osalt.com

Came across a useful link: www.osalt.com Open Source Alternative - Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software. Thanks to Jimmy, who made note of osalt.com in his comment to Jeff Atwood's post on the value of open source vs. commercial software on Jeff's always thoughtful blog, Coding Horror.

Your loops got game?

Koen deWitters published an article on game loop design that should be of interest to anyone who designs software. He explains not only how to design a game loop, but why one technique is better than another, with simple, clear examples.

Small C++ Project, huge .ncb file?

I'm taking COMP 2617 C++ for Object Oriented Software Development at BCIT, and using Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition to do my homework. Pretty sweet little IDE, lots of Pro VS 2005 goodness for free!

But - why does the .ncb file (Intellisense parser database) for my dinky little C++ program, all of 160 lines in one 5Kb .cpp file, weigh in at over 2Mb?! According to Li Shao in this thread on the MSDN forum, "In VS2005, we have made change to remove this prebuilt ncb and dynamically parsed the files including the system headers into project ncb.", in response to the original poster, who complained that "... an NCB file of 50KB under VS 2003 now has 500-600 KB, a 200 KB NCB under VS 2003 now has about 2 MB. And NCB files that used to have a size of 2-3MB now have 25-30 MB." Sheesh! This is progress?

Timeless career dev tips, 2008 recession or not

Robert Scoble's wise words on what to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession apply no matter what the weather...

Help me help

OK, so in an effort to "monetize" this blog, I added a Donate button yesterday (lookey over yonder ->). I'd like to donate 50% of all donations to a worthwhile cause—the other half just helps keep this site, and my webbish ambitions, alive—assuming of course there's any whole to divide up in the first place!

So come on, make a donation, then convince me why I should benefact your favourite charity.

Images missing from Windows Vista Help and Support Pages

I switched back to Vista a couple of weeks ago, after giving up trying to live in Kubuntu for the second time in a year. I noticed one minor nit after I moved back in, all of the image graphics in Vista's Help and Support pages had mysteriously disappeared, leaving only little boxes with red x's behind them. Fortunately, a quick Googling brought me to Ramesh Srinivasan's solution - a quick registry patch file, courtesy of Mr. Srinvasan, restored the help page graphics to their former glory.

Diffing where I want, and diffing the same file

I use WinMerge a lot for general interactive file diff/merge/munging. It's great, free, etc. But what I'd really like is a diff tool that a) lets *me* decide which bits in each buffer match up as the starting point, and b) let me compare two sections of the same file. Does this exist? Please let me know. Please.