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Monthly Archives: February 2010
The Tautline Hitch Knot
If you've ever had to tie a volleyball net or a tent guy line to a stake, you know difficult it is to tie the knot at just the right place to keep the line tight. The tautline hitch knot is perfect for this application.
Navigating the Directory Stack in ‘bash’
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time jumping from project to project in a Linux shell. I find that I have to switch back and forth between directories. The bash shell has commands to maintain a stack of directories. I’ve written some functions that use these utilities to make directory navigation easier. [...]
Follow up: Google Admits Buzz Was Only Tested Internally
In yesterday’s article about Google Buzz, I guessed that “the problem was that the population for whom the system was designed wasn’t necessarily the only population actually using the system.” I gave Google the benefit of the doubt: I am certain Google tested their application thoroughly. They’ve been known to do extensive usability tests for [...]
Sometimes Testing Isn’t Enough
In the first few days after the release of Google Buzz many people (including myself) criticized Google for exposing their users' private information. This was a couple of weeks after Apple got a lot flak for their unfortunately-named iPad, and the same week that we heard reports of a woman who broke up with her boyfriend after finding some suggestive text messages on his cell phone - messages that came pre-loaded on the phone. I think that all these cases were not caused by a lack testing, but by testing the wrong audience. Let's examine these three cases and see what we can learn from them:
Why Should I Use CPAN?
Why should a program depend on so many external modules when it could implement what it needs itself?
Camera Clock Correction After The Fact
I had this dilemma a few days ago: I had taken almost 4,000 pictures during a vacation 12 months ago. The vacation was in Asia (two continents over), and the time on my camera was wrong. I was importing the pictures into Adobe’s Lightroom, and wanted them to have the correct time just in case [...]
What Is An F-Stop?
In a previous article we looked at how lenses work. We learned about the focal length. Today we'll focus on camera lenses and what the term f-stop means.
The Most Dangerous Programming Errors