Planet TLLTS

97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts by Kevlin Henney

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I ready one of these a day at work and found each bit of wisdom valuable. Each of the 97 things is about 2 to 3 pages by a well established programmer. The advice I found to be spot on and made me reflect back on my past and current projects and how things could be done differently.

Do not expect any indepth discussion of design patterns, testing techniques or any of that, but great advice to consider as you perfect your craft.



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The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a delightful read. All the friends are back and Dorothy comes to live in the land of Oz with her Aunt and Uncle permanently. But what is this brewing on the horizon? The return of the Nome king with an army of wicked denizens from the outskirts of the Oz ready to invade the Emerald City via a tunnel they make beneath the Deadly Desert.



I loved reading about some of the other hidden villages and kingdoms of Oz. Utensia was a delightful play on words, hilarious and a land I hope they someday return to.



What more can I say? This series is aboslutely charming.



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The Waste Lands by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great book! I like how all the characters have now come together and are working their way to the goal. King had me riveted to my Kindle and excitedly awaiting the next moment to pick up where I left off. Tik-Tok man seems like he is going to be a very interesting adversary.



As more layers of the Gunslinger’s world are peeled away the universe becomes more and more fascinating. I look forward to the book devoted to unearthing the Roland’s past and the history of his world.



Out of all the characters I have the hardest time picturing Susannah. For some reason I picture her as an older woman, close to senior citizen age. I don’t know where I got idea from and I am not sure King ever declared her age. But I think I am wrong on that.



The crowning element of the story for me is the riddles. I love riddles and they were fun to figure out as they were presented. Great stuff!



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Hooray! Gnome3 is in the standard Arch repositories! Hooray! I install it! Boo! It says my grahpics card is not capable of runnin Gnome-Shell so it drops into fallback mode. What the heck?

I had the same problem with Unity on my Ubuntu system at work. Now granted both of these machines are at least four years old and running an fairly run of the mill Nvidia chipset for their time. The laptop has an Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 and the workstation at work is sporting a GeForce 5300. Now the issue with Ubuntu is that none of the Nvidia drivers will work with the card as it has been deprecated by Nvidia. I did not think the same thing would be an issue with the System76 I have, but the odd thing is that the Nvidia drivers work just fine and I do have 3d acceleration. So why won’t Gnome3 run?

I even went as far as to use the Nouvueau driver and that did not improve things at all. I’m stuck with fall back and I am stuck with Gnome2 when it comes to Unity at work. But you know what? That is fine by me because I use Fluxbox anyway so bully!

Still, this brings up an interesting problem with regards to both Unity and Gnome Shell being so dependent on 3d Acceleration. Having to deal with Nvidia’s closed driver leaves a good portion of users out in the cold. Do ATI cards fare any better? I’ve only heard bad things regarding that hardware for some time now. How about Intel? That seems to be the way to go. But alas, there is no way I can swap out the chipset in a laptop. And the cost of an AGP card that would work in my workstation at work far exceeds the price I am willing to pay just to give Unity a spin

Nope, looks like I am relegated to Fluxbox for the time being and that is fine by me.

Today we put our cat Miroku down. The family was devistated but we were all there to send him off. He passed away from complications of a urinary blockage. On Monday I came home to find him a bit lethargic and bloated. He seemed uncomfortable and kept moving from place to place around the house. He threw up a bit but did not seem completely out of it. When I mentioned to the wife that he looked sick the kids had said he vomited upstairs the previous night. I thought it was just a hairball or something he ate. It’s not uncommon for one of our cats to have a digestive issue and appear unhappy.

Around 10:00 he took a turn for the worse and was almost completely down. He would not move and smelled awful. We rushed him to the vet. They kept him overnight with a cathater. The next morning we transferred him to our regular vet. He remained lethargic. His condition did not change much the next 24 hours and this morning they did some blood tests. The results were grave, there his levels for kidney functionality were off the charts and his potasium level at a lethal amount. She was surprised he lived this long.

We went in to say our goodbyes to Miroku. The Vet – Todd’s Lane Vetrinary Hospital was awesome. He was gently put to sleep and we brought him home for burial. Damn I am going to miss that cat!

Miroku was half Manx. At a time when we had three other cats, and Erin said no more, she came home with this kitten from a garage sale. He moved with us from Pennsylvania down here and has been a awesome cat the whole way. Miroku was always there to snuggle at night and I am going to miss that greatly. He did not deserve to die this way, it’s almost a pointless death. He was only 7 years old!

Urinary tract blockage is one of the number one killers of male cats. Its sudden onset is perplexing and cats typically die within 24 hours. I never knew of this killer and while we hoped to catch it in time with Miroku, ours was not the case. Stones form in the bladder and block the urethera; the cat cannot urinate. His bladder filled rapidly backed up into his kidneys causing irreversible damage. So male cat owners, be aware of this. It happens extremely fast!

We will miss Miroku so very, very much.

Another geek recipe for you. I haven’t posted anything for a while as I have been super preoccupied with other things. My mother was here for a visit a couple weeks ago and reminded me of a family favorite recipe and I thought I would share!

1 can Campbells Cheddar Cheese Soup
1 can good tunafish
1 tube of your favourite biscuits
1 cup milk

Combine soup, milk and tuna in pot over low heat.
Preheat oven according to biscuit directions on label.
Arrange biscuits in pan and spoon small amount of soup mixture over each
biscuit (just enough to cover the top).
Bake biscuits according to directions on label.
Remove biscuits and serve hot with generous amounts of soup mixture
spooned over the top.

** For a bit of added zing, put a little ground black pepper and a few
shots of your favourite hot sauce in the soup mixture while cooking.

Yum!