’Twas Brillig*

For any management out there, this is obviously not true. I have never had a sword fight while waiting for code to compile.

Comic from xkcd.

Today, while reading Coding Horror, I found out about some great free software called GridMove which has given me the push I needed to rotate one of my 1600×1200 monitors. Now I can run tests at close to our design resolution (1280×768)[1] on two browsers at the same time without doing anything more complicated than middle clicking on the browser title bars and pushing them to the desired grids.

The real problem with multiple monitors is you soon find yourself desiring more, and right now a second portrait monitor on the left hand side seems like a nice idea [2].

[1] Obviously this actually gives me two windows sized at 1200×800, but if something looks bad at this size it is probably going to look bad at 1280×768. The height doesn’t usually matter, but horizontal scrolling in browsers is evil.

[2] Unfortunately, in this regard, my work PC is a laptop and (AFAIK) triple monitor support isn’t really an option.

It is now 2/7 18:28:18

Well, I’ve installed Safari for Windows and I thought I might as well record my thoughts. As Joel Spolsky says, it does seem to take a while for the application to initially load and the fonts do at first seem blurry, but loading times do get better and being a font whore (ever since reading Donald Knuth’s MetaFont book back in the summer of 1990) I think I approve of the reasons why the fonts look the way they do and could easily get used to it.

It is a bit odd that like a Windows 95 application it installs straight into the root of the “All Programs” folder and not as per current windows style guidelines into a sub directory (e.g. “Apple Safari”) - even Microsoft Office now does this correctly - and the fact that I’m now running something with a UI that looks extremely Mac-like is particularly odd (the only obvious difference I can see from a mac is the menu bar is within the app). So far (and I’ve only used it for an hour or so) there is one feature which other browsers should (ahem, cough) borrow and that is all text areas are resizeable - quite frankly brilliant. I’m also fairly impressed that, with the exception of a popup calendar, the web application I work on works (yay! for attempting to be standards compliant).

The announcement of Safari for Windows is something I wasn’t expecting and I can’t work out if it is a good thing or not. I dislike Internet Explorer and am happy about the inroads that Firefox has made into marketshare, but can’t help feeling that without a huge advertising campaign another browser is just going to occupy the same kind of niche position opera or, even worse, flock (a browser I like, but with a core which will always be playing catchup with firefox) has.

I guess if one good thing comes out of it (and assuming it has the same rendering engine) people might actually test their websites on it and keep Mac users happy.

I appear to have won a camera[1] -the star letter in PC Pro this month is mine. The following is the letter I sent, you’ll have to read the magazine for the edited version:

Regarding your article on identity theft, if it is known that 80% of people are willing to give away information commonly used by companies to determine identity then wouldn’t it be more useful to change the attitude of the companies involved as to what information is really secret? I’ve long believed two of my bank’s secret questions are more secure than the rest because they are more open to creative answers, for instance “A special date” and “A special name”, whereas questions that ask for specifics are just asking for trouble “First School”, “Last School”, “Mother’s Maiden Name” etc. People are obviously free to lie about the specifics, but I suspect most don’t.

There are items on your personal information checklist which are easy to discover about people with slightly uncommon names. For example, since the register of births since 1984 is freely available online, the mother’s maiden name of most people in Britain born after 1984 (the core social networking generation) is easy to find. Anybody running a service relying on Mother’s maiden name as an even vaguely secure piece of information is fooling themselves and quite possibly their customers.

[1] A Canon Digital Ixus 60 - review

Edit (15-Oct-2007): I think I must have read the next month’s star prize bit and thought that was what I was going to win, since what I have actually been sent is an Epson Stylus Photo RX585 (an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier - I already have an RX420, but this looks better).

Wil Wheaton on writing:

1. Don’t be afraid to suck. It’s easier to fix something that’s broken than it is to create something from nothing.
2. Write your first draft “with the door closed.”
3. Don’t try to make everyone happy. If you try to make everyone happy, you end up with According To Jim. Write what you’re passionate about, and write to entertain, amuse, and satisfy yourself. To borrow a phrase from Joel Hodgeson, the creator of MST3K: don’t ask yourself, “Will anyone get this?” Instead, tell yourself, “The right people will get this.”
4. If you’re going to write, you have to read. If you’re going to write screenplays, you have to read, and you have to watch lots and lots of movies, both for entertainment and for education.

This applies to programming as well (particularly the first two points), point 1 is a no-brainer - there will always be bugs in initial code (although there are ways and means to eliminate some - unit testing *cough*, *cough*) , but just for my own sanity getting that first draft is important. As to point 2, if a programmer says they’re not ready to demonstrate their code that should be respected. I often find someone wants to know how things are going while I’m still working on my initial version - which means I feel irritated, they form opinions based on something I’m likely to change anyway and nobody goes away happy.

I like this. I particularly agree with the second half of Tim O’Reilly’s opening comment, as an unrepentant snapper with no claims on art, I could really get some use out of the ability to have a camera that takes family snaps, but when I just want a picture of an object give me the opportunity to find better pictures.

The virus scanner at work has been changed in the last fewed months to Symantec antivirus and it is horrendously slow. We have a scheduled weekly scan and this is the screen I was greeted with on getting into work this morning. Nine hours and it is only three quarters of the way through my main work drive. AARGH!