fendale

Auto complete would be a good option, however I want people to be able to send the commands in emails (with the option on the web page too).

Having started scanning about NLP, I can tell its a big area, and I don't think I want to invest lots of time into this. Perhaps a cutdown syntax is the way to go. For my small set of commands, all I have now are TODOs, Followups and Reminders. So a few ways of entering each of them and some thinking about dates should get me something usable.

That said, I do have concerns about the ambiguity of what can be entered, and what to do with failed commands etc.

Dates really are the pain point for entering things - date pickers are generally annoying, and a series of drop downs are a pain too and people write dates in so many different ways!

Interestingly, the ruby on rails podcast just released has a interview with one of the maglev developers.. Sounds like they are making good progress!

What happened the to great potential offer by Maglev and Avi Bryant's presentation a while back about putting Ruby on the smalltalk VM? Was that all just vapour ware? I have not heard a peep about in since!

I am from Northern Ireland and everytime I phone a call centre/hotel/whatever that is answered by someone doesn't live in the UK, I find it almost impossible to get them to hear 'two' - they always think I am saying three. In my mind I am not even saying anything like three and other 'locals' have no problem understanding me. Many others I have spoken to have the same problem here too!

> A related problem is that you can't right click links to open them in their own tab

That is THE most annoying thing a web developer can do to a user if you ask me!

I believe Leo Laporte sits on a ball all day when doing all those podcasts and twit live shows he does ... I don't get it - how does it help your posture? Can you not sit slouched over on a ball as easy as a normal chair? Maybe I should try this ball thing!

Oh come on - writing a resume is not that hard! Its two pages max, and while I agree its the most tedious undesirable task in the world, 3 or 4 hours spent on it will sort it once and for all. Then all you have to do is update it every 3 - 6 months for 30 minutes and it will always be ready to use.

Its basically just a bunch of buzz words on the skills you have, and a paragraph about your last few positions/roles.

Being that for any job, you are supposed to tailor your CV to the position, is that not the time to omit the section that mentions your Engineering degree and relevant work experience if you know you are going to be over qualified?

I guess its not really ethical to do that, and may even be illegal, but its not as bad IMHO as inventing qualifications and experience you don't have which is a definite no no!

Oz is boring? Im stuck in the UK and would love to be back in Oz because the UK is boring (and the weather is terrible)! My theory is that no matter where you live, it becomes normal (aka boring) after a few years.

Sounds like webkit2png is the best bet, but its OS X only which is no good if you want to run it on a webserver.

The alternative is khtml2png, which will run on a linux webserver, but it looks like its going require a lot of messing about with virtual X-Servers to get it going http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=faq

Now the question is whether I can get my creaky old Fedora 4 box to get this all working without rebuilding the whole thing!

Edit: looks like a good tutorial at http://corpocrat.com/2008/08/26/capturing-a-screenshot-of-a-...

I would prefer something I can install on my own server as opposed to a service. That site is all in German, but it looks like its webservice that captures the images for you - am I correct?

Hear, hear indeed - It was 11pm after a long day when I wrote that, but I won't make the same mistake again, lol!

Here here - In our project, its packed with generic features - most of them haven't be used ever and were released ages ago. Often they really complicate the application with lookup tables and weird logic that never sees the light of day, 'just incase'!

I was having a conversation about communication skills with a few colleagues just today.

I work with a lot of off-shore people based in India, and yes most of them are just code monkeys. While their English is generally (but not always) excellent, the single worst trait we have spotted is terrible communication skills.

If you work on something that is technically difficult and requires a great coder and not a code monkey, then perhaps great coding trumps communication at all times, however in the big enterprise world, I already know I am going to encounter countless code monkeys, but if they cannot communicate its just sole destroying attempting to set their direction and manage them.

This can be in several ways:

* Extracting information is a painful process - they are never keen to offer it up and when they do, they leave vital pieces out, or forget bits and don't tell you about it until you ask as second or third time when you suspect things don't seem quite correct.

* Developers send you emails with questions or explanations devoid of context assuming you can read their mind - This just wastes everyones time, as I have to then reply asking for more information or call them.

* The communication is so bad, that they explain something in a way that it allows it to be assumed to be something else entirely, and the team/project/whatever heads off in the wrong direction entirely, until someone hopefully catches it!

* They give managers extra anxiety, as they never send progress report of keep him up to date on what is going on, which means the manager has to spend a lot of time chasing things up.

I have been watching this Phorm business for some time now - While I am disappointed that the EU are letting them continue on with it, at least they have stated that companies involved must obtain consent and provide useful information about what people are consenting for ... I still wouldn't bet on the ISP's gaming it somehow though!

