Inklings: a tumblelog

How cool is that!

I can never remember how to do this.

A short taximony of the different kinds of unit tests.

This is why I document and automate as much of this kind of stuff as possible.

Hits my opinions on the individual strengths of the two sexes right on the nose. Note that this is all generalisations, and nothing in it should be used as a reason to be triumphalist or beat somebody down: people are individuals in spite of any general trends, and individuals have a habit of bucking trends, even strong ones.

Interesting paper that’s basically a set of observations collated from various influential sources, Knuth for example.

We describe our experiences with the Chubby lock service, which is intended to provide coarse-grained locking as well as reliable (though low-volume) storage for a loosely-coupled distributed system. Chubby provides an interface much like a distributed file system with advisory locks, but the design emphasis is on availability and reliability, as opposed to high performance. Many instances of the service have been used for over a year, with several of them each handling a few tens of thousands of clients concurrently. The paper describes the initial design and expected use, compares it with actual use, and explains how the design had to be modified to accommodate the differences.

Pitfalls I didn’t know existed.

CoScripter is a system for recording, automating, and sharing processes performed in a web browser such as printing photos online, requesting a vacation hold for postal mail, or checking bank account information. Instructions for processes are recorded and stored in easy-to-read text here on the CoScripter web site, so anyone can make use of them.

Haven’t tried it yet, mainly because it requires an IBM ID to download. Screw that crap!

Cross-border co-operation is great. Now, if only the FAI and IFA would get their collective heads out of their arses and merge. Two football associations, both fielding international teams, is a waste of resources that could be better spent on fielding a single international team that might, just might, be able to qualify for the World Cup and European Championship.

The source is quite an interesting read.

An Libre Wipeout-style game.

I can never remember this crap.

Take a read of this: it’s hilarious!

So stop asking the server to “hold on to things” for you. Please. If you do that one simple thing when you build an application architecture, you have freed the server infrastructure; you have given it wings.

Damn straight!

Apparently if you try to remove/destroy/trash a FORM DOM node in IE6, it won’t delete it, instead creating a bizarre orphaned node stuck sucking up memory until the browser window is refreshed.

That’s seriously messed up.

Each chapter describes a particular aspect of the P-code system, each section discussing a particular procedure or group of procedures, sometimes preceded by an explanation of the data-structures used.

Nifty!

If you were ever wondering how exactly they differ.

Needed for my parents’ computer.

So true.

Sigh.