Programming is like sex

… because:

  • One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.
  • Once you get started, you’ll only stop because you’re exhausted.
  • It takes another experienced person to really appreciate what you’re doing.
  • Conversely, there’s some odd people who pride themselves on their lack of experience.
  • You can do it for money or for fun.
  • If you spend more time doing it than watching TV, people think you’re some kind of freak.
  • It’s not really an appropriate topic for dinner conversation.
  • There’s not enough taught about it in public school.
  • It doesn’t make any sense at all if you try to explain it in strictly clinical terms.
  • Some people are just naturally good.
  • But some people will never realize how bad they are, and you’re wasting your time trying to tell them.
  • There are a few weirdos with bizarre practices nobody really is comfortable with.
  • One little thing going wrong can ruin everything.
  • It’s a great way to spend a lunch break.
  • Everyone acts like they’re the first person to come up with a new technique.
  • Everyone who’s done it pokes fun at those who haven’t.
  • Beginners do a lot of clumsy fumbling about.
  • You’ll miss it if it’s been a while.
  • There’s always someone willing to write about the only right way to do things.
  • It doesn’t go so well when you’re drunk, but you’re more likely to do it.
  • Sometimes it’s fun to use expensive toys.
  • Other people just get in the way.

from Digg

RSS feed up to spec

I’ve done a bit of research and updated the Atom feed to be up to spec (Atom 1.0). For those of you reading this post via RSS readers pointed to the old feed located at http://www.nargalzius.com/blog/index.rdf, you should be seeing a painfully obvious disclaimer above this (and every succeeding) entry. I’m leaving the old feed alive for a few more weeks, that (and the announcement header) should give people enough time to update their links to the new feed.

The new feed is located at: [http://www.nargalzius.com/blog/rss.xml][1]

[1]: http://www.nargalzius.com/blog/rss.xml “Right click and copy location to your RSS reader” Read More

Flickr-ized

I decided to maximize the use of Flickr as an image repository specifically for my blog. While it would be nice to just move the entire gallery to Flickr, I really don’t like the idea of not being able to skin it (and that the gallery’s URL will be outside of my domain). I’m not sure if they have an API released that allows a fully blown gallery to be created outside of their servers, but for now it’s not an option for me.

I finally finished editing each and every entry to fix the broken image links after I moved everything to Flickr. And while modifying the posts, I realized some things that may be useful in case you guys didn’t know it yet. One cool thing about Flickr is that stores its images statically, which allows you to do some legitimate hotlinking to [your] images in the Flickr server from virtually anywhere.

The drawback was that you had to do a decent amount of clicking before you can get to the “static URL” field of the file… at least that’s what I experienced until now. This post is just a discussion on how to access and use those static URLs quickly and efficiently for your hotlinking needs. Read More

Blog redesign finished!

Version 7.0 is practically done. I just have to put some minor tweaks and apply the template to the rest of the site (music section, etc.) But as far as the blog goes, it’s a done deal.

Although I know RSS is basically a more efficient way of reading blogs, and that those people who are actually savvy enough to be reading multiple CMS(ish) type systems probably just aggregate their content via RSS readers (hence rendering any design of an updated site useless); I still went on ahead with changing the look.

I guess deep down, I still want people to visit the actual pages once in a while and see the layout of the posts in all their glory. After all, RSS readers have their own stylesheets applied to the content, so you get a very uniform look for all the sites you read from – which pretty much strips the sites from their personalities. I designed the new look to be easy on the eyes and (hopefully) a pleasurable experience for visitors and readers alike. Not to mention the fact that there are a bunch of features in the site that can never be replicated on an RSS reader. Read More