Archive for January, 2009

Is that Lint in your pocket (or are you just pleased to see me)?

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Eclipse crashed on me today whilst I was Linting (I guess that’s a word) my code. I didn’t lose any work since I had just saved all of my files, but when Eclipse went fut, it did so without releasing the lock on my workspace (meaning that any subsequent attempt to launch Eclipse failed). I wasn’t that bothered by this fact as this had happened to me on older versions of Eclipse, I just navigated to the .metadata directory in the top level of my workspace and looked for a lock file to delete. There wasn’t one. Cock. Now completely bemused by this conundrum I spent a good five minutes Googling for a solution, only to find that the more recent versions of Eclipse use operating system locks instead of lock files – nothing to delete, but a quick reboot forces “dead” locks to be released. Back to Linting – yay!

I actually quite enjoy Linting, even if it is quite laborious; done properly, i.e. taking time to understand each problem before correcting it, rather than doing whatever it takes to shut the blasted thing up , it is a great way to refresh your knowledge of good (and more importantly bad) coding techniques and helps to highlight problems in code design. I’m still a bit of a Lint noob, but I now understand that whenever Lint highlights a problem, it is always right, even if it takes me a while to catch up to what it’s complaining about!

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Posted in Software Development | 2 Comments »

Anti-static

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Three things that I discovered this week that I love:

1. The Google guide to software: This guide makes so much sense and illustrates beautifully how a well intentioned software developer can sleep walk into a world of hurt. Mind you, I would also point out that I feel that static functions and singletons do have genuine uses (see the section on “Brittle Global State & Singletons”).

2. StackOverflow.com: You know the drill, you’ve come across a software conundrum, but can’t be bothered to consult that shelf full of dusty reference books (that only that one guy in your office ever touches). You do what any sensible person would do. Google it. Someone must have faced this problem before, surely? The first search result seems to be exactly what you are after. Excited, you click on through to the website, only to be greeted by some overly aggressive JavaScript that blocks your view of the solution and then attempts to extort some cash from you. Cock. You jump back to Google and follow the second link, discovering a multitude of suggested solutions, but without anyone actually confirming that any of them work. Well, stackoverflow.com is like Wikipedia for software developers. How did nobody think of this before!!!

3. This article by Joel Spolsky, particularly the last paragraph and the bit about managers being there to take care of all the extraneous stuff (I believe Joel uses the phrase “clearing the decks”) so that the people they employ can get on with doing the work that they were employed to do!

Posted in Software Development | 10 Comments »

Parental guidance programming and gimic infringement

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

I have nothing against the WWE deciding that it needs to produce programming that is more suitable for family viewing. My Mum has stated on several occasions that if I had been a young child during the attitude era, I would not have been allowed to watch wrestling – I agree with her judgment. Hang on a second though because that’s not the end of the story, the WWE can’t just decide overnight that they are abandoning an entire fanbase in an attempt to become more acceptable and therefore generate more advertising revenue. Don’t give me that crap about Vince McMahon being able to do what he wants in the arenas he hires… we pay for them with PPV sales, merchandise sales and television subscriptions. How can the WWE get all bent out of shape about fans with signs saying “Cuck Fena”, when they have been making money out of t-shirts emblazoned with “Ruck Fules” and “F*ck fear, drink beer!”. Why was the WWE not worried about young children when Steve Austin was flipping them off at live events and drinking copious quantities of beer in front of them? The WWE hasn’t suddenly grown a conscience, they just want the advertising revenue, in the words of Vinnie Mac himself, “It’s all about the mon-ay!”. I actually don’t disagree with the shift towards PG rated programming and renaming John Cena’s finisher from the “FU” to the “Throwback” seems like a reasonable enough thing, I just don’t believe the motive is anything other than money and that if it would make him more cash, Vince McMahon would abandon PG and have Shawn Michaels and Triple-H spit roast Katie Vick on RAW Monday night.

Beef number two has to do with gimmick infringement. I’ve got no problem with Michelle McCool being a part of the WWE roster. She is one of the Divas that I look forward to watching, since she can really go in the ring. She clearly worked extremely hard in OVW and DSW and continues to do so in the WWE and the fact that she is a Diva Search reject, but still made it to the big league, is testament to her passion for wrestling and her desire to succeed in life. Do I care if she is in a relationship with Taker? Not really, I doubt that gives her any extra pull, but good luck to her if it does. I do have a problem with Michelle though – her finishers. When she started using the Angels Wings I was a wee bit suprised, but hey, in reality it’s just a variation of a double under-hook facebuster so as long as the name is different it’s not the end of the world, but now she debuts her new finisher on SmackDown! and it’s the frickin’ Styles Clash!!! I know that Crash Holly used to do something similar way back when, but I can’t help but think that there is some kind of ulterior motive to her using the finishers of TNA’s male wrestlers (so far Kurt Angle, Christopher Daniels and A.J. Styles). Like Eric Bischoff says, “controversy creates cash”.

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Posted in Life | 1 Comment »

Same shit, different day

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

If you are a God botherer then you may not want to read this post, but you should.

As an alternative (or in addition) to the Queen’s Speech this year, there was a speech made by an extreme religious asshat who preached his usual run of the mill prejudice. No, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Pope, who informed us that mankind faces a threat akin to that of global warming – the gays. Seriously, explain to me the difference between denying the holocaust and declaring that the gays are going to kill us all, there isn’t one and that’s why the Pope is as extreme and irrelevant as Mr Ahmadinejad. Yet there are still plenty of Church of England clergy members threatening to switch allegiances to the Roman Catholic church if the ordination of female bishops is allowed to go ahead. My understanding of the objection is that it is based upon the fact that none of the Apostles were women, but I’ll ignore the obvious sexual discrimination here and head straight on to what I think is the larger issue: since the beliefs of the two churches in question are different how can anyone switch sides? As a non believer this sort of thing does little to convince me of the strength, or accuracy, of such people’s faith and leads me to be very glad of the separation between church and state.

The bottom line (and I’m aware that this may sound very smug – it’s meant too), out of all of your religions, only one is can be right.

:P

*I could find no evidence of a legal separation between church and state in the UK, after all the Church of England is a state religion, but I’m pretty sure that the majority of Britains no longer believe in divine right.

Post tune: Killing In The Name, Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine.

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