Paralipsis

If you’re using eclipse and find yourself getting the following errors:
Cannot connect to keystore.
java.io.IOException: This trust engine is read only.

It’s probably related to certificate installs (such as that needed to complete the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse install).
After doing that, try running keytool -list, if you get an IOException about an invalid keystore, then delete ~/.keystore
The [...]

Jakob Nielson’s Alertbox has been one of the best sites on web usability for many, many years. A recent post does a nice job of showing just how pointless it is to argue in a meeting about what design is probably the best.
testing just 2 users per design reduced the probability of being wrong [...]

Last year Dave Weiner did a great job of defining what makes for good blogging. The criteria don’t just apply to blogging, but any writing in general.
People talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course).
Of course, Joel Spolsky, who [...]

It takes a while to read, but it’s very much worth it. If you still think you should be writing your own crypto code, or even using native crypto libraries, you are DOING IT WRONG.
P.S. Same goes for parsers! Learn to use ANTLR or any other of the hundreds of parser generators out [...]

I was trying to get eclipse to install an update and it just wouldn’t do it. Specifically the m2eclipse plugin. I kept getting errors about being unable to fix a dependency.
“maven eclipse can not find a solution 3.4.2.M20090204-0800″
Turns out several things help. 1) turn on every site as an available update site, [...]

Anyone can do the lame robocop and a unicorn thing, but unicorns are so 90’s when robocop is clearly a hardocore 80’s icon. Therefore he is better associated with rap music. The video below manages to pack the entire movie into a single 10 minute rap music-video.

Over the past years I’ve driven many, many miles on Los Angeles freeways in conditions of heavy to light traffic. In that time I’ve seen lots of different, interesting, and sometimes even scary things being done on the road. Today was something I’ve never, ever seen before. I got to spend about [...]

Found on the internet as a Best of Craigslist post.
A couple of weeks ago we decided to cruise out to Ryan’s Steakhouse for dinner. It was a Wednesday night which means that macaroni and beef was on the hot bar, indeed the only night of the week that it is served. Wednesday night is [...]

Whether you are in product development or customer service, more or less every single measure of success comes down to how well you have managed expectations. After all, what is a failure other than a customer or consumer considering you to have missed their expectations?
This can cut both ways, however. I recently ordered [...]

I was thrilled to see that in the 200 best/worst jobs list, I have BOTH the 5th best and 5th worst jobs. I am both a software engineer (rank 5) and an EMT (rank 196).