My new Windows PC is set up to do a full virus scan every Friday night (assuming that I won’t be working then, which is usually wrong), and last night I finally let it finish.

Files scanned: 2,938,482! You read that correctly, almost 3 million files on my PC. Just 4 years ago, it was about 450,000. What is going on? Am I a file whore? Or can I just blame Subversion? It is only 37GB of space, so I could have had that many files 4 years ago, I just didn’t.

Popularity: 8%

Via LaughingMeme.

I filled out the ‘thousand questions’ (really more like 60) at Find Your Spot.

And the results are:

1. Annapolis, Maryland
2. Gardnerville-Minden, Nevada
3. Grass Valley-Nevada City, California
4. Eureka Springs, Arkansas
5. Salisbury, Maryland
6. Newport, Rhode Island

How cool is it that I moved to #3 just about one year ago? I would say that I know what I like

Popularity: 21%

This is what you don’t learn in college, and is worth so much that you wonder why?

• Politics Oriented Software Development …Occasionally it may be in someone’s interest to build a successful project. Usually it’s more useful to sabotage it…
• On bullshit
• Office Politics

What have I missed? (No, BOFH and Dilbert don’t really count)

Popularity: 8%

Blame it on Simon.

1. Go to bloglines (don’t think you need to have an account).
2. Find your own blog on bloglines (if it’s not there you can sign up and add it I guess, if you don’t have a blog this one’s not for you).
3. Click related feeds (each time you click they may change slightly).
4. Post the top 5 (or more) on your blog.

Here it is:

1. Joel on Software (previously subscribed)
2. inessential.com (previously subscribed)
3. Wired News (previously subscribed, though not very interesting)
4. Surfin’ Safari (was subscribed on last reader)
5. Boing Boing
6. Daring Fireball (previously subscribed)
7. Simon Willison’s Weblog
8. ongoing (Tim Bray) (previously subscribed)
9. Engadget (previously subscribed)
10. Slashdot (previously subscribed, about to drop)
11. Google Weblog (previously subscribed)

Not terrible, but I obviously would have chosen a different set

Popularity: 18%

Check it out here.

Popularity: 13%

Have you ever wondered why there are not Colleges that specialize in teaching software development? Computer Science is pretty far from the real world of application development. I do believe there is still a need for computer science in education, but not for everyone! The majority of programming jobs out there are for applications which do not need fancy theoretical crap, they need people that know their way around a familiar tool, and the ability to find their way around new tools.

Are there classes out there that teach you how to play schedule chicken effectively? How about the ability to debug an application that you have never seen before? Write usable tech documentation for your code? Test-driven development? Teamwork? Team Building? Technology Evaluation? Bug finding? Bug prevention? Release process management? Basic resource management?

I think this will be a huge oppotunity in the next 10 years, as people and companies alike realize that computer science is not what they signed up for.

Popularity: 11%

Went out last night, and traded in my dated Samsung A460 for a shiny new Treo 650. 20% of hardware purchases for business, so I switched my account over to a business account, and saved $120. With the $150 rebate on top of that, and the $25 I got for selling my old phone back to them, I feel pretty good about the deal.

First impression: Damn, that’s a nice screen!
First bad impression: Why in Hades is the headset plug on the bottom of the damn thing?

More info here as I set up and play more.

Popularity: 8%

Just using Thunderbird with 3 separate accounts, each with about 30 folders, and it occurred to me that Thunderbird should have tabbed email. This would allow me to focus completely on the one account I am using at the moment. The tab could show the number of new emails, etc.

Maybe I am just tired of having too many trees (tree controls, not cellulose-based life forms) in my life. I think this would be a great change for Thunderbird.

Popularity: 9%

Says it all. Now, how long will it take before comment spam actually dies? Quite a long time (2+ years in my opinion), and it will get worse before it gets better. At least the search engine community is responding to a negative situation in a positive and timely fashion.

Popularity: 16%

From the documentation:

Popularity: 23%

Even if the machines are on different operating systems, this is dead easy. On the source machine, simply ‘dump’ the repository:

Then login to the new machine, and set up the new repo:

That’s all there is to it. Then you can of course delete the dump files, the .tgz files, and even the source repo if you are brave.

Popularity: 88%

(Adapted to my needs from the original at http://www.apache-ssl.org/#FAQ)

First, you create the cert:

Then, you edit the site config, adding the following lines:

Then, you restart apache, while crossing your fingers:

Popularity: 23%

LazyWeb, I ask thee, is anyone working on a port of SWT to python? Is anyone interested in such a thing? Comment or trackback here so that I can either find what I am looking for, or guage interest in such a venture.

