One Line Posts...
They're almost tweets but not... Anyway, why do Americans refer to the collective genius of Rowen Atkinson only through Mr Bean? Yeah, random today ain't they?
Posts
C++: To Reference or Not
Constant Something Reference or Something constant reference... I ask myself this in a similar manner as Prince Hamlet at the start of the nunnery scene... For as a C++ programmer and English speaker I've always found myself most comfortable using the phraseology thus: const int X (0); And to pass this to a function: void foo (const int& p_X); I find this most useful, we're passing a constant integer reference to the function... However, I was recently challenged that this meant something else to a reader, her input was that it meant "constant integer" reference, that is we would ONLY be able to pass "const int" instances, not "int" instances. The thinking being: const int X(0); void foo(const int& p_X); foo(X); Would compile, whilst: int Y(42) void bar (const int& p_Y); bar (Y); Would fail to compile or at least spit out a warning because "int" was not able to be passed into the function as "constant integer" and ...
When to Dark and When to Light
As a programmer I spend a lot of my time either looking at a screen, using a keyboard or both. As such over the years I've gotten quite particular about both, I like a nice crisp screen (or more than one to be honest) and I like my keyboard to be mechanical and be one I enjoy working with, rubber domed plastic crap from hell... For eight to ten hours a day, no thank you. The screens, today it's easier to get nice screens, so I focus more on what's on them, which will generally be my IDE or text editor of choice on the Operating System I happen to be on at the time. And I've come to loath the themes available in some IDE's but only in very specific circumstances... Lets take the majority one of my time, Microsofts Visual Studio, it comes with a dark and light theme, I like both... I LIKE BOTH... But I like them in different circumstances. The Dark theme I like when I'm in my own dark room, when it's late at night, when I'm not interacting with others. ...
Good Riddance Google+
When I was forced (through my YouTube account) to create an interlinked Google+ account I was not best pleased. And I posted as such on the pages there, then never returned to them. As a social media platform it was flawed and ran into the "Google being evil" motif far too strongly. Anyway, I look through BBC News just now and find this .... The fact Google knew about the issue in March and didn't disclose it... Well it's pretty much just the dregs.
I don't really go in for political commentary, unfortunately what's caught my eye is about a bunch of folks at Uni whom are members of the Conservative club... Whatever, there you go... That's not the problem, nor is the fact that they've seemingly gone in for body art... No the point I want to make is... There's one female in the picture... She's allowed them, or they've just, drawn messages on her bosom... She seems non-plus about this.... But look over her shoulder... There's a chap in glasses... Just staring at the back of her head, it needs captioning... "hmm, you smell nice"... "mine, my precious"... It really does... I'm more worried about that than the seeming racism in the shot. And it's an utter disgrace the chap right right in the glasses making the "ok" sign... He's got a Windows symbol on his shirt... Where's the Penguin? Bloody Racist!
My Social Media Stance
I am not on LinkedIn, there I said it... This seems to be something of a mystery to folks, why are you not on LinkedIn? You should be on LinkedIn! I'll send you a link to link up in LinkedIn... The problem is.... I don't want to me on LinkedIn. I don't particularly engage with social media; I understand many many people do, I myself personally do not; facebook is extremely minimal for me, Google+ has a message from me saying I won't be using it; just because my YouTube account got forced to create one (and they did that automatically); and I only use twitter to complain to companies about poor service! Perhaps this is the problem, putting oneself on social media makes you immediately accessible, searchable, findable, but not always in the form nor forum you desire, being pulled from pillar to post. I've been reading a book by Neem James, essentially about how distracting life is and as a developer, I find the number of distractions I can recount moment on moment ...