I’m at a one-week contract this week, and the client uses only Macs. So I’m using an unfamiliar Mac keyboard — the kind with the transparent plastic casing, and the really stiff keys (by my standards, anyway). I am starting to get used to the propeller key already, and getting sort of used to using Meta-K […]
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Would Shlemiel the Painter Optimize Prematurely?
Thursday, June 18th, 2009 – 2:34 pm
I don’t want to optimize this code prematurely. And “while you’re still writing it” is probably premature. On the other hand, totally ignoring algorithmic complexity is a sure route to a Shlemiel the Painter’s algorithm. Do I really want to just write the whole thing, and then start profiling it to see where the hot […]
Launching SSHblock
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 – 11:59 am
My latest software project is now available… where “latest” means “the latest thing I’ve launched, even if I actually wrote it over a year ago.” The story is simple: I was tired of seeing “failed password” messages from sshd cluttering up my logs. I was also annoyed at the constant flow of dictionary attacks, even […]
Cruel Rollover Trickery
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 – 1:58 pm
I found an interesting UI problem today, on a site that I will be kind enough not to actually link to. Instead, I’ll just reproduce the general concept and problem here: alpha beta gamma delta The links all just link straight to the nav bar itself, so if you scroll your browser view so that […]
Don’t Waste My Time With Email Confirmation Fields
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 – 5:58 pm
I just ran into yet another form on a web page that looked like this: First Name Last Name Email Address Confirm Email Address Address Line 1 … and so on These things drive me nuts. Once I’ve typed my email address in the first time, I just type Shift-Home to highlight the entire field, […]
If I Leave the Tutorial, Can I Get Back In?
Friday, June 5th, 2009 – 4:10 pm
While reading c|Net’s preview of the upcoming Palm Prē, I came across: “When you fire up the smartphone for the first time, there’s a brief animated tutorial to familiarize you with the various gestures” the Prē uses. And having a first-time orientation is a pretty common UX decision, especially for products that are trying to […]
Eyeball-Deep in Legalese
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 – 5:37 pm
I used to not have a problem when I wanted to release software. I’d just release it under the GPL (what we’d now call the GPLv2), and be pretty happy with that decision. Now there’s GPLv3, and I’m really uncertain whether I like it at all. I understand that Tivoization is a serious problem, but […]