Author: Amit Schreiber

Posted on

User Interface Oddities #1

In MSN Messenger 7.5, the options window is composed of many option categories. In the “File Transfer” category the following option exists:
“Automatically share backgrounds and accept shared backgrounds”

I think this option shouldn’t be in the “File Transfer” category, as the user is not supposed to understand that sharing backgrounds requires a file transfer. If anything, it should be in the “Messages” category, where the smiley options (accept smileys or not) are.

Here’s a screen capture (click to see a slightly bigger version)

MSN Messenger 7.5 File Transfer Options

Posted on

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest

Some programmers actually like writing messed up code. That’s why there’s a contest for it, which is called The International Obfuscated C Code Contest. The winners of 2005’s contest have been announced, but the entries are not on the website yet.

However, you can see the winning entries of years before. One of my favorites is this code, which “takes a single command line argument, transcribes the argument text into Tolkien’s Elvish letters, and writes the transcription to standard output as a portable graymap (PGM) file.” Another one is this code, which “translates ASCII text into semaphore code.” (take a look at the link to see an example. It’s pretty cool.)

Posted on

ScummVM

ScummVM is a great open source project for running old quest games like Simon The Sorcerer, King’s Quest, Maniac Mansion, Day Of The Tentacle, and… I can go on with the list forever. Basically, this project was created to run old Sierra games, but since then has been developed to do a lot more than that.

Note that ScummVM is only the runtime engine for the games. To play an actual game you have to find the files on the Internet (this is due to legal issues). It’s not that hard, eh hem eMule eh hem… excuse me, I had to cough ;-)