Archive for March, 2006:

Even the usability of a book can suck!

{ Posted on Mar 31 2006 by david }
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Categories : Usability
A small group of us at work are still making our way through the O’Reilly book Head First Design Patterns. We’ve all been very excited to apply what we’ve learned, even after the very first pattern. They’re thought provoking, fun, ...Read More »

Nokia 6600 Resurrection

{ Posted on Mar 28 2006 by david }
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Categories : Geek
I have reason to believe that my mobile phone is dying, but I hope not. I bought my Nokia 6600 about 1.5 years ago and, up until 2.5 weeks ago, it has been a very dependable phone. Symptoms • The Message application ...Read More »

Design Pattern: A decorator in the wild

{ Posted on Mar 24 2006 by david }
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Categories : Programming
I’ve been looking over a lot of Javascript code lately, mostly in the various AJAX libraries. It’s been interesting to see the ways in which the different projects are using the language to enable them to coexist peacefully. Though, one such ...Read More »

My first `case` statement in 60 months.

{ Posted on Mar 22 2006 by david }
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Categories : Programming
The first time flipping through my O’Reilly Javascript Definitive Guide, I was pleasantly surprised to read that Javascript had a case statement. I’m not sure why I was surprised, but I guess I forgot about it considering that I have ...Read More »

A report card of AJAX/DHTML platform compatibility.

{ Posted on Mar 19 2006 by david }
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Categories : Technology
I’ve been checking out more of the AJAX/DHTML libraries which have been released lately. In the back of my head I have a nagging question about their cross-platform compatibility. I certainly don’t want to use anything which isn’t cross-platform, because ...Read More »

Great 3D sidewalk art by Julian Beever

{ Posted on Mar 19 2006 by david }
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Categories : Misc
I stumbled upon some web sites with photos of 3D sidewalk-art by English artist Julian Beever. Click here to see a larger image. All of the images I have seen show the artist interacting with his work, which are amazing, three ...Read More »

Doing Python-style imports in JavaScript

{ Posted on Mar 15 2006 by david }
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Categories : Programming, Python
Lately at work I’ve been doing a lot of programming in JavaScript. Among other things, I have been learning about using the prototype object to do object oriented programming. One thing that I missed was the feature in Python used ...Read More »

Hacking the front page to display my blog entries

{ Posted on Mar 12 2006 by david }
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Categories : Geek, How-To
The problem I wanted the home page of my web site to show my blog entries and also be a little more dynamic by displaying other related content. The default index_html page for my blog software, Quills, does display the current entries, ...Read More »

Ho Hum on the Apple front, but I still want a Mini

{ Posted on Mar 01 2006 by david }
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Categories : Apple, Geek, Misc
I am glad that Apple has upgraded the Mac Mini with the new Intel processors because I wanted to get one to use as my web server. Awhile back I read something which stated that Python runs slower with FreeBSD ...Read More »