Gaming Me IRL > Fuck, man. Everything. I push buttons. I turn dials. I read numbers. Sometimes I make up little stories in my head about what the numbers mean. This screenshot from Fallout: New Vegas is one of the best descriptions I can offer of what it feels like to be a
Programming How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake You Can Make as a New Software Engineer > Small deltas in your learning rate make a huge difference in the long run because investments in yourself compound over time. The knowledge and lessons that you learn today create a foundation for the opportunities that you find and seize in the future. And the earlier that you invest
Programming How To Learn a New Programming Language In this article, Rob Conery describes the way I have learned almost every programming language on my CV. If you're struggling with the idea that you're "too busy" to improve your tool set, this method can sometimes help break that negative pattern of thinking.
Programming The Evolution of a Developer Me from ten years ago: "I need to code this all from scratch so that I really understand how each piece fits together. The end result will be efficient and beautiful." Me now: "Is there a framework to do this? I'd like to do this
Gaming What Sex Feels Like There's no feeling in Magic quite like casting Rite of Replication (with the kicker) targeting Master of Waves. (Total of 96 elementals in play that were 6/5s.)
Gaming Representation Matters It may seem dumb to some of you, but the ability to play as one of my female soldiers in MGS5 really improves the experience for me. I like being able to see myself in my digital avatar, and it feels very empowering to see a woman being treated as
Programming When I Forget to Turn Off Debug Mode I know that feel. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I forget to turn off debug mode [http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/09/07/when-i-forget-to-turn-off-debug-mode/] Art by Etienne Issartial, story and text by Thomas Gx, and translation by Mark Nighingale.
Gaming An Important Update Somewhere along the way, the Mass Effect universe has become one of my most favorite sci-fi properties. For a while now, I've told anyone who will listen to my fevered nerd gushings that I consider it second only to Star Trek, and honestly, I feel like the two
Gaming Prediction One of my favorite time-killing past-times is hitting the middle prediction in SwiftKey on my phone to see what it comes up with. For many months, it was "I think I'm going to pass on this." Now, it has shifted to "I just got the
Programming Recursion When your recursive function does exactly what it's supposed to do, for just a moment, you feel like the smartest human who has ever lived.
Gaming Teenage Girls Are Playing Video Games. You Just Might Not Hear Them. > About a quarter of the girls who play video games do play online at least once a month. Unlike boys who play video games online, however, teenage girls tend to turn off their mics. Only 28 percent of the girls who play video games online use voice chat to
Programming Endocrine System I wish I could somehow teach my endocrine system that the physiological reactions that might serve me well if I were being chased by a predator are not actually relevant to debugging faulty SSL connections from a Unix shell.
Programming Semicolonic I have coded in a mix of Java, Perl, PHP, and Javascript for over fifteen years now. Do you have any idea how hard it is to not put semicolons at the end of Python statements?
Gaming Shared Digital Experiences So I'm sitting here at work, and suddenly found myself thinking about this point that Jerry Holkins from Penny Arcade made a few years back. > I think that what happens is that, when you get, you know, enough people together who have a huge bank of shared
Gaming Bioware Trash I have been playing Bioware games since Baldur's Gate, and Mass Effect is one of my top two favorite sci-fi universes. If "Bioware trash" is a thing, I most definitely belong in that particular garbage can. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why BioWare’s games inspire a unique kind of
Sing A Dirge for Bottom Posting Today I'm coming to realization my people have lost the great bottom-posting vs. top-posting email reply war. And—I swear to God—it's a grieving process I'm going through. This must be how the Betamax and HD-DVD people felt.
Programming NASA's Ten Coding Commandments > A huge amount of arbitrary rules and inconsistent guidelines causes code quality of even the most critical applications to suffer, according JPL lead scientist Gerard J. Holzmann. That’s why the lab has released ten coding commandments to govern all NASA software: “The Power of Ten – Rules for Developing
Gaming Shots Fired Yesterday, I got tired of sitting in front of my computer. Conveniently, I've got my computer set up so that it can easily display to my TV. I got out my Xbox 360 controller, sat down on the couch, and fired up Fallout 3, a game I had
Gaming Whoresons Don't Use Turn Signals I've been reading the Witcher books and playing the first Witcher game, and I feel like it's really only a matter of time until someone cuts me off in traffic and I lash out verbally, declaring him to be a "whoreson".
Programming Feels Good, Man That moment when your external query over JDBC actually returns data after literally a month of bargaining and begging for resources, privileges, and whitelisting. #JustDeveloperThings #FeelsGoodMan
Feminism Making Black Widow Truly Awesome The comic series referenced in this article is one of my favorite comics ever written. If superheroes are ultimately power fantasies, this series was a proper power fantasy for women. And I loved every empowering page of it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How To Make Black Widow Truly Awesome, According To Richard K.
Programming Third Verse? Same As the First! I spent my day in front of a computer writing code for my job. I came home, made myself some dinner, and then promptly sat in front of my computer writing code for fun. I take this as a sign that I'm in the right line of work.
Programming If Programming Languages Were Cabs If Programming Languages Were Cabs [http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/02/27/if-languages-were-cabs/] Art by Etienne Issartial, story and text by Thomas Gx, and translation by Mark Nighingale.
