Why Men Geeks Love Bitches...

ME + IM Forever

When IM became the latest rage, I hated it. I saw it as just a new way to interrupt me while I'm working. Didn't they already invent something for that...like a telephone?

Interrupter: u there?
Webigail: @#$%^&*()! This better be good.


Years later, I love IM. Why? Because it allows more and more developers to work from home. Distrustful bosses now realize that with IM, as long as you respond within 30 seconds to their "u there?", you're as good as in the office. And with my IM audio alert set to maximum volume, I can get all my housework done by five o'clock. It's a win/win for everyone.

Vive le IM!

Time for a <br />

Shucks, it's time to get back to work, dear reader. I'm taking a break from blogging for a few days/weeks/months.

Enjoy Big Head Todd & the Monsters while I'm gone. They're the best!

Now THIS is the Correct Use of <strong>

As you may recall, I posted previously about the correct use of the <strong> and <em> tags. Again, the <strong> tag is used to place "strong emphasis" on the content between the opening and closing tags. Here is an example of the correct usage, for your reference.

Photoshop by Lauren

Alphabetter™

One of the things that happens to you, if you work around geeks long enough, is you sits and thinks too much when you're, say, flying to or from a client's location. For example, on a recent return flight, I invented a new alphabet.

In my new alphabet, words are spelled like they sound. So, bug would be spelled...well...bug, and house would be spelled hows.

Redundant letters of the current alphabet would be reassigned to something more useful: c, since it is already covered by the k or s sounds, will become the ch sound, as in church. q, since it is already covered by the k or kw sounds, will become the sh sound as in shout. x, since it is already covered by the ks sound, will become the th sound as in the.

Now, each of the five vowels will be written as either short or long, depending on its sound in a word. So, kat (cat) will have a half-u over the a to indicate that it is a short-sounding a. But kat (Kate) will have a horizontal bar over the a to indicate that it is a long-sounding a. No more useless dot over the i. Yes, this will mean having to change keyboards, but think of all the new jobs that will be created. :)

OK, now the benefits of the Alphabetter™:

1. Children will learn to read much faster since, as long as they know the sounds in the new alphabet, phonetics becomes FUN-etiks. (Get it?)


2. No more spelling tests. If you can say it, you can spell it.


3. Foreigners will learn English much faster and without the typical heavy accents since there would no longer be a mismatch between written and spoken English. For example, Lincoln would become Lenkun, with a long symbol over the e, so foreigners will stop erroneously pronouncing it lin-kowln.

Diskus.

Two geeks at a party...

America's Best Kept Secret

Shhh...don't tell anyone that ColdFusion is not really dead. I prefer that the IT community think it is, so they stay off my turf. Yes, there are a lot fewer ColdFusion jobs these days then, say, the year 2000, but there are even fewer ColdFusion developers, since most of them jumped ship when ASP.net came into vogue. Ask any ColdFusion hiring manager...CF developers are VERY hard to find. For the last several years, I've been trying to make the switch to another language, but I keep getting hired for ColdFusion.

If you're having a hard time finding a ColdFusion job, try applying for openings all over the country, and explain that you're willing to travel (at the employer's expense, of course) and/or work remotely. If your resume is halfway decent, you'd be surprised how many companies are willing to make a deal.

Wordless Wednesday

Refcardz

Looking for a free, downloadable, nicely-formatted cheat sheet for ColdFusion 9? Eclipse? HTML? CSS? C#? MySQL? You name it? Look no further:

http://refcardz.dzone.com/

(Pathetic) SQL Humor

(Click image for easier viewing.)

Programmer Arrogance, Measured

One of the most frustrating aspects of working in the IT industry (if you're normal like me) is dealing with arrogant programmers, which unfortunately comprise at least 70% of the programming population. Somehow they get it into their geeky big heads that they are superior to the rest of the human race, smarter even, and behave accordingly. Grrrr, you just want to smack them.

Here's an article, from a genuinely smart programmer, which explains the phenomenon, graph included.

http://blog.ruslans.com/2010/01/programmers-arrogance-plotted.html

The Eternal Question

Finally, a website that definitively answers the question that won't go away: Is ColdFusion dead?

http://www.iscoldfusiondead.com/

New (to Me) ColdFusion Site

Here's a ColdFusion site that I haven't run into before: http://www.coldfusionportal.org/. It was created by Raymond Camden, co-author of some of the infamous "Ben Forta" ColdFusion training books.

The Dreaded Code Review

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Need a little lorem ipsum for your page design? Here you will find, not only the history of lorem ipsum (which has been used in publishing since the 1500's, who knew!), but also a free lorem ipsum generator. Guaranteed to contain no Pig Latin (or embarrassing foreign obscenities):

http://www.lipsum.com/

Bob Kylan

Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/user/operadaniel

W3Schools.com

If you haven't visited http://www.w3schools.com/ lately, check it out. The site has been redesigned and now includes a very active Q&A forum, a sophisticated color picker, free validation services, and the usual long list of tutorials.

It's also a great place for non-developers to get free basic training in all things web development.

Random Number Generator

int getRandomNumber
{
  return 4; //chosen by dice roll
            //randomness guaranteed
}

Outfoxedsourced

Tip: Clear Your Inbox for Landing

Coworkers often ask me how I keep my email inbox so white--that is, absent of email messages. My answer is that I treat my inbox as a landing strip.

As soon as that airplane has landed, I move it to the appropriate gate: FileCabinet or FollowUp. Otherwise, the inbox becomes an explosive pile of scrap metal that has to be stepped over and sorted through.

Then, only after the airplane is safely parked at the gate do I allow passengers to disembark (via the reply exit).

Tweak Your Productivity with Lifehacker

Here's a neat book and companion website that I stumbled on recently. As long as you don't get too carried away with the plethora of dodads, widgets, and clever ideas found here, it will definitely help you save time and increase your productivity.

http://lifehacker.com/

Yummy Eye Candy

    My all-time favorite website...

That's how I'd feel if I ever got a job at this place:

http://www.thoughtworks.com

I may be blind, but I'm not deaf!

Due to the full moon in Virgo, I simply must get this off my chest. If you have replaced all of your <b>'s with <strong>'s, your code is probably <wrong>. 99% of the code I've seen in the last several years is misusing <strong> and <em>. Even the Dreamweaver development team got it wrong.

<strong> does not mean bold; it means "strong emphasis". Voice readers for the visually impaired, when encountering the element, will place strong voice emphasis on the content placed between the <strong> tags. You are to use <b> or CSS if you simply want to display a word or phrase in bold letters. Otherwise, you are shouting unnecessarily at the visually impaired.

Similarly, <em> does not mean italics; it means "emphasis". Again, voice readers for the visually impaired, when encountering the element, will place voice emphasis on the content placed between the <em> tags. You are to use <i> or CSS if you simply want to display a word or phrase in italics.

Read what the W3C has to say about it: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html.