Xagronaut

Steve McConnell is one of my heroes. His book, Code Complete, is one of my favorite programming texts–definitely a classic. Guess what?

Steve has a . That’s pretty cool. Here’s . But Steve doesn’t have weblog

. Maybe he should start one at , his current company.

Maybe when you write like he does, you just wait a couple years, put out another classic book, and wait two more years. Blogging, daily or weekly, doesn’t fit into that model. Maybe that’s what he prefers.

But, as I have been on a binge of consuming the blogs of some great industry minds, I would almost expect to see a blog from the great Steve. So far, I’ve found blogs for the following:

I’m also hoping to find a blog from Larry Wall. He has a too, but not a weblog

. Here’s . Based on his website, though, I guess he values time spent on things other than blogging.

posts by :

Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some ask what happened.

download movie megan is missing hd

hall pass legal download

Ian’s site has a very cool graphical layout–something I miss when I convert to “all RSS, all-the-time” blog reading.

My visual layout here is very basic. It’s one of the pre-packaged themes that comes with Radio Userland. One of the things I that fall very low on my priority list is a custom redesign of this blog. Oh, well, it is what it is.

I today, after listening to the on . I found his . After browsing his list of podcasts I came across and . As I was typing, I decided to throw in this tip (reposted here for the benefit of readers):

I filter podcasts through NewsGator Online Edition. I subscribe to podcast feeds via NG online and review them occasionally. I pick the ones I like and save them to a My Clippings feed for podcasts. I am subscribed to that feed on my home PC via Radio Userland’s news aggregator.

Radio Userland downloads enclosures in the background at a configurable number of hours after midnight. The next day, the podcasts I selected are cached on my PC.

This allows me to selectively download podcasts instead of wholesale downloading anything that comes across in the feed. Of course this technique means that the downloads are a little time-delayed, but I like the control.

Michael Lehman has a pretty cool radio voice. He can read fast too. Just listen to him give the contest information for the PDC event in the Buzz Cast!

Michael’s podcast, the Manic Minute is available on his Radio weblog via .

I found an that describes several command-line utilities that can automate SQL Server tasks.

These commands include:

We use a couple of these commands at my current client as part of our build/migration process.

I’ve been reading some “alternative” blogs at . By alternative, I mean not my usual faire. I’ve been sampling the Journals category and Kathryn Lively’s St. Blog’s. Interesting what you can find when you take the time to try something new.

blogs about shutting down his blog and why he did it. It makes sense. He said that his motives revolved around the need for attention and the craving that it forms. I can relate. When I first started blogging, I was checking my referrer logs every hour to see if I had any hits. I still check my logs regularly, but not in the same way. Plus, any comments that came my way were a big bonus. “Wow, someone real out there knows that I’m alive, and they read my blog!” You get the idea.

Then there was a provocative, well-written, beautifully presented journal called Oddly enough, the thoughts and events recorded were so personal that I was both moved and bothered. Bothered because I was reading something so personal. I hope that Candace, her family, and Matthew of illness.

I tried some other blogs, too, only to find that they had fallen prey to link rot or some other form of abandonment, such as .

But then I was quickly back to my old haunts in the techBlogs category. I must say, even though I’m not a Mac fanatic (don’t love ‘em, don’t hate ‘em), I was totally

impressed with ’s graphic design, layout, and content. Sweet and kudos! I gave a quick read to his description of an . Did I get that right? Curious. His blog archives use PHP. I wonder what system he uses to run his weblog. Is it homegrown?

I had to check in at to see how things were going. It appears that , , with the bane of bloggers everywhere: comment spam.

On another note, I just discovered that now has a of their online service. Very cool! I tried the trial edition, and I plan to buy it when I can. It’s only $29, so not a bad deal.

. My blog replacement is coming alongabout 3800 lines so far. The database layer has been stable for the last two weeks, and I have all my current MT blog entries imported. Im currently working on the web layer…

[]

Fun, fun, fun!

I think it’s great that so many tech-heads are writing their own blogging tools. I know the old addage about not reinventing the wheel, but when you reinvent the wheel, you get to keep, control, and distribute your wheel as you please. Let’s just hope that Nu Cardboard’s new wheel doesn’t turn out to be a tire.

. Dave Kopper explains why ‘E-mail just can’t be trusted anymore at all, ‘ detailing an email spoofing problem similar to one that recently almost got my Redland Baptist Church website shut down. Audio Engineers, lend us your … I’m sorry,… []

via , on how genXers are destroying their futures/posterity. Somehow it makes me feel guilty for being a member of the DINKs (Dual Income No Kids) category (well, sort of–my wife is retired) with no likelihood of change.

Am I less of a citizen of God’s kingdom for not wanting kids? Even though God gave the commandment in Genesis to ‘go forth and multiply,’ I don’t think his love and mercy is conditional on having offspring. Besides Paul indicates that it’s actually good to stay single if you can manage it (read ‘no poopy diapers’). This is a far cry from the promiscuity described in the story above. That’s not what I’m defending.

I think that the decision to remain childless must be inspected for selfishness. At least a couple of times. Then, I say, exercise your liberty in Christ. But, as Christ said, “…suffer the little children to come unto Me…” Children are precious in God’s sight, poopy diapers and all.

is a versatile open source content
management system. I’m trying to install it for my own use, but I need to
upgrade my PHP version first. My friend suggested that I rebuild the
server with an updated Mandrake or SUSE distribution. I’m currently
running Mandrake 8.2, and I can’t get patches for it anymore.

It just sounds like the task is going to be a major pain. Plus, I don’t
think I have any way to burn an ISO image from Windows XP. Drat! Maybe
I’ll have to dual boot to Win2K to use my CD Creator software that no
longer works under XP. More work.

A friend of mine is considering replacing his entire with Drupal. I think
that’s a smart move. Right now his website is still developing (partially
under construction) and I think now is a good time to make a move like
this. It will his as well as a number of
other features. Good stuff. Jeff K., if your out there, I hope you don’t
mind me referring to your site. As they say, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

I’m beginning to loathe my TiVo. Maybe loathe is a strong word. It sucks my time away. I can record an unseemly amount of shows that I have no time to watch. If I try to follow any of them, I have no time for the richer things in life, like blogging for example. Plus it’s been a long while since I wrote any code whatsoever at home. Scary!

Ahh! It feels so good to get back to the keyboard and blog again. I didn’t watch television/TiVo-vision all evening. I left that to my wife. Instead, I spent the evening sorting out my medications for multiple sclerosis and depression. I did say the “richer” things in life, didn’t I? Anyway, I’m not sour about it. I actually felt like I got something accomplished.

You know what, this felt so good, I think won’t wait so long to do it again next time.