Here’s a quick little experiment to show the current time, as a time_t number of seconds since the Linux epoc, displayed as a code39 barcode. That feels nice and geeky 🙂
This is just a proof of concept, I doubt the barcode will scan. It’s based upon c39 font typed into mspaint and cut up into pieces 😉 The fun parts were..
- Chopping up the barcode symbols. It was a flashback to old school icon editing
- Getting WordPress to not muck up the javascript – use HTML view & check it again if you switch back to visual editor.
- Put a “window.onload = MyFunc();” at the bottom of your script block. Feels dirty overwritting the onload event & not adding it to a list of functions to call
- switched to using window.addEventListener – feels sooo much cleaner than window.onload
- preloading the images to cut down on flicker as an image is used for the first time
- getting everything to work in my non-primary browsers
Now to search for the right css that will keep the div tag from word wrapping it’s image contents. That initial load on some browsers is annoying. If you care to do something like this – view the source – it’s all there. Longer term
- Test that the generated c39 symbology is valid. I’m sure the asterisks at the start and end are fine – I’ve stared at enough barcodes to recognize that at least 😉
- Shrink it & put it in the side bar
- Maybe do a QR Code clock? That could be interesting
I know people bag on c++ (for many valid reasons) but it still amazes me to learn something new: read only members using const references. It’s even better when a c++ non-fan teaches you about it. Thanks Nico!
class Test
{
public:
Test() : readOnlyVersion(m_writableVersion)
{}
const SomeType & readOnlyVersion;
private:
SomeType m_writableVersion;
};
Never having a need, I had always filtered out reference data members – I just categorized them with static members and their special initialization. Now that I see a use case, I’m basking in the “Ah that makes total sense” moment.
Got a new wordpress plugin from http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/, let’s see how it works, by drawing on a recent facepalm bug that existed for many years in the codebase..
#ifdef linux
struct SomePThreadContainer {
pthread_mutex_t mutex;
int other_data[32];
};
#define ODD_DATA_SIZE sizeof(SomePThreadContainer)
#else
#define ODD_DATA_SIZE sizeof(HANDLE)
#endif
class OddWrapper {
byte m_oddAbsraction[ODD_DATA_SIZE];
public:
void DoStuff();
};
class OddContainer {
OddWrapper oddOne;
bool b1;
OddWrapper oddTwo;
public:
void VerifyOneWorksOnUse();
void VerifyTwoFailsOnUse(); // but will work if b1 is changed from a bool to an int
};
Many bothans were NEEDLESSLY lost to bring you this bug. 🙂
This really isn’t about signatures – it’s actually a test of the WordPress iOS app to write a post.
First impression is that it is a bit sluggish. Just writing this is painfully laggy on an iPad 1.
So signatures. There was once a time where a fellow employee that worked as a liaison to a partner in a different region. To add to his, what some would say, annoying nature – he had ~100kb image signature that took up most of the screen real estate of the outlook preview pane.
Truth be told, many people had them. But none were on the same scale as his.
He was a chonic one liner emailer that treated email as an instant messaging client.
And he would do this from a remote region over a low bandwidth connection.
Every “how’s X coming along?” or clarification on a previous comment would add 100kb. If you came late to the “conversation”, you would spend a great deal of time scrolling to read it. It was a mess.
The worst off we’re the QA testers. Unlike Devs they don’t have unlimited mailboxes, their boxes would fill up and be locked out of mail.
After that, the trend died down & most people switched to one liners. Mostly first names or “Thanks”
It is nice 🙂
But the truce is over. I just got an email with a dainty 660x80pixel signature image.
-Jason
For the past few years I’ve had a rather obtuse (and some might say caustic) profile on LinkedIn. It surved it’s purpose: Hide me from the recruters. And it mostly worked. That is, except on the recuters that play WoW. 😉
Now as those recruters cycle through their jobs and hand over their dead leads to even greener recruters to retry – I’ve ended up on an inaccurate hodge-podge of job lists that are, well, just not my thing…
- 3 month contract job in michigan, $25k – like I’m going to relocate my familiy for that
- Multiple Stock trading firms
- Require: 10+ years C++ expert knowlege, Job: InstalShield scripter
- Consultant Jobs
- Sales support engineering
- 3D Artist – wtf?
- Archival media engineer – put the tape in the backup tape drive?
- GoogleTV media codecs
It’s taken a while. But I’ve finally come to the conclusion that there’s a certain value in having an accurate career description. Sure, I may get a few more recruter calls – but that’s OK. I’ll deal with it. It’s fun answering calls from strangers using my customer service / answering machine voice.
Over the next few months my linkedin profile should start to look a little more “professional”. For tracking purposes, here’s some of the original text…