http://the-brown-dragon.com The Brown Dragon Blog! http://the-brown-dragon.com http://the-brown-dragon.com/favicon.gif http://the-brown-dragon.com/harrypotter.htmI read a lot but I really think this is one of the most interesting things I've ever read. It's not for everyone but if you are the type of person who read [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter ^Harry^ ^Potter^] and thought:...Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTharrypotter.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/backups.htm__Some people aren't built for GUI's__...Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMTbackups.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/gtd-session.htmI conducted a session on "[href http://www.davidco.com/ Getting things Done]" today. I've been using this methodology for years now and I find it really useful....Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMTgtd-session.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/perils-of-bitfields.htmYesterday, our team ran smack into the perils of using [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_field bitfields] in C/C++....Tue, 9 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMTperils-of-bitfields.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/pale-blue-dot.htm|--center-->...Tue, 9 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMTpale-blue-dot.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/prometheus-rising.htm|--center-->...Fri, 5 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMTprometheus-rising.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/rewrite-1.htm[image rewrite-1/rewrite-1.png Yay!] ^^^Yay!^^^ After a year of blogging I've finally upgraded my blogging engine to a new version!...Tue, 2 Mar 2010 00:00:00 GMTrewrite-1.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/restrict.htmA new feature introduced in the [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C99 C99] standard is the %%%%restrict%%%% qualifier....Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMTrestrict.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/lazy-functional-min.htmIn a functional language [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort Quicksort] can be implemented in a wonderfully simple and elegant form:...Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMTlazy-functional-min.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/emacs-run.htmOld [href http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EmacsAsOperatingSystem jokes aside], I do use [href http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ Emacs] on WinXP as a near complete [href http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Dired.html replacement for explorer] and as a very advanced replacement for the command line utilty [href http://www.bayden.com/Slickrun/ SlickRun]....Thu, 1 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMTemacs-run.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/c++isnotc.htm*C++* is NOT *C*....Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMTc++isnotc.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/clip.htmI've started using [href http://www.cygwin.com/ cygwin] heavily on Windows XP and it's mostly been great....Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMTclip.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/downloading-dilbert.htm[href http://dilbert.com/ Dilbert] is a great comic strip. I have a bunch of Dilbert comics at home and recently I found that all the strips had been re-colored and were availble for free on the net....Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMTdownloading-dilbert.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/pva.htmOne small point that often gets overlooked in writing C/C++ programs is the difference between pointers and arrays....Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTpva.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/mutt-vs-outlook.htmHaving switched from [href http://www.microsoft.com/outlook/ Microsoft Outlook] to [href http://www.mutt.org/ Mutt], I've been pretty happy with the experience so far. The biggest pain points are __creating formatting mails__ and __forwarding formatted mails__ but that's manageable for me....Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTmutt-vs-outlook.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/tail-recursion.htmWhat is a recursive process?...Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTtail-recursion.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/grepmail.sh.htmHaving [href muttrc.htm moved to Mutt], I needed a good way to search my mails....Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTgrepmail.sh.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/duffs-device.htmI find it sad that many programmers today, even those that use C/C++ extensively are unaware of gems like [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff's_device#cite_note-0 Duff's Device]. To correct this glaring deficiency (and for the fun of it), I'll give a brief explanation here....Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTduffs-device.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/muttrc.htm[image http://wiki.mutt.org/mutt.gif Mutt]...Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTmuttrc.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/pst-2-mbox.htmI've been using Microsoft Outlook to manage my email for a long time now. It works pretty well although the .PST format isn't very good the product is good enough to compensate....Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTpst-2-mbox.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/two-wolves.htm[image two-wolves.png Cherokee Legend of Two Wolves]...Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTtwo-wolves.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/prime-reexps.htmMany of us use [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression regular expressions] a lot for editing. Though limited in power they are immensely useful tools and can be very helpful....Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTprime-reexps.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/cygwin-full.htm[href http://www.cygwin.com/ Cywin] (on WinXP) is wonderful - it allows access to a Unix-like environment within Windows. I use it a lot but one pain point I have is needing to connect to the net every time I need a new lib or utility installed. This is a pain because the corporate firewall at work cribs on some downloads(size limitations) which is a PITA....Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMTcygwin-full.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/ab2.htmIn [href ab.htm my last post] I discussed the Apache Benchmarking tool and how I used it to test my server against Apache....Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMTab2.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/ab.htmI was discussing an embedded HTTP server I've written with a friend of mine yesterday. I've written it simply to serve local pages for an application I'm working. One cool thing about it is that it is completely asynchronous - spawning no threads yet able to service multiple requests simultaneously....Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMTab.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/rhino-semen-collection.htmThis is an email forward that I got today. I don't know the author so I can't attribute it but it's so funny I just had to post it!...Wed, 3 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMTrhino-semen-collection.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/rand.htmThe %%%%rand ()%%%% function generates a pseudo-random number in the range %%%%[0, RAND_MAX]%%%%. You can initialize it with %%%%srand (seed)%%%%. In most cases, however, we want random numbers in a much smaller range %%%%[0, M)%%%%. What's the best way to do this?...Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 GMTrand.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/bimwhpl.htmThis is mostly for the PLT fans out there - I found it absolutely hilarious!!...Fri, 8 May 2009 00:00:00 GMTbimwhpl.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/calling-conventions-x86.htmWhen debugging with WinDbg you may notice that all functions are not called in the same way. The "traditional" way would be to push arguments on the stack, call the function and check the return value. However, in many places this may not happen. This is because the x86 architecture has several different calling conventions which I will describe below....Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTcalling-conventions-x86.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/multithreaded-cats.htmI found a fun introduction to multi-threading from __Orion Granatir__ of Intel:...Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTmultithreaded-cats.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/editing-binary.htmProgrammers love their editors. Considering we spend most of our work lives within an editor that is not surprising. Most of what we do is in plain text and our editors are geared to do very sophisticated things with text (%%%%:g/^/m0%%%% anyone?)...Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTediting-binary.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/dis-dur-deb.htmA quick way of disabling instructions you don't want to execute during a WinDbg session is to %%%%nop%%%% (no-op) the code in memory. WinDbg takes care of changing the protection over the code segment pages and hopefully it also flushes the instruction cache. In any case, it seems to work fine. Let's look at an example....Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMTdis-dur-deb.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/minus.htmSomehow this comic gets to me everytime:...Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMTminus.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/fast-java-exceptions.htmJava Exceptions are notoriously slow. Heck - _everything_ in Java is slow, but exception handling is slow in most languages and doubly slow in Java....Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTfast-java-exceptions.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/even-after-all-this-time.htmI really like this verse....Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTeven-after-all-this-time.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/freedom-from-free.htmOne of the pain-points in C is manual memory management. Using C++ with RAAI gives you a better time but it's still a hassle to create the RAAI wrappers....Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTfreedom-from-free.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/rss-got-style.htmRSS and IE6. A match made in hell!...Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTrss-got-style.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/music-to-program-by.htmI listen to a lot of music while programming. I find it helps me block out distractions and program better....Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTmusic-to-program-by.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/practical-pm.htmI'm currently managing nine projects at work and I needed a way to keep tabs on all of them without spending all my time on Microsoft Project. So I came up with this lightweight way to track projects which I think works very well....Thu, 8 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTpractical-pm.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/pass-me-that-array.htmHave you ever wondered how to pass an array as a return value in C? It's not something commonly done, so I'll walk you through it....Tue, 6 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTpass-me-that-array.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/curl.htmI found this small but incredibly powerful tool when looking for a way to automate uploading my website. [href http://curl.haxx.se/ cURL] is like a swiss-army knife for transferring files. From the documentation on the site:...Sun, 4 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMTcurl.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/svn2git.htmI've been trying out [href http://git.or.cz/ Git] to see if I should move my SCM solution (currently in [href http://subversion.tigris.org/ SVN]) to it....Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTsvn2git.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/boy-or-girl.htmThis is a cute little problem - one that looks straightforward when it isn't!...Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTboy-or-girl.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/ripping-with-sed.htmI just bought the [href http://www.amazon.com/Anthems-Various-Artists/dp/B000WTZ702/ Ministry Of Sound : Anthems (1991-2008)] and I wanted to rip it into my music collection (who sticks with CD's these days?)....Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTripping-with-sed.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/EWD831-whynumberingshouldstartatzero.htmBeginner programmers tend to get confused over the convention that __array indexes start with *0*__ in languages like C/C++/Lisp rather than the more natural *1* (in Pascal or Lua for example)....Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTEWD831-whynumberingshouldstartatzero.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/browsing-iso-files.htmIf you need to view an .ISO file in Windows XP, there is a small, free, UNSUPPORTED, utility from Microsoft that works beautifully....Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTbrowsing-iso-files.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/embedding-files-in-c.htmRecently I needed to access a text file containing a database schema in my code. Now this schema is tied to my application and should ideally be bundled with the exe somehow....Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTembedding-files-in-c.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/what-would-willie-do.htmI'm currently re-reading the Modesty Blaise books. Somehow I'm not a great fan of the comic strip but I absolutely love the novels!...Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTwhat-would-willie-do.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/yourself-or-someone.htmLast Saturday BG Sir, the CEO of our company took a session on "Programming Foundations"....Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTyourself-or-someone.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/einstein-problem.htmA colleague of mine sent me this puzzle to solve. It's apparently called [href http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_Puzzle Einstein's problem] because popular myth is that he invented the problem (and said that 98% in the world wouldn't be able to solve it to boot! :-D )....Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTeinstein-problem.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/c++2c-with-sed.htmWhen I program in C, I like keeping my comment in the old C-style (%%%%/* */%%%%). Unfortunately, I'm so used to the C++ comment style (%%%%//%%%%), that my code invariably gets peppered with it....Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTc++2c-with-sed.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/sed-cheatsheet.htmSed is an under appreciated tool of remarkable power. It can be hard to use but it has its rewards - using Sed is akin to solving simple puzzles....Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTsed-cheatsheet.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/parse-wud.htmTo get a nice, graphical display of some update logs for my SCM solution, I wrote the following quick and dirty parser....Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTparse-wud.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/oh-c.htmWhen I joined this C/C++ shop after nearly six years of Java, I spent a bit of time brushing up on my then rusty C/C++ skills....Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMToh-c.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/nightsky.htmThis is a very neat introduction to star gazing...Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTnightsky.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/win-envvars.htmThe following is a list of environment variables that are available in Windows XP. It sometimes comes in useful....Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTwin-envvars.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/win-cmds.htmThe following is a list of commands that can be used in Windows XP to bring up various administrative tools. It is sometimes helpful to do this without needing to click through the GUI....Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTwin-cmds.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/cc-cmds.htmBase clearcase has a large number of commands and each command has a large number of options. To help administrators I have listed some clearcase commands that I found useful....Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTcc-cmds.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/binary-search.htmRanga galloped out of the woods onto the clearing where Charlie and the brown dragon were arguing. His horse, a magnificent black Arabian, snorted in fear as it caught the acrid smell of dragon. Annoyed by its own instinctive terror, the proud stallion put on an extra burst of speed that delighted Ranga. He loved making a dramatic entrance....Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTbinary-search.htmhttp://the-brown-dragon.com/blogging.htmHOORAY!!!!!!!...Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMTblogging.htm