Miscellanea

This is my old blog and I don't update it anymore. Please visit my new blog instead.

Call it blog, call it diary: this is where I write down short thoughts and ideas, partly to share them with people, but mostly so that I don't forget them :-)

I called it Miscellanea, because I had trouble coming up with a good name and programmers tend to use 'misc' for just that purpose. Which is wrong, but there you go...

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Starting a windows application in the background
March 29, 2007
In a UNIX shell you can use ampersand (&) to tell the shell to run a command in the background. Here is how to do it in the Windows command shell.

CrossFit.com
March 04, 2007
A quick introduction to the CrossFit fitness system

The Jam build tool
February 26, 2007
Jam is a multi-platform build tool created by Perforce

Win32::GuiTest
February 22, 2007
Some resources related to the Win32::GuiTest Perl module

NASA mandates UML
February 08, 2007
NASA thinks (wrongly?) that UML can help them improve quality

Marcus Ranum on static analysis
January 25, 2007
Ranum runs Fortify on his 1994 Firewall Toolkit (FWTK) and tells about it

How to review a book
January 22, 2007
Reviewers are really talking about themselves, not the book

High Intensity Interval training
January 19, 2007
Fitness gurus agree on HIIT effectiveness

E-mail Priorities
June 05, 2006
How fast should we respond to email?

Should architects code?
May 17, 2006
Yes, please and fix defects too!

Software failures are systematic, not random
May 15, 2006
Defect severity is more important than probability of occurence

Playing with C#
April 28, 2006
I'm creating a small C# productivity app to learn about it

Defect severities, part 5 - Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering
April 27, 2006
Classification used in Michael Lyu's book

Freakonomics
April 21, 2006
A good book in the tradition of "How to Lie with Statistics" and "Innumeracy"

Structured text or HTML
March 28, 2006
Is structured text a valid alternative to HTML?

Defect severities, part 4 - Bugzilla
October 01, 2005
Classification used by Bugzilla developers

Defect Severities, part 3 - Subversion
October 01, 2005
Classification used by developers of Subversion

Defect Severities, part 2 - Debian
October 01, 2005
Classification used by Debian package developers

Weissman on Presentation Skills (via Colwell)
September 30, 2005
Weissman's five cardinal sins in a presentation

Software Architect
July 29, 2005
What does a software architect do?

Startup
July 26, 2005

Eclipse Development Process
June 21, 2005
I like the way decisions are de-centralized.

Software Reliability Engineering
March 31, 2005

Defect severities, part 1 - Severity versus Priority
March 14, 2005
Severity is technical, priority is political

Jim McCarthy
March 14, 2005

Theory of Constraints
March 14, 2005

More on the design factory
March 14, 2005
Some more food for thought from Reinertsen’s “Managing The Design Factory”

Managing The Design Factory
March 13, 2005
Review of Donald Reinertsen’s “Managing The Design Factory”

Poppendieck Seminar
March 07, 2005
Toyota Production System (Just In Time Manufacturing) applied to software

Liquid Information
February 28, 2005
Turning web pages into interactive text with some browser magic

Bookmarklets
February 26, 2005
Using bookmarklets to enhance weblogging.

Jakob Nielsen on Usability
February 25, 2005
Interested in usability? Read Jakob Nielsen’s work

Code coverage considered harmful?
February 24, 2005
Measuring code coverage seems like a fool-proof way of evaluating the quality of your tests

You are what you measure
February 24, 2005
Be careful with metrics. You might get what you ask for

XML: Tags vs Attributes
February 24, 2005
Rules of thumb to decide on using tags vs attributes

The Scientific Companion
February 22, 2005
The perfect reference book to have by your desk while you’re writing the next science fiction bestseller

Groupware considered harmful?
February 22, 2005
Groupware to help users get laid

Software Design
February 14, 2005
Random thoughts about software design

On-line Learning
February 14, 2005

Daily Build
February 14, 2005
The heartbeat of the project (according to Jim McCarthy)

Time management
February 14, 2005
Some resources that helped me learn how to manage my time

Compositing
February 14, 2005
Compose the desktop by compositing together separate graphical windows

Requirements, designs and pink chairs...
February 10, 2005
You can’t always get what you want, But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need

Estimation in Software Development
January 27, 2005
My list of issues with estimation of software effort, costs and schedules.

Top 5 risks according to Waltzing with Bears
January 27, 2005

Dijkstra on Testing
November 29, 2004

Gilb's Competitive Engineering
November 27, 2004
In February I attended a short course on Design by Tom Gilb

C++ Exception Specifications
November 24, 2004
Don’t bother with C++ exception specifications

Gilb on Design
November 22, 2004

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