Jeff Atwood has posted about the Sugar UI, which is the proposed operating system for the $100 PC, ‘One Laptop Per Child’ initiative. He looks at the new OS, which has been designed to be a new experience for first-time users of a PC – read ‘Children’:
Author Archives: ksb
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office CommandBarButton FaceId Property
I recently started experimenting with Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) 2003. This entry is a technical .Net / VS2005 / VSTO blog and will probably not be of interest unless you use these tools yourself.
Outrageous Electricity Consumption
My electricity bills recently have been horrendous. My bills being high were not a surprise when I was running computers for a business; it was a business cost, and I had made a commercial decision to run them 24/7.
It’s Never Been Built Before
Recently, Jeff Atwood discussed “why software projects can’t be treated like any other construction or engineering project“. He suggested that:
“But software projects truly aren’t like other engineering projects. I don’t say this out of a sense of entitlement, or out of some misguided attempt to obtain special treatment for software developers. I say it because the only kind of software we ever build is unproven, experimental software.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
If you’ve ever read the book noted above (by Robert M. Pirsig) – or perhaps more accurately – if you have read and finished ZATAOMM, then you will know that it is more about a philosophy of values than it is about motorcycle maintenance.
Aluna – A Tidal-Powered Moon Clock
A What? A Clock – ok, I get that! A ‘Moon Clock’ – what’s that? And why’s it tidal powered?
Thankfully, I am here to answer these questions for you 😉
Word-Styling Oops
Well, I finally made a mistake that I really ought to have known better about, using Styles in Word 2003. I spent an hour last night deciding to add numbers to my headings for a particular document; it was quite long and I felt the numbering would help clarify the layout. I loaded the file this morning and Oops, where have my style changes gone? Continue reading
Lowest Common Denominator Users
Historically, computer hardware development was held-back by lowest-common-denominator hardware and software. Mainframe screens were designed to be character-based displays with a single colour. If a VDU designer came on the scene and looked at the technology of those screens, he might have realised that the technology was relatively old; TV’s can display ‘moving’ images! In colour! But what would the point be to adding colour capabilities to a screen that was used on a system that could not display colour?
Formatting Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby
Some time ago, I had my first experience of “Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby” courtesy of “The Best Software Writing” selected and introduced by Joel Spolsky. I was intrigued by the strange writing style, the cartoon foxes, and indeed the language Ruby. But honestly, for whatever reason, it was not an appropriate time for me to follow up. Continue reading
Stopping the Proceedings for Idiocy
Jeff Atwood comments in his blog ‘Unnecessary Dialogs: Stopping the Proceedings with Idiocy‘ that dialog boxes are evil:
Here’s how strongly I feel about this: every time you send your users to an alert dialog, you have failed them. In a perfect world, we should never see a single alert dialog. Ever.