phipster

Came across a useful link: www.osalt.com Open Source Alternative - Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software. Thanks to Jimmy, who made note of osalt.com in his comment to Jeff Atwood’s post on the value of open source vs. commercial software on Jeff’s always thoughtful blog, Coding Horror.

Koen deWitters published an article on game loop design that should be of interest to anyone who designs software. He explains not only how to design a game loop, but why one technique is better than another, with simple, clear examples.

I’m taking COMP 2617 C++ for Object Oriented Software Development at BCIT, and using Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition to do my homework. Pretty sweet little IDE, lots of Pro VS 2005 goodness for free!

But - why does the .ncb file (Intellisense parser database) for my dinky little C++ program, all of 160 lines in one 5Kb .cpp file, weigh in at over 2Mb?! According to Li Shao in this thread on the MSDN forum, “In VS2005, we have made change to remove this prebuilt ncb and dynamically parsed the files including the system headers into project ncb.”, in response to the original poster, who complained that “… an NCB file of 50KB under VS 2003 now has 500-600 KB, a 200 KB NCB under VS 2003 now has about 2 MB. And NCB files that used to have a size of 2-3MB now have 25-30 MB.” Sheesh! This is progress?

Robert Scoble’s wise words on what to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession apply no matter what the weather…

These instructions on the Ubuntu KNetworkmanager page got my Compaq Presario C500’s Broadcom BCM 94311 MCG wlan interface back up and running after I fu-fiddled around with it this afternoon. I made the mistake of clicking the “Manual Configuration” option in KNetworkmanager, after which I lost all wireless connection, and couldn’t find my way back out of the wireless woods:

1. Made a backup of the file /etc/network/interfaces
2. Delete all configuration settings in the file except the lo interface

   auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

3. saved the file then typed /etc/init.d/networking restart
4. After enabling the laptop’s wireless networking hard-button, the wired network reappeared in Networkmanager’s Connection Status
5. Also followed the instructions to enable the connection to survive suspend or hibernate, and bypass the keyring password at every login