OddThinking

The Rational 1000 debugger had an optional feature – the ability to step-forward or backward through the code.

When I become the CEO of a major car-manufacturer, I’m going to start selling my cars in a very different way.

I examine the causes of poor business presentations, and then evaluate Edward Tufte’s criticism of PowerPoint.

(Note to casual readers: This is a long (6000 word) essay!)

The last gaming console I ever bought was the Sony PlayStation. Maybe I am really missing out, but the PlayStation was so disappointing, I never felt the urge to move away from the PC-based video-games again.

Last Thursday, the Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello, made a speech, titled “Worth Promoting, Worth Defending: Australian Citizenship, what it means and how to nurture it.” I found the speech to be disappointing and mildly terrifying.

The thesis of the speech is that immigrants who come to Australia and become citizens should be sure to adopt Australian beliefs and values. If they don’t (and they are still citizens of another nation) they should have their Australian citizenship revoked.

I think there were several flaws in his argument, and I am annoyed enough to want to address them here.

Yes, as it happens, I am a bit grumpy today. So what?! You want to make something of it!

CSS Principles For the last twelve months, I have been trying to toe the party line when it comes to Cascading Style Sheets. Tables are our enemies. Div and span are allies and friends. Content shall never be mixed with formatting. Animals shall never sleep in beds. Err.. sorry, got distracted. Where was I? I […]

An anonymous war-story about the dangers of relying on GNU Privacy Guard to protect your anonymity as well as your privacy.

Conclusion this week: Not only is my life more dependent on crappy software than ever before, but there is no hope that the software I depend on will ever improve.

About an hour after I started the check-in process, a horrid thought occurred to me…