2007

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My Blog, Or Is It?

I wanted to thank everyone who read, and especially commented on, my My Blog, My Rules post a couple weeks ago.  It's nice to know that people care, and even better to know that they appreciate what I've done.  And apologies to Charlie for the firestorm.
So is this my blog?  Or is it everyone's site, [...]

Programming Creativity

Creativity is an interesting characteristic, because it means so many things.  Bach was creative.  So was Picasso.  Da Vinci.  Shakespeare.  Thompson and Ritchie?
Is computer programming a creative endeavour?  My instinct says yes.
Merriam-Webster defines "creative" as "having the quality of something created rather than imitated".  So by definition, everything that is created is the result of [...]

Music…

I have musical talent of a very mediocre degree, but I love listening.  Popular, rock, choral, new age, instrumental, anything that's interesting.  But what makes it interesting?  What about music evokes feelings?  Why are some collections of noises beautiful while some are appalling, even if they're made up of the same constituents?  A very perplexing [...]

Tokamak is Offline

I've had a Linux workstation (named tokamak) as my primary computer for the past several years, and until this past year, work was exclusively Linux as well.  Tonight, for the first time in literally years, I took tokamak offline.  It'll come back on, rest assured, but it's off, and it's weird.
I got a new Thinkpad [...]

iPhone vs. Blackberry vs. None

I used to carry a cell phone, but I haven't for the past year.  I don't miss really miss it.  Being able to whip it out and call someone any time I wanted to is nice, but not being able to call someone any time I want to is nicer, I think.  In our hyperconnected [...]

I Am A Guitar Hero

Simeon, fine purveyor of electronic distractions, got me hooked on Guitar Here III last month.  I went over to his house for a Saturday of Halo and then some Chang's for dinner.  But unfortunately, his network wasn't cooperating, so we bailed on Halo and started playing Guitar Hero.  I have to admit that I was [...]

The Custom Tag Body-Scope

I was working with FlexChart a little this evening and ran into an interesting situation with a potentially very useful solution. I don't claim to be the first to think of it, but it's the first time I've used/seen it.
I added a date preparation tag a while back, but I thought it'd be nicer [...]

My Blog, My Rules

Charlie Arehart send me an email the other day  about my Flex charting control and the way it's presented on the site (which is poorly).  I ended up writing a fairly long response that was a bit tangential, but unreasonably so.  The basic premise was that it's my site, and I don't like maintaining web [...]

New FlexChart Demo

I've updated the FlexChart demo to include display of the descriptor XML that is loaded into the chart, as well as providing a way to edit the XML inline and load your modified XML into the chart client-side.  In addition to being far easier to experiment with, it also showcases the the client-side redrawing of [...]

A Very Wonky Request/CFTHREAD Bug

Found some really interesting behaviour with CFTHREAD over the past couple days of testing.  Put this code into three browser tabs and run them concurrently (so you get three simultaneous requests which you can view the output of).  And ensure you have the CF Server Monitor open in a different window with monitoring enabled and [...]