The Insomniac Coder

It's been a few weeks since the upgrade to SSD , and I was starting to be concerned about my external USB drives . I have two Iomega Prestige USB2 drives (one bought by my robot overlord employer, one bought for personal use). I am scared to death of single-drive data storage on laptops , because wrecking the drive not only kills your OS but also all your data. I like how in desktops and servers pretty much everyone I know tries to use multiple drives, and leaves the OS on its own. Under reasonable conditions (properly filtered power, nobody working the case over with a baseball bat, etc.) it would be extremely rare to lose more than one drive at a time. With the laptop we don't have that luxury. Since we do all of our programming work with a centralized repository, a disk failure is not a catastrophe: whatever was checked into the repository is on a much stronger server that goes through a reasonable backups regime (I pray to God). If the work was not checked in, most of ...

From Baby Mistakenly Locked In Bank Vault : “The toddler was safe the whole time” -- Wells Fargo spokesman Jay Lawrence

Image via CrunchBase No, this is not a repeat . No, this is not an Inception parody, but it almost feels like one. A timeline: On 1/29/2011 I replaced my Blackberry Curve (fucking bulletproof phone ) with a Samsung Intercept . I also replaced Ivette's LG Rumor Touch with a Samsung Intercept.  On 2/8/2011 I received a warranty replacement on the Samsung Intercept since the 1/29 unit was shutting itself off at random times. Ivette's phone? No issues whatsoever.  On 2/14/2011 I received a warranty replacement on my Samsung Intercept since the 2/8 unit (itself a warranty replacement) was shutting itself every time I closed the keyboard . Every single time. Ivette's phone? No issues whatsoever.  Sometime on 2/28 I am scheduled to receive a warranty replacement on my Samsung Intercept since the 2/14 unit was shutting itself every time I closed the keyboard. Every damn time. Yup, you guessed it, Ivette's phone still works absolutely perfectly.  So there you have ...

Beyond Black Swan : More Hulk .

The card on the left is actually 10mm wide. I have been using these cards for a couple of years and this is the first time that I notice that the card actually shows a texture from some of its printed circuit board, from even a few inches away it always looked smooth.

Image via Wikipedia Amazon Prime Streaming Will Disrupt Netflix, Here's How | The Business Of Online Video It's been an interesting week for video streaming . Amazon is allowing us Prime members to watch about 5000 of their streaming titles for free, Hulu made a deal with the Criterion Collection (at least for the Hulu plus members), and Netflix made a $200 million content deal with CBS . I had a chance to test the free Amazon streaming and it was no different than Netflix, and the only difference (in principle) from Hulu was not having to watch the fucking ads (even if I pay for Hulu plus). I also cashed-in a rental credit with Amazon and watched Exorcist: Director's Cut offline. This was pretty cool except that the DRM license is tied to whatever monitor was active when you asked for the purchase ( at least that is how Amazon explained my customer support inquiry  I have verified this behavior, whatever monitor is active when you start the movie will set the DRM and ...

When You Write Your Essays in Programming Languages - Imgur Here's the saddest part: I laughed the hardest at the LaTeX one.

Amazon.com Instant Video: Watch Movies and TV Shows Instantly Oh hell yes! Related articles AMAZON TAKES AIM AT NETFLIX: Instant Streaming Of 5,000 Movies And TV Shows Part Of Amazon Prime (AMZN, NFLX) (businessinsider.com) Amazon Prime Instant Video Now Streaming Free To Prime Subscribers (crunchgear.com) Amazon Prime Now Includes Streaming Video Service (readwriteweb.com) Amazon Prime Instant Video service switched on (slashgear.com)

Don’t send the developing world PCs: send them Kindles | PC Pro blog Remember when xkcd predicted that the Kindle was in reality a disguised Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy? This is why. What the world needs is easy access to information, not necessarily easy access to computing. The lack of this flow of information is what is keeping the divide going for so long. A Kindle, or a cheaper gadget based on the first generation of the e-ink technology with a 3G chip in it would do wonders to help the developing world. It would use very little power and can be built to be sturdy while keeping the price really low. I am sure that some creative accountant/tax lawyer can figure out a way for Amazon to burn out through whatever excess inventory they have, send it to a developing country for free and pocket a very nice tax break, which would beat whatever loss Amazon would take from liquidating the old inventory.

