Writing by Brent Rockwood
The other day one of my co-workers was asking about some computer books and I realized something — I’ve gotten to the point where I actually prefer reading on a computer screen than on paper. Other than the newspaper I rarely read anything on dead trees anymore. I stopped getting flyers in the mail (thank [...]
I managed to screw up my sleep schedule yesterday (this happens to me all the time, no biggie), and so I woke up at 2am and figured I might as well run down the street to the office and get some work done, sans distractions. Anyhow, around eight in the morning, folks started to filter [...]
Gmail is down. I just moved my brentrockwood.com addresses to Google Apps for Domains. Stay calm. Drink beer. Hope for the best.
I turned on Vista’s BitLocker feature on my laptop last night. First I started by doing a complete PC backup. Then I turned on BitLocker. It asked me to insert a USB drive (I don’t have a TPM, read my earlier article on how to enable this) to save the encryption key. Then it asked me [...]
Every time I resume from Sleep or unlock my laptop with an outboard display connected, the driver for my ATI Mobility Radeon X700 resets the display. In itself, this is no big deal. However, the default relative positions for monitors in Vista is to align along the top edge. Which makes sense if you [...]
This week I spent a little time (and money) updating my mobile kit. My primary machine has been a laptop for nearly two years now, yet I had yet to invest in a proper laptop bag, etc. I had been looking at some of the higher end bags like Timbuk2 and Crumpler, but in the [...]
You have to love astronomers. What with the vernal equinox happening tonight, I was reading about the precession of the equinoxes, which brought me to this…
Over longer time periods, that is, millions of years, it appears that precession is quasiperiodic at around 25,700 years, however, it will not remain so. According to Ward, when the [...]
When creating Windows installers, it is quite common to want to register COM DLL’s, install services, register MMC snap-ins and what have you. If you were doing this manually on your development machine, you would most likely use one of the automated methods of registration — namely DllRegisterServer or a managed installer. However, when creating [...]
This survey (PDF), conducted by Globescan for the BBC, reports that Canada is the most positively viewed country in the world, while Israel is viewed most negatively. Go Canada.
There are, however some inconsistencies. The executive summary indicates that questions were asked about twelve countries. However, the chart contains thirteen results (though Canada is omitted in the [...]
“Checking out names takes time—a couple of weeks in my case”
Tim Bray, The Open Source Process
I’ve heard this over and over. Anyone who has ever dealt with lawyers or the government while trying to do a trademark search or business name search or what have you has wondered…
Why does it take so long. Don’t they [...]
