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"JSON Patch" - Paul Bryan

2011 Nov 17, 1:06

Mime-type for describing the difference between two JSON resources (in JSON using JSON paths)

A shuffled deck of cards is unique in all human history (matthewweathers.com)

2011 Nov 17, 1:01

Possible combinations to shuffle a deck of cards is 8.0658X10⁶⁷compared to the number of times a deck of cards has been shuffled thus far in history 1.546X10²³

Malware Signed With a Governmental Signing Key - F-Secure Weblog : News from the Lab

2011 Nov 16, 12:19

“It’s not that common to find a signed copy of malware. It’s even rarer that it’s signed with an official key belonging to a government.”

technical ssl

Elements of Modern C++ Style (herbsutter.com)

2011 Nov 15, 11:59

Summary of some of the new C++ features with comments and suggested usage. Not sure I agree with the take on auto.

‘“C++11 feels like a new language.” – Bjarne Stroustrup’

technical c++ programming

“The Big Head by San Francisco artist Dan Rosenfeld is an...

2011 Nov 15, 11:54

“The Big Head by San Francisco artist Dan Rosenfeld is an oversize video conferencing helmet that displays an enlarged version of the wearer’s face on a 24″ monitor at the front of the helmet. Rosenfeld debuted the helmet at this year’s Halloween” (via The Big Head, A Giant Videoconferencing Helmet by Dan Rosenfeld)

humor halloween big-head video

"Additional HTTP Status Codes" - Mark Nottingham, Roy Fielding

2011 Nov 14, 7:51

Includes ‘511 Network Authentication Required’ for airport/hotel/coffee shop scenarios! Am I too excited about this?

technical ietf http http-status-codes

"The application/opensearchdescription xml media type" - Frank Ellermann

2011 Nov 14, 1:26

technical mime mime-type opensearch xml ietf

A The New York Times ‘Vows’ series entry parody from Jena...

2011 Nov 14, 12:40

A The New York Times ‘Vows’ series entry parody from Jena Friedman.

humor video youtube jena-friedman new-york-times

ShapeCatcher

2011 Nov 14, 12:37

Draw ShapeCatcher a symbol and ShapeCatcher shows you the characters in Unicode that look similar. Try a smiley face. (via Eric Lawrence)

technical unicode via:ericlaw

iPod Godfather Tony Fadell Finally Reveals His New Product: A Thermostat. No, Really. | TechCrunch

2011 Oct 25, 5:37

An original iPod guy has a new company that makes... wait for it... thermostats. Weird. Well they look cool anyway.

technical

NYTimes Sues US For Refusing To Reveal Secret Interpretation Of Patriot Act (techdirt.com)

2011 Oct 20, 6:52

Wow, FTA: "Given all of this, reporter Charlie Savage of the NY Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out the federal government's interpretation of its own law... and had it refused. According to the federal government, its own interpretation of the law is classified."

technical

Bug Spotting: Smart pointers and parameter evaluation order

2011 Oct 19, 5:58

The following code works fine. I have a ccomptr named resolvedUri and I want to update its hostname so I do the following:

        CreateIUriBuilder(resolvedUri, 0, 0, &builder);
        builder->SetHost(host);
        builder->CreateUri(0xFFFFFFFF, 0, 0, &resolvedUri);

But the following similar looking code has a bug:

    ResolveHost(resolvedUri, &resolvedUri);

The issue is that doing &resolvedUri gets the address of the pointer but also clears out the pointer due to the definition of my smart pointer class:

    operator T**()  
    {  
        T *ptrValue = mPtrValue;
        mPtrValue->Release();
        mPtrValue = NULL;
        return &ptrValue;
    }

In C++ there’s no guarantee about the order in which parameters for a function or method are evaluated. In the case above, &resolvedUri clears out the ccomptr before evaluating resolvedUri.Get() and so ResolveHostAlias gets a nullptr.

An interesting and related thread on stack overflow on undefined behavior in C++.

c++ technical bug programming smart-pointer cpp

"Deprecating Use of the "X-" Prefix in Application Protocols" - Peter Saint-Andre, D. Crocker, Mark Nottingham

2011 Oct 19, 2:07

Don't prefix your proprietary URI schemes with "x-". Your company name or label reversed domain name is acceptable though.

technical

Man Unfortunately Sleeps Like Baby

2011 Oct 18, 7:16

Just discussing this recently. Maybe sleeps like a baby is meant to indicate the depth of the sleep and not the duration?

technical

Haven't Been Posting Much

2011 Oct 18, 4:52

I haven't been updating my blog recently. But I have three excellent reasons:

The manner in which I use Delicious is broken.
I've been playing Glitch instead of reading through Google Reader.
I have a newborn!

"The Canonical Link Relation" - Maile Ohye, Joachim Kupke

2011 Oct 17, 6:03

technical

"The 'about' URI Scheme" - Lachlan Hunt, Mykyta Yevstifeyev

2011 Oct 17, 5:58

Essentially anybody can resolve it however they like except for tokens from the about URI special token registry which currently only contains 'blank'.

technical

Portal 2's Turret Lullaby comic sheds light and lasers on the singing turrets

2011 Oct 2, 4:30

comics mac microsoft pc playstation portal-2 ps3 singing-turrets valve xbox technical

The three terrifying minutes that created The Gunstringer

2011 Sep 29, 8:35This story is funny and also reminds me to go eat at Matador... "Twisted Pixel chief creative officer Josh Bear had responded with abounding confidence, if only to mask the truth. Because the fact of the matter, the fact that he and CEO Mike Wilford were all too aware of, as they sat in Redmond, WA Tex-Mex restaurant The Matador, was this: The idea wasn't "awesome." It was nonexistent."

food microsoft game gunstringer humor technical

Nintendo Game Maps

2011 Sep 28, 10:22They've got maps from your favorite NES games as giant images. I'm using SMB3 1-1 as my desktop background. I've got a four monitor setup now and so its tough to find desktop backgrounds but Mario levels easily cover my whole desktop.

game videogame map nintendo nes