Laptop Design For Disassembly - Slashdot I don't even think it needs to be so extreme, but there is absolutely no excuse for the parts of the laptop that become obsolete faster to take more than a couple of minutes to swap. I swapped a drive on a one-year old Dell and all it took was to remove two screws and a third one that held a plastic fascia in place. It took maybe 5 minutes. As nice as it was, except for the hard drive , DVD and RAM , almost nothing else in the laptop can even be swapped. How come the networking, wireless and GPU are not built into pluggable modules like the ones that fit into the ExpressCard slot? I know GPUs have cooling issues, but I am sure that this should take no more than designating one of these slots only for the GPU and add the proper heatsinks to it. The other things like the networking and wireless cards should have absolutely no trouble fitting and working in this form factor. My laptop is one year old, and after upgrading RAM and switch...

Image via Wikipedia Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter - NYTimes.com : "Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family." The best the NYT could come up with: Bloggers are lazy, it's easier to post to the FB wall or to Twitter. FB does a good enough job in reaching friends and family. From that they leap to the conclusion that blogs are waning. I imagine that in 3 months they'll write about how people are too busy to Twitter, after all, who has time to write 140 characters at a time? Maybe somebody is going to write an app that taps into your head and posts a stream of consciousness into your social media accounts of choice. The reality of the matter is that a lot of the people that "blog" simply do it because it is the cool thing to...

Image via Wikipedia But instead please consider it is a long list of grievances: Background I played A LOT of Test Drive Unlimited 1. It was not a perfect game, but it kept me busy for a long time. According to my gamer score , I finished 73% of that game,  34 out of the 46 achievements including the annoying ones like driving every damn road on the island and a bunch others. Needless to say that I know this game, warts and all. Game Two is a piece of shit. It is so weak that instead of just building it in Ibiza , as announced, they lazily included Oahu to give the illusion that the game is much bigger. So what we have here is a big DLC for Test Drive Unlimited part one. The Cars This is by far one of the saddest games in terms of cars available in the full 360 catalog. This is worse than Grand Theft Auto: 4 and Saint’s Row 2 . I understand that all gaming titles go through licensing in order to get the cars, but what I am seeing here is just so terrible that the only way...

Image by pvera via Flickr From  Taking sides - Feb 19, 2011 - NASCAR.COM : Shortly after Thursday's first Duel, Petty was asked innocuously what he thought of all the two- car drafting that made up the 500 qualifying race. Petty replied tersely that he couldn't stand it and that he was "ashamed to be a part of it." In a nutshell: the drivers are approaching the race like a road race in cycling, by taking turns drafting the front car. This is huge because in most of auto racing each driver is on his own, they may talk to their pit but not to other cars in the team. Now you have cars coordinating who stays in front and who drafts. The drafting itself is not an issue, it has been a strategic part of NASCAR racing since forever, the problem is that it is coordinated, and that the trailing car relies too much on the lead car (they can't even see ahead because they follow so close). Pack drafting is OK, coordinated in-team drafting isn't.  They are also bitc...

From Sunday At Borders : I don't understand why everyone is in shock about the news that Borders went bankrupt. I knew they were screwed the last time I set foot on one of their stores more than a couple of years ago: I was in a mall with Ivette killing time between appointments, and I had my Kindle . We were browsing the new arrivals section and noticed that one of my favorite authors had a new book out. I immediately opened the Kindle, downloaded the free preview for the book and left the store for the Starbucks elsewhere in the mall. Borders lost the sale, Starbucks at least sold two drinks out of this one. Now I wouldn't even need to have the Kindle, I could just open the Kindle app from my phone and do the exact same thing. How the hell can brick and mortar compete against a digital product that is a 1:1 equivalent? I am not talking about art books, or relics/collectables/etc, I am talking about mass produced hardcovers and paperbacks that have zero physical value ...

