Archive for September, 2006
Code Monkey
Author: Glenn Slaven29 Sep
So.Very.Great.
There are some very talented people around with far too much spare time on their hands. Go see Jonathan Coulton, who did the song originally. He’s got a whole lot of other great stuff there. Also, Mike Spiff Booth, the guy who did the video has also done a few other WoW videos for Jonathan’s songs.
(via EngTech)
Update: I’ve been listening to a few of his other songs, they’re really funny. His style reminds me a bit of TMBG. He’s got a podcast that contains every new song too!
ArrayList.Contains() race condition
Author: Glenn Slaven27 Sep
We found something interesting happening recently at work when reviewing the web exception logs on our servers. There seemed to be an inordinate number of “Index out of range” errors occurring, and they were all coming from one class.
Digging into the code, we found that the error was occurring on a ArrayList.Contains(item) method, which seemed very odd. As I understood it, the whole point of the Contains() method is to check for the item before you try and access it, thereby avoiding the index out of range error.
A workmate thought that it may be a race condition problem, as this class is called on pretty much every page load (it sits in the page header) and the ArrayList itself was a static variable. We weren’t sure how this could happen, so he cracked out Reflector and disassembled the Contains() method on the ArrayList object. And we found something interesting.
- Comments
- Filed under: General, Tags: locking, NET, race condition
links for 2006-09-22
Author: Glenn Slaven22 Sep
-
Microsoft takes direct aim at Sony and Playstation3 at the Tokyo Game Show, with new enhancements for its Xbox console, plus some new games to please a so far reluctant Japanese audience. Chris Kohler reports from Tokyo.
-
A list of the oldest domain names still online
-
New road-fatality statistics prove the draconian restrictions on P-platers are not working, but it seems the government and authorities aren’t prepared to offer a better solution.
-
Internet search firm Yahoo is reported to be in talks to buy social networking website Facebook for $1bn
-
Passengers on an airliner bound for Bristol were plunged into panic when their captain refused to fly them home, telling them the aircraft was unsafe. Evening Post readers on board the flight from Antalya in Turkey say a “mini-riot” broke out after the pi
-
New images of the “face” on Mars have been obtained by Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft. They reinforce what scientists thought from the beginning – that the face is just a naturally sculpted hill.
-
If you ask a software developer what they spend their time doing, they’ll tell you that they spend most of their time writing code.
However, if you actually observe what software developers spend their time doing, you’ll find that they spend most of t
-
What has Microsoft ever done for us?!
-
The 3 Christian men facing the death penalty in Indonesia have been executed by firing squad. The men were executed just after midnight on Friday, 22 September, 2006
links for 2006-09-21
Author: Glenn Slaven21 Sep
-
How much does it cost to put a rocket into space? Three engineering students at Cambridge University in the UK reckon they’ll be able to do it for just £1000 ($1879).
-
much of the chess master’s advantage over the novice derives from the first few seconds of thought. This rapid, knowledge-guided perception, sometimes called apperception, can be seen in experts in other fields as well.
-
The NSW state government yesterday went to market for its desktop, notebook and small server needs for at least the next three years, designating the ability to purchase Linux-based systems as “highly desirable”.
-
404 - Someone who is clueless. From the Web error message, “404 Not Found,†which means the document requested couldn’t be located. “Don’t bother asking John. He’s 404.â€
-
Great free fonts with a very nice browsing interface
-
Linux creator Linus Torvalds today signalled his enjoyment of the annual “Talk Like a Pirate Day” festivities, using the nautical lexicon to launch an update to the kernel at the heart of his open source operating system.
links for 2006-09-20
Author: Glenn Slaven20 Sep
-
Not everyone takes “no” for an answer when told they’re stuck in a broadband blackspot.
-
Matt explains about Google’s recent changes to URL queries & how it impacts search results
-
Patriotism is not the last refuge of the scoundrel. “I have a right to my opinion” is. It’s amazing how often people, backed into a corner by logic or evidence, will resort to “I have a right to my opinion,” asserting their right to cling to their opinion
-
In in-page javascript interpreter, very handy for testing javascript calls
-
I know it’s been seen before, but it’s still cool
-
After reading about how much people like MbUnit, and a quick chat with Phil, I decided to give it a whirl. I was floored. MbUnit is like unit testing on crack. Sure, it has all your basic Asserts and other standard methods, but then on top of it there are
-
An Outlook 2007 plugin that would search Snopes for the contents of an email to see if it’s a known hoax
Garfield on the reaction to the Pope
Author: Glenn Slaven19 Sep
At work we have a lot of newspapers lying around the office (yeah, I know, ironic seeing as all our business is online, but anyway) and someone had left the paper from Sept 14th open to the comics page.
I noticed that Garfield seems to have definite views on the current firestorm over the Pope’s recent speech about Islam and faith & reason.
- Comments
- Filed under: Uncategorized, Tags: World Events
