Mokka mit Schlag » Software Development

I’m afraid I accidentally deleted somebody’s valid comment while cleaning up the spam. To whoever’s comment that was, I apologize. The spam is really getting ridiculous. Despite the filters I have in place, too much still gets through. It’s up to two to three hundred pieces a day. They’re three or so things I can still try:
(more…)

I get occasional requests for the source code to the WordPress theme of this blog. It’s really just a few small modifications on the default Kubrick, nothing major. However I haven’t officially published it yet because:

• I haven’t bothered to figure out how to bundle up and distribute a theme.
• The theme includes some things unique to this site like my own Amazon associates ID, my own Google ads, and my own headshot. This would all need to be factored out so you could replace it with your own.
• There are still some bugs in the theme. The most important is that in Safari the sidebar tends to drop below the post if the window is too narrow. The second most important bug is that in short posts bottom of the sidebar aligns to the left rather than staying on the right.

I’ll cut a deal with those who’ve asked for the theme. If you can help me figure out how to fix those two layout bugs (without using tables, or placing the sidebar content before the text content in the HTML) I’ll take care of figuring out how to bundle up and publish the theme for general use.

This story simply astonishes me. Anyone who doesn’t know the difference between GET and DELETE has no business designing a web app for their kid’s lemonade stand, much less taking on a multi-month contract for the government. Not that I haven’t seen mistakes like this before, but what really gets my goat is that the government agency doubtless paid a huge amount of money to these morons to develop their site. Doubtless these mouth breathers had the necessary security clearances, and wore the right suits, and took the right people out to play golf. I’m sure the fact that they had no fucking clue how the Web works never entered anyone’s mind.
(more…)

There’s always lots of good hallway and speaker lounge talk at the Software Development Conference, and this year was no exception. Over past years, hallway chatter has been an amazingly good predictor of what’s going to be hot over the coming year or two. It’s worth summarizing some of the thoughts here.
(more…)

So I get my new Mac Mini, connect it, and launch the bundled copy of Quicken 2006. It asks me to personalize it with my name. Simple enough I think, but no. Believe it or not, it won’t accept “Elliotte Rusty Harold” as a name. It gets stuck right before the d. Seems it believes no name can be longer than 20 letters, and “Elliotte Rusty Harold” is 21.
(more…)

One of my absolute favorite things about Wikipedia is one of the most trivial. When I see a minor spelling error, typo, or grammatical mistake, I can just go right in and fix it. No registration, no e-mail, no nothing. I do wish I could do it inline without even loading a separate page, just like I might fix a typo in a Word document I had open. However Wikipedia’s the easiest I’ve seen.