’t be happier. Now I know why they call it a CrackBerry. I find myself reading my Gmail, Google News or whatever in what was previously wasted time. I’m no longer bored while standing in line!
Hopefully this new addiction won’t become problematic.
Under The Hood Of The Internet
This video is old but interesting. It has some behind the scenes footage of a large scale data center.
Commit Early, Commit Often - The Sane Way To Work
A recent post by Ben Collins-Sussman talks about the benefits of frequent commits. This is a must read for all developers that work as part of a team.
Ben talks about some potential benefits to distributed version control, but didn’t go into too much detail. All of my source code repositories use Subversion. I often use DVCS as a way to let me work offline. With a DVCS I am able to make very small commits and take advantage of version control when I’m on a plane, in a park or a variety of other places. I am then able to sync up all of my commits as individual commits into the Subversion repository. The trick is to not go more than a day or two in between the syncs.
Memory Can Be Recovered After A Computer Is Shutdown
A research project at Princeton University has proven that memory can be recovered after a computer is shutdown. This is exactly the opposite of what I have always thought. Very interesting technique and video.
Twitter Finally Got Me
Until now I have not seen the value of Twitter. Well actually I still don’t know if I see the value, but I decided to sign up anyway. Feel free to follow me there.
$HOME in Subversion
Keeping my $HOME in Subversion has made my life much easier. The chief benefit is the ease at which I can create and synchronize dotfiles across different machines. In the past I have had to figure out which box has a particular version of a config file and then manually copy it over. This is just a waste of time.
This method also benefits from all the goodness of version control: backups are easy, history, etc. I can manage all of my config files just as I do my source code.
I found a great tutorial that I used as a starting point. I highly recommend you give it a try. Once I start to deviate from the tutorial a bit more I write my own how-to.
How Greasemonkey Saved My Valentine’s Day
I am usually really bad about remembering to get my wife a gift or even a card for Valentine’s Day. Val is the busiest day of the year at work and I am usually too busy to remember anything. Thats a poor excuse and I pretty much suck.
This year, however, I did remember to order flowers to be delivered on the 14th. I purposely used my Paypal account because I didn’t want my wife to see the transaction. Only an hour later I realized that I picked the wrong credit card in the Paypal interface. I chose the card that my wife uses and of course periodically checks the balance. Now I know I really suck.
With a week to go before Val I decided that I needed to take evasive action. Greasemonkey to the rescue. I created a very simple script that replaces all occurrences of FTD with WEBHOST when she is on our bank’s site. Now she’ll just think I made another stupid purchase.
This only works in Firefox obviously, but all she uses is Ubuntu so I’m safe.
Maybe this will help someone else out….
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