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.
Category Archives: Computing and the Web
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.
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.
The Best Job I Never Got
Today I’m going to tell you the story of the best job I never got. And it’s entirely true, which is nice. Continue reading
Real World Styles (Part 1 – Canon Camera Picture Styles)
Anyone who has read more than a few entries on this site will probably realise that I am a little bit obsessed with ‘Styles’ in both Microsoft Word and tools such as CSS. It struck me that it might be beneficial to look at some real-world things that use something similar to styles to help convey my message. The analogy to word processing or document styles will not always be tight, but hopefully it will be informative. Today, I’m going to look at Canon cameras and their ‘picture zone’ settings. Continue reading
Styling Clarity
Having talked about some of my perceived issues with the up-coming Word 2007 over the last couple of days, today I am going to address a topic I nearly covered back in October last year.
It’s a core feature of Word. It will make your life better. It will free you up to write more clearly. It will save you time, it will save a designer’s life. It will save your company’s brand image. Continue reading