Popularity: 12%

I have a new CPU (Dell Dimension 8400), running Windows XP SP2. I am setting it up to be my primary windows development box. This article is to show what I have installed/use on a daily basis. Below is a list of installed software and the current version in use:

• Blindly take anything from windowsupdate.microsoft.com, because it has to be better than SP2
• Firefox (1.0) Don’t forget to install extensions: Web Developer Toolbar, JavaScript Debugger, and ColorZilla.
• WinZip (9.0) Mostly to open all the .tar.gz files. Bought it too long ago to drop it now.
• Tortoise SVN (1.1.2)
• Emacs (21.3)
• nxml-mode for Emacs(20041004) nxml-mode has replaced xslide for my xml editing needs.
• Apache HTTP Server (2.0.52)
• Python (2.3.4, until mod_python has a binary for 2.4) Also cheetah, sqlobject, ctypes, mysql_python, pywin32, and wxpython
• mod_python (3.1.3)
• Putty and friends (plink, pscp, etc)Great ssh client for Windows
• TextPad (4.7) Great replacement for Notepad/Wordpad
• XMLSpy(2005) Still the best visual XML editor (nxml-mode is better day-to-day for simple editing)
• PHP(5.0.3)
• JDK(1.4.2, don’t need 1.5 yet) (Don’t forget the documentation)
• MySQL(4.1.7) Don’t forget to turn query logging on, for development. Also install the Query Browser, Adminstration Console, and Control Center.
• CVS command line executable (1.11.12)
• JBuilder(X)
• Delphi 7
• IDEA 4.5
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0
• Trillian Trying it as a multi-IM client.
• MKS toolkit, for unix utilities (tried cygwin, didn’t like it, and have not tried Windows Services for Unix yet, since mks ‘just works’
• Ant(1.6.2) How to build anything java without it?
• Subversion(1.1.2) Good to also have the command line client in addition to TortoiseSVN
• Zend Studio(4.0 Beta) Trying it out for PHP development.
• VMWare Workstation Great for testing installers by using the snapshot functionality. Also used it at a previous job to run Linux/Windows/etc on the same machine. Much better than Virtual PC.

Stuff I don’t use everyday, but do need for the odd project:

• SQL Server 2000 Developer
• Mozilla Suite (1.7.5)
• Mozilla Thunderbird (1.0)
• Cisco VPN Client
• Microsoft Office 2003, everyone makes me use it, because I believe in text files.
• Visio 2003
• Project 2003
• Eclipse 3.1M3, testing the water again
• NSIS (2.0.3) Awesome installer product for Windows, and free to boot (Don’t forget to try nsisedit)

Other stuff I should not forget:

• My .emacs file
• antrc_pre.bat (Sets the max memory for Ant to 1GB)
• Edit the httpd.conf for mod_ptyhon integration:
  
  +LoadModule python_module modules/mod_python.so
• Environment variables:
  • HOME=c:/usr
  • PATH += HOME/bin
  • JAVA_HOME = C:/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_06
  • PATH += JAVA_HOME/bin
  • PATH += C:/usr/mks/mksnt
  • ANT_HOME=c:/usr/java/apache-ant-1.6.2-bin
  • PATH += ANT_HOME/bin
  • CVS_RSH=plink.exe
  • CVSROOT=???
  • FORREST_HOME
  • INSTALLSHIELD_HOME

Stuff I did NOT install:

• Tortoise CVS (icon overlay in 1.6.3 sucks!!!)
• Yahoo! IM
• AOL IM
• MSN Messenger (though it is still forced upon me)

Should I install these again?

• Google Desktop search
• Visual Studio
• Anything related to the D language (doesn’t seem to be going anywhere)

Popularity: 11%

So, you’re running MySQL on Windows, and would really like to see a log of all of the queries the server is processing? Simple, just find your my.ini file, open it in a text editor, and add the following line in the [mysqld] section:

Then restart the mysql service, and every query will be logged in a file called hostname.log in the MySql\data directory.

For you unix types, starting the mysqld daemon with the ‘–log’ parameter will create the file ‘hostname.log’ in the $MYSQL_HOME/data directory.

Popularity: 19%

Check out the ezmlm manual pages.

Is there much interest in a web-based interface to ezmlm and its management functions?

Popularity: 8%

Just dropped my initial code on a new project, molt. molt is a source level java to D conversion tool.

Basically, we parse java into an xml format (using jikes and javaml), then run an XSLT stylesheet (using saxon) over it to transform it to the equivalent D source code. Manual intervention is still necessary, and all comments are lost (this could be a good thing).

I had stopped working on it when I had all but given up on D in the Summer of 2004, but I am putting it out there to try and get others to help out with it.

Come check it out over at dsource.org.

Popularity: 9%