Alternative blogs

I'm trying out an alternative blog at http://craignicol.wordpress.com to see how the two platforms compare. Flock seems happy enough with either, but I'll see which one wins out in the long term. For now, I can cross-post anything important.

take a good, hard look at your first revision and just say to yourself, "gloves."

I've lost count of the number of times I've stumbled upon the coffee-room solution to a big problem. I'm sure most people recognise the feeling. You're sitting at the computer with a big problem staring you in the face, and you've been battling it for a couple of hours trying to find a solution. Then you decide to pack it in and go get a coffee, and after 2 minutes away from the computer, before the coffee's even poured, you've figured out a one-line solution that means you can throw away all the baggage from the last two hours and get on with the next task.



This link is to a story for people who don't have their coffee-room solution.



So remember, next time you've been staring at a problem for a couple of hours, go grab yourself a coffee and see if there's any gloves.



C.



The Complicator's Gloves - The Daily WTF (-)

take a good, hard look at your first revision and just say to yourself, "gloves."

Technorati Tags: programming, wtf, thedailywtf, lifehacks, timeout

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Amnesty

As a scientist, freedom of speech is very important to me, which is why I've given the Amnesty International banner a prominent placing above. Once speech gets shut down, thought can quickly follow.

I'm still working on getting my own speech out there. I'll post details of papers and software soon.

Google Code Search vs Krugle

I'm sure a lot of people have seen and tried Google Code Search by now, so I've had a look and compared it with my favorite code search at Krugle which has saved me hours of work on many occasions. The interface of Krugle is clearly modelled on Eclipse, but it handles plenty of languages alongside Java and covers a few extremely useful bases which Google doesn't. The two I find most useful are thye API/TechDocs searches which allow you to find easily how something works, and the function search which allows you to quickly find the definition of a particular function. They are incredibly useful for finding your way round a new project, especially where the documentation is still in flux.

My impression of the Google Code Search is that it works as a standard Google search over the domain of software, so it doesn't take advantage of the domain knowledge offered within the source code and related documentation. I have a feeling this may be a trend to come. Specialised searches within a domain can exploit knowledge and connections that are hard to generalise to other domains. Krugle is a great example of how this extra knowledge can really make searching easier and more powerful. The generic Google PageRank just can't cut it, at least not on the basis of what I've seen.

Official Google Blog: More developer love with Google Code Search

Test Post

Using external posting tools to post to my Blogger blog.

C.

New Beta

I've just thrown this blog onto the new Blogger Beta to make my life a little easier, as I've already got a Google Account linked up.

I've used rich-text editors before, especially in Writely, but this seems quite nice. Not sure how new it is as I haven't posted here in a while.

Doesn't look that different so far, but at least it's easier to get into. Might see me posting more here, especially if Flock still works with the new beta.

C.

Who Am I?

I thought I should write a bit more about myself and what I've been upto. I recently gradtuated in a Ph.D. in Computer Science, the details of which you can see in the links to the rights of this post. Outside the research, I've been doing some political work, integrating the spell checker from Speller Pages into the WriteToThem website, which provides an easy way to get in touch with your MP.

WriteToThem.com - Who are you, and why are you doing this?

technorati tags:politics, web, programming, Ph.D.

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