http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt The Pelennor Fields White Book: Red Book reincarnated Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:38:28 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This blog is the horse with three broken legs and a wheezing cough. It is the dog with three metastasized cancerous tumors the size of grapefruits and open sores all over. It is...no, that's enough. This is a grisly notice to the two of you still subscribed to this blog that ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/09/17/mercy-killing/ Magic is bad. There should not be anything magical in production code, because by definition, magic is something not understood. I'm on board with this notion. But what happens when magic is twice as fast (or faster) than normal code? Fast magic is a temptation difficult to resist, particularly when the ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/08/21/code-magic/ [Code Free or Die()](http://dfranke.us/cfod.html "Daniel Franke's musings on hacker society") is an interesting short essay that attempts to explain why hackers are very often also libertarians. It is worth reading even if only to admire the author's *correct* usage of the phrase "begs the question", which occurrence is a rare ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/08/04/why-hackers-are-often-libertarians/ Here's a handy way to count lines in C# source files using `grep` and `wc`, excluding (most) comments and blank lines: grep -Pr --include=*.cs "^.+$" TargetDirectory | grep -v "^\s*//" | wc -l Note, however, that this expression still counts comment blocks enclosed in `/* */`...my grep-fu ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/07/31/count-source-code-lines-with-grep/ I wish I had known about this (if it existed) three years ago. Better yet, I wish I'd invented it! As with all good ideas, it is both simple and beautiful. Now, *at last,* I have an appropriate way to answer the people who come to me asking inane questions ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/07/21/why-dont-i-just-take-care-of-that-then/ ...even on your wedding day! I used to think Amazon Kindles were kind of neat, in an abstract "I'd probably never spend the money" sort of way. Today, though, I'm pretty convinced that I'll never buy one due to the heavy-handed reminder that you don't actually *own* any of those e-books ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/07/17/its-better-than-rayyy-ee-ayyy-nnn/ I am gratified to learn that [developers are born brave](http://www.flickr.com/photos/9968089@N05/2491967672/sizes/o/ "According to various and divers blogs, anyway."). Of course, were we to unceremoniously carry this picture's metaphor to its logical (yet bitter) end, we would realize that the developer's only brave because he put the rat there in the first place. ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/06/19/a-little-esprit-de-corps/ Command-line Russian roulette: [ $[ $RANDOM % 6 ] == 0 ] && rm -rf / || echo '*click*' I like it. http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/06/12/seen-someplace/ I've landed at Marc Grabanski's site a few times on the business end of Google searches about jQuery, and every time I end up there I find myself wishing I could come up with a blog title image like his. [Take a look](http://marcgrabanski.com/ "I'd replace the Starbucks with my Bialetti ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/06/11/some-design-pleasantness/ If you're a programmer, there is no excuse for not knowing about [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com "Brilliance on tap"). I've never seen such a high signal-to-noise ratio combined with such fast responses to programming-related questions. It seems to take me longer to compose a question than it does for the answer to ... http://www.pelennorfields.com/matt/2009/06/05/egotistical-roller-coaster/