Category: English

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The Daily WTF and The Hidden Network

The people at The Daily WTF decided to start a job board, HiddenNetwork.com, with the stated mission to “put top-talent within the reach of employers by advertising high-quality job opportunities”. The job board is not the first attempt at this. For example, Joel Spolsky (of Joel On Software) has his own niche job board with similar goals.

What I found interesting about the new job board announcement was this observation:

Have you ever noticed how, out of all the people you work with, the ones who read tech blogs are the strongest employees? It’s not that reading blogs inherently makes you smarter, but in order to read tech blogs, you need to deeply care about technology and have a passion to improve yourself and learn more.

When people ask me how I can afford reading one hour of tech-related news every day as part of my working hours, I say that as far as I’m concerned this is part of my job. I’m a better programmer thanks to reading about new software at freshmeat.net or even reading about new Web 2.0 start-ups although my job has no relation to the world wide web. Knowing what’s going on in the tech world is a good way of keeping my mind sharp and learning new things.

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How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in Any Programming Language

I once had a teacher (Dr. Yechiel Kimchi, who taught me so much of what I know today) who said that in C++ it’s harder to shoot yourself in the foot than it is in C, but when you manage to do it – the foot is completely gone.

A funny tutorial was published, which describes how to shoot yourself in the foot in any programming language. If you know a few languages (even superficially) this will make you laugh. (via Digg)

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searchmash == Google

Google has a new testbed for its search engine. It was rolled out very quietly and is called searchmash. Trying it out a bit doesn’t give me any different results than Google, but the interface is all Web 2.0 (for example, search for something, then click the “more web pages >>” link at the bottom of the results to see what happens. (via Download Squad)

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Making Windows XP Faster

Yet another list of Windows XP tweaks has been published, but this time it’s a short, comprehensible list which seems to contain the best advice I’ve seen so far (among the many tweaks out there many have no effect on Windows and sometimes can even make it perform worse).

Last night I tried some of these changes (specifically: A, B, C, F, J and K – some have been set for years) and my Windows XP really works faster! However, after having the same Windows XP installation for over 3 years, I think I’m going to have to re-install it pretty soon. (via Download Squad)

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2 years of working out

Today marks 2 years since I started working out. I still follow the same 4-days-a-week workout schedule from March this year. I must admit that having Tuesday off from workouts is a nice relief and also a chance to move workouts around the week when there’s a need to do that.

I think I’ve reached a certain point where my physique is pretty much the same, as well as my weight and muscle volume. I guess that if I want to make changes to my appearance now, I have to make some changes in my workouts. For example, I do 45 minutes of fasted aerobics every workout day (4 times a week). Fasted intense aerobics is not really recommended, but I feel good doing it so I’ll keep it up for now.

I can also make some diet changes if I want to look better, but I’m happy with the way I look and I feel good so that’s good enough for me. I just hope that things will stay the way they are as long as I keep working out.

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Google Reader – New, improved version

Google Reader is Google’s online RSS feed reader. The new version is finally usable for me – you can see more than one item at a time and there is a branch/tag view on the left (instead of the previous “all items” view).

I love RSS (Wikipedia entry). It allows me to read a lot of news in a relatively short time. Now that I’ve used Google Reader for a few days I’m going to use it as my default RSS reader. It makes perfect sense to have your RSS reader application an online one, and Google Reader is now a great choice.

It also turns out Google implemented a little Easter egg inside Google reader. Easter eggs are always fun.

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Online Dating Study Published

A study called “Online Dating: When Do You Like Someone Like Yourself?” presents some interesting data, which is summed up in this Tasty Research blog post. I wonder how accurate it is, considering that many people don’t exactly tell the truth about stuff in their online profiles. A link to the study’s PDF is in the blog post, in case you’re interested in reading the entire thing.

I wonder what freakonomics Levitt and Dubner would say if they had this data. (via Slashdot)