David Pitkin

I wrote and ran my first T-SQL unit test today. It was a pretty lame test but it did run against our product code and in a testing framework.

I liked this paticular quote from the cookbook “When it is difficult to write tests it can be a sign that you should change the design of the interface or refactor your system.”

One of the cool things about flock is connecting it up to a del.icio.us account; sadly there was a side effect for me.

When I created a menu link bar of some quick links flock deleted, re-added the del.icio.us links and removed the tags they used to have. FeedBurner then picked up the new links and syndicated them in my feed. This is bad application behavior I would hope flock would have at least confirmed a deletion. I hope that someone at flock reads and fixes this, otherwise I have to pick between flock and splicing my links into my feed.

Splicing my links will probably win unless someone tells me that they hate it.

The FastCGI dispatcher that I am using with Typo on this server keeps crashing. It is frustrating since I just squat space from a friend and crashed his server three times! Sorry Howie!

I like flock. At first I could not get it to work with my typo blog but it had nice integration with del.icio.us and supports user scripts. It works the same on both Windows and the Mac which I like these days. I wish that there was an authoring tool integrated into BlogBridge since reading blogs is often where I want to start posts and not on a web page. When I just read RSS feed on my Macintosh the integration of NetNewsWire and MarsEdit was really cool.

How I got Flock to work with Typo: At first when I just put in my blog homepage like flock asked the wizard would get stuck and never finish. I put in the real typo api url http://my.blog.tld/backend/xmlrpc and it came back with a quick failure and then let me set my blog api manually!

I love 43folders and Getting Things Done so Meet the Life Hackers is not that new.

I did like the experiment Microsoft researchers did. The more computer desktop space you have the better you can multitask. The grouping of windows on separate monitors allows you to keep track of what you were doing when the constant interruptions reign down. Personally three times in the past week I have finished emails and forgotten to press send only to find them hours later.

I have throughout most of my life had a multiple monitor setup. One of the big benefits of using a Macintosh computer in the Windows 95 era. Right now with 1200×1600 I have been thinking I am okay, but what if I am not.

Now I just need to save up $800 bucks for a pair of 20-inch LCD monitors from Dell. VLADStudio has 3200×1200 desktop wall papers for me when I do.

I have always wanted to play with a DECT phone. DECT phones rule because you can text message from your land line and you can mix and match handsets with base stations. The problem is that they are European only. This week I got my hands on a pair of Siemens S440 base station and handsets, these were German devices bought through eBay from Sinapore. These handsets are compatible with the Siemens M34 USB adapter (I got one of those also) which means you can make and receive calls via Skype with the same phone your mom calls you with.

I totally agree with the review on Digital Lifestyles that these are not for everyone. The biggest reason is that to make a Skype call with the phone you call your PC with your portable phone. Instead of answering it the handset then shows a menu with options from the computer Skype, Messenger and Remote Control. If you pick Skype you can then scroll through a list of your contacts and the green on-hook phone button will call them.

Having a DECT phone here in the US has two problems. One is that it uses the 1900Mhz spectrum reserved for mobile phones so it has to be interfering (no FCC approval on this thing) and the second is that it has features are not supported by my Vonage phone like sending SMS text messages..

The craziest thing is that the portable phone has a calendar in it why would I or anyone want to enter dates into my portable phone. The USB adapter does let me synchronize my outlook contacts with the portable phones but it is SO slow, I guess DECT does not support high speed data.??

This rainy afternoon I read Russell Beattie’s post Anonymity about 2ch. 2ch is simple; a forum with no registration and each topic is limited to 1000 entries. The wikipedia entry only has statistics from 2003 I wonder why more has not been updated, did it become less popular?

The anonymity argument put forth is well written in the read me for the Shiichan forum software. Registration on forums and websites stifles the quality and creativity that they are able to collect and attracts the wrong people. Real people don’t comment because they have better things to do than figure out another username/password and verify their email. We all know this.

Right after I read it I immediately thought of Seth Godin’s new company/idea Squidoo. Imagine if somehow a Squidoo expert page could actually capture enough expert information to be really valuable, could you do this without anonymity?

I often search for a wikipage/lens/post about a software product error message or what stuff to carry on a bike ride. I am great at searching the forums but for example I have never contributed to something on expertexchange. I think what I am proposing here would be like an anonymous 43things that was not geared to things you want to do but to things you are doing or just need help with.

Spirited Away is an example of the type of application that keeps me loving the mac. It is a simple elegant program that does something cool. It automatically hides windows of applications if they have been ignored.

from coolosxapps.net

I read the digg.com rss feed as one of my favorites and have been fairly happy with it. It uses the slashdot and kiro5hin approach to populate the homepage. Everyone can submit URLs and the links that collect the most digs end up on the homepage.

This is a wicked fun flash site and I mostly hate flash sites.

I am not sure that I really fully understand why there is a new bunch of lightweight markup languages. I am going to try out using Textile which is similar to what I have used with FlexWiki.

It is quicker than typing HTML but visual editors are really what I want. For now I am happy that I get “curly quotes” easily.