I just gave that app a try there - I like it.

I second (or third now!) that I don't like the meaningless words. Makes it much harder to type them I reckon, and some of the words seem to be real words, but with missing letters, so you find yourself typing the real word, which is wrong!!

The thing that got me excited about StackOver flow was that it was announced just a few days after I spent days attempting to dredge information out of those Bulletin board type forums where there are 100's of non threaded replies/discussions to a question (and the experts are reluctant to help the noobs).

If only the correct answer could bubble to the surface, or the question asker would take the time to update the question with the discovered answer, so I reckoned Stack Overflow sounded like a great idea.

I have not used it yet, but I reckon it will solve more problems than it causes.

Jeff and Joels podcast and current following didn't have solve the chicken and egg problem either, so they are off to a good start!

Good points. I do a lot of swimming and soccer playing for general overall fitness - would like to do some upper body work, but just cannot motive myself to do a full range of exercises (takes to long and I find them too boring!) ... so pushups may get me started!

Have you followed the 100 pushup program? 100 push ups in a row is no easy task, I would love to be able to do it ... might take this challenge on and see how it goes!

I think the major point was that, yes an experience developer can make a good accurate quote, but it needs the requirements to be nailed down and in fine detail before that quote really means anything. Being that most clients probably don't know what they want until they see it, accurate requirements are hard to find.

More common these days are some user stories and lots of rapid iterations until the client is happy I guess.

+1 for that - I am dreading the day that people are able to talk on their phones on the plane. Cue massive increase in 'air rage' when it happens!

Its even turned on in MySQL if you are using innodb tables too!

If I read this correctly, does this article say that an Update statement is blocking selects? Does SQL Server really work like this?

My expertise is in Oracle - readers don't block writers and writers don't block readers. Infact writers don't block other writers unless they are updating the same row. I think MySQL works the same way as Oracle in this regard.

I find it hard to imagine building a performing web application on top on a database in which writers block readers!

I gave up on this article before I got to the 'meat' as it was too waffley ... anyway, to lose weight my best advice is to:

* avoid fizzy drink as much as possible * avoid crisps (do americans call them chips?) * go easy on fried and fast food (no need to cut them out completely) * Try to cut down on alcohol, but I don't really follow my own advice here!

Then

* walk or cycle as much as possible * take the stairs instead of the lift for 5 floors or less * and exercise 4 or 5 times a week doing whatever you find fun.

Maybe I am just lucky, but I never seem to put on any weight, and I do eat fast food and drink plenty of beer, but I do exercise a lot and cycle to work each day.

I don't fully agree with what you are saying. A self signed certificate DOES provide 100% cryptographic security, in that nobody sniffing on the the wire, or whatever open wi-fi I happen to be using can see my data.

Securing the connection from 'spies' is only one part of an general SSL certificates function - the other is proving the identity of the site you are connecting to. A self signed cert provides zero use here.

So a self signed cert has some uses - that said, perhaps its the more techy person who would ever care about encrypted connections but not identity, and they can probably work out how to get FF to accept their cert anyway.

Well as I got better at swimming, I upped my distance too ... so I cover more distance by going faster and its more enjoyable too. It also upped my top speed, allowing me to swim with the better swimmers without getting in their way, also adding to the enjoyment.

A lot of swimmers do interval training too - eg 20 by 4 lengths every X minutes (with X including some rest time) - as you get better you drop the minutes to give yourself less rest and can up the number of intervals too.

I guess its all down to enjoyment to swim more efficiently, as you counter the energy savings by going faster and longer ... Its like the pleasure you get from programming in a language you are expert in vs the one your just learning (which is rather frustrating until you get good at it and don't need the manual every two minutes!).

+1 for the TotalImmersion link. I swim about 10K a week at a reasonable, but not superstar pace, and the TI drills improved my stroke no end a few years back. I can now swim a length of a 25 meter pool in 16 - 18 strokes, where as most of 'paddle wheelers' notch up about 25 - 30 strokes per length and hence tire much more quickly.

You need to get a certain karma before you can downvote comments. I think it was 100 before I could ...

Well that screen tip is going to be really useful - I can feel my explaining things to remote colleagues getting easier already ...

Facebook's apps have annoyed me into not using them. Typically I get invites for apps that look like:

Test your movie knowledge with this quiz ...

You take the quiz, and then it won't give you the results unless you spam all your friends with an invite to the same quiz. With the amount of spammy stuff on there I am not surprised if the app usage tails off ...