From HijiNKS ENSUE: The second I learned that Fringe was moving to the Friday Night Death Slot, I knew it was the end. I mean, how naive can one be when the damn title of the first episode was FIREFLY? Seriously? That show is on its death throes. I still tried to watch it, but after two weeks I couldn't take it anymore. What a damn shame. Worse, FOX actually had the nerve to try to come up with a bullshit explanation about how a high percentage of Fringe viewers "time shifted" it, in other words, they recorded it to watch it later so it wouldn't make any difference in ratings if they moved the show. Dumbasses. Related articles Is 'Fringe' in Danger of Cancellation? (tvsquad.com) 'What's The Protocol They Use Over There??' More Death-Slot FRINGE!! (aintitcool.com) Joshua Jackson Wants You to Watch 'Fringe' Tonight, 'The Vampire Diaries' Casts Klaus and More (tvsquad.com) 'Every Time The Observer Shows Up It Has Somethi...

Pink meta for Karla, who is addicted to everything pink/and/or/ purple.

News Hounds: The Glenn Beck Conspiracy Generator And then my head asploded:

It is not usually until you've built and used a version of the program that you understand the issues well enough to get the design right. — Brian Kernighan, Rob Pike, The Practice of Programming

Fantasy Casting Posters Reimagine Classic Sci-Fi Films | Underwire | Wired.com Pure frickin genius:

Image via CrunchBase BBC News - Google unveils One Pass system for online content Here’s an interesting way to piss off Apple: 1. Apple announces they are charging X% for some service. Say, 30% commission if you want to sell through an iOS app. 2. Announce an arrangement that lets app creators to charge for content for less than what Apple charges. Say, 10%. 3. Watch Apple get pissed off. The way Apple sees this, Google is simply messing with them. The way Google sees it, whenever Apple does something and people bitch about the price, that’s an instant opportunity to pick up customers without spending a lot in marketing (the marketing is paid by Apple charging too much for the service). It is a bit more devious than not doing market research on where to place geek retail, and simply picking areas where Apple has opened an Apple Store, which was Microsoft’s original plan for THEIR stores.

Image via Wikipedia BBC News - Japan halts whale hunt after chase by protesters Well, it was bound to happen: something actually happened in Whale Wars ! Too bad the new season doesn’t air until Summer. I am not a greentard by any measure, but I find this kind of unscripted TV absolutely addictive. Now that something actually happened in the show, it is going to be even better. The problem is that the way the show is edited, I can almost guarantee you that they’ll stretch this over pretty much the whole season. I can almost visualize the promos: “On the next episode of Whale Wars, we’ll show you a five-second clip that hints at the five-second clip we’ll show three weeks from now that hints at somebody getting excited about maybe catching up to the damn whaling mothership.” Or something like that. They did it already, for the Ady GIl incident. I hope that when the Caves of Steel happen it won’t impact this kind of TV show. Related articles Japan suspends whale hunt after...

The Blizzard of 2011 | The Big Picture I officially hate ALL weather . Please do whatever it takes to bring us the weather-proof air conditioned bubble above DC, so we can have year-round 68 degree weather and a comfortable level of humidity. Or bring us the Caves of Steel , or whatever else you can come up with.

And yes, all managers have that selective listening filter.

From: We Say ‘Be Mine’ to These Valentine’s Day Cars | Autopia | Wired.com Yup, I LOL’ed.

Google's Androidify app helps you make your own Android robot avatars | Android Central This is what an Insomniac Coder is supposed to look like: I think the green skin is pretty much dead on.  Related articles Androidify yourself with Google's new Android app (downloadsquad.switched.com) Android fan? Androidify yourself with the official mobile app. (thenextweb.com)

Guitar Hero II for the 360 was (and still is) one of the most engaging games I ever played on that console. I have exactly zero musical ability, and it was a thrill to finally visualize decades of air guitar shredding to more than a few songs that I really liked. It was also humiliating to fall on my face trying to even pass a stage with an Iron Maiden song I must have listened to hundreds of times in the past 25 years or so. To my relief there were other songs that I nailed cold (Strutter, YYZ), so I think I paid for that transgression in spades. For some reason I got tired of playing it, and I was never attracted to the games that came out since, or the Rock Band franchise . Friends played both franchises and mostly liked them all. Here's a fantastic timeline on the 19 versions of the Guitar Hero series that spawned over just five years: R.I.P. Guitar Hero, but I honestly will not miss you. (Timeline) : gaming Related articles R.I.P Guitar Hero (pcworld.com) Guita...