Dangerous Mistakes

Posted and filed under My Life, rants.

I was blessed — or cursed, I suppose, depending on your point of view — to have my first “real” programming job in the medical field. I wrote software which managed the processing of human tissue (knees, fascia lata, femurs, etc.) for implantation into human patients. I was very young and very stupid at the… Read more »

WordPress Wednesday: Thesis Theme Tag Text

Posted and filed under Programming, Web Design.

Today I’m going to explain how to make your WordPress blog display a special note based on a tag associated with a post. This tip is uniquely written for users of Chris Pearson’s awesome Thesis Theme, but if you are crafty enough with WordPress, you’ll be able to use it regardless of the theme you’re… Read more »

What Have You Tried?

Posted and filed under Programming, Software.

Over at mattgemmell.com I just found an excellent article about software development and a must-read for any programmer, at any level: If you’re a developer and you’re about to ask another developer a technical question (on a forum, via email, on a chat channel, or in person), you’d better be ready to answer the question… Read more »

Slicing Code with a Rusty Razor Blade

Posted and filed under My Life, Programming.

A year or two ago I was returning to my office from lunch with some co-workers. I spotted an old, rusty, razor blade on the sidewalk. “You don’t see that every day,” I said. In retrospect I was probably wrong. Everyone likely sees dozens of rusty razor blades on sidewalks and in gutters every day…. Read more »

I Always Said ColdFusion Sucked

Posted and filed under Programming, technology.

I was glad to see ColdFusion make it on this list of the top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills. It’s a ridiculous “language” that I never bothered to learn and used to tell people was craptastic and worthless when it was brand new and everybody and their mother was looking for people that knew… Read more »

WordPress Gunning-Fog Analysis PlugIn

Posted and filed under blogtech, Programming.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to build a WordPress plugin to display a Gunning-Fog analysis on his blog. The math part was pretty easy stuff. I was having a borch of a time getting the plugin to count syllables, so I hunted through Google and found someone else had written… Read more »

Amazon Wishlist Yahoo! Pipe

Posted and filed under Programming.

Today I decided that my life would not be complete if I didn’t learn how to use Yahoo! Pipes. So I gave it a shot. I couldn’t really think of anything I wanted in a pipe, so I decided to try building one that would let me search eBay for items on my Amazon wishlist…. Read more »