In Perl, some people will do funky stuff like this:

package FooBar;
use constant {
CONFIG_VALUE_A = 'foo',
CONFIG_VALUE_B = 'bar',
};

If I want to override those values (e.g.: while running your application on my system, or building a test suite) I have to use a construct like this:

*{FOOBAR::CONFIG_VALUE_A} = sub { 'my new foo' }; ( Read more... )

In which I contrast the Kobo Touch, Sony Reader and iPad 2 in terms of reading books.

Let me cut to the chase: If I was forced to choose only one of these devices, it would be the iPad. But for the purposes of exclusively reading books I would choose the black Kobo Touch.( No photos, sorry. I can't capture the bedazzling effect of the Sony Reader's shiny bezel. )

Some points to consider when reviewing your backup strategy: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/poremba/bulletproofing-your-data/?cs=49333Read more... )

Due to my weak and undisciplined nature I have succumbed to "more shinies syndrome" and now I have a Kobo Touch. I have a large collection of O'Reilly books in ePub format, which work just fine on the iPad, but crash the Kobo. So I set out to massage my O'Reilly books to the point that they are usable on the Kobo.

( Details of my book massaging behind the cut )

http://original.jamesthornton.com/fun/blinkenlights.html

The 220 was a 10 digit plus sign BCD machine. Each register was displayed on the console as an 11 x 4 matrix of neon bulbs. The bulbs were in a plastic "eggrate" matrix. The kicker, and the reason for the ( Read more... )

Say you have a MySQL database on one machine, which you want to move to a new machine. The database on disk takes up 60G of space. Oh, and you want to test some potentially destructive software using this database.

( What do you do? )

Let's blink an LED. But we'll do it with an Arduino. And just to be difficult, we won't use delay and we certainly don't want to spin around in a loop watching a number go up slowly until it matches our expected value. The person who wrote that example should be shot.
( Of course, if you're not particularly interested in programming an Arduino, there's nothing here of interest to you. )

The Arducopter Arduino.mk makefile is the most useful of the various attempts at producing a standalone command-line environment for Arduino programming.

( More about implementing the Arducopter makefile behind the cut )

Some of you might be interested to know that Mac OS X Lion's terminal is actually 256 bit colour now:


( Read more... )

Today's rant outsourced: “rant on = qw(HTML::Mason Embperl Template etc);”.

( On the other hand, there's more to this rant after the cut )