Marcus's Musings

Just for once, these are nothing to do with web development in any shape or form...!!

First, some mathematics-related articles from the excellent +plus magazine...

• Maths and art: the whistlestop tour
  An easily digestible, fascinating introduction into the mathematics of art, and by the same token, the art of maths. Escher is mentioned, and is one of my favourite artists - his works never cease to stimulate and intrigue, even the 100th time. The Escher Museum in Den Haag is a must see if you're ever over there, as I was recently. Fractals are also endlessly fascinating, and you can download a fantastic freeware fractal zoomer called Xaos which will let you explore the Mandelbrot set (and other popular fractals) in realtime (in years gone by, each frame took many minutes - if not seconds - to render). It also includes an enjoyable tutorial/presentation on fractal theory.
  
  
• All about averages
  Unfortunately it's all too often that we see misleading statistics presented to us by a supposedly reliable source (newspapers, TV news bulletins, government), so understanding what pitfalls lie behind something (supposedly) simple as an average figure is essential if we are to make sense of the information that we encounter. Sadly, your average man in the street knows little about things, and simply takes such "facts" at face value. Make sure you know better!!
  
  
• Why is the violin so hard to play?
  Or alternatively, "Why do beginners make such an awful racket"?! All is revealed within...

If you enjoyed those, check the archive page for more!


And finally, as a reward for all that cognitive exercise, here's something to make you laugh... The Parents Television Council of America regularly takes offence at various TV programmes, and tries to raise awareness of unacceptable content. All very well and good, you might think. However, rather puzzlingly they seem to think that it's a great idea to post the most offensive clips online, calling the page "Worst TV Clips Of The Week"!! Like a red rag to a bull, one could say... check them out here:

http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/clips/main.asp

I seem to be failing miserably in my aim of blogging original content more frequently... but at least here are a selection of interesting links to keep your brain ticking over:

Photographer Seeks Resolution
You think your 4 megapixel camera takes good photos? Check out what this guy's 4 *gigapixel* ultra-high resolution digital camera produces!

The cranky user: Performance anxiety (Where does all the processing speed go?)
Despite incredible advancements in hardware technology - most of us now have a 2GHz+ computer on our desks (or perhaps even on our lap) with number-crunching capabilities which were only available from supercomputers 10 years ago - Windows and Office are still dog slow! Why hasn't our day-to-day PC experience improved?

Using SQL Server's XML Support
An thorough guide to SQL Server's XML features, nothing new, just well-written and all in one place!

The Dollars and Sense of Building to Standards
A look at the real-world (i.e. economic and practical) advantages of building to web standards. As an aside, I did notice the use of user-agent stats of questionably reliability - see my post in the comments.

CodeCon 2005 has been and gone, bringing some very interesting projects to light:
- Incoherence, a realtime stereo imaging visualisation tool (available as a plugin for Winamp, iTunes, Media Player, etc)
- Mappr and PhotoSpace, two projects which attempt to correlate photos to geographic locations, and leverage existing mapping (and other) services to this end.

And finally...
Marijuana makes blood rush to the head
Interesting new research... and a possible world record? 50 joints a day?! Crazy (man)!

Another mixed bag of interesting reads for you...

x86-64: The Golden Handcuffs

A well-rounded coverage of the history of the latest and greatest processor architecture to hit the consumer PC market, pitched just right so that readers of all levels of experience can get something out of it.

Flash of Unstyled Content (FOUC)

Notes on an annoying CSS rendering phenomenon, and how to work around it.

It Pays to Trust Your Gut

Why we might be deceiving ourselves if we think that rational logic is always the best approach.

Benford's Law

That's a Big Transistor

Microsoft guru Eric Lippert never fails to come up with fascinating blog posts, quite how he gets any work done is beyond me!

ASP.Net: 10 Tips for Writing High-Performance Web Applications

Although this is an ASP.Net article, I thought it would be worth pointing out that tips 1 thru 3 are just as applicable to ASP classic, so if improved performance is your goal, take a look. This article also neatly demonstrates a few killer features of the ASP.Net platform - its sophisticated data and page caching facilities being must-haves in themselves.

Controlling Stored Procedure Caching with ... Dynamic SQL?!?

An excellent article by Adam on how SQL's execution plan caching works, and how you can ensure that you get the best performance out of dynamic SQL

Sequential Numbering/Counting of Records with SQL Server

Numbering of rows in a query result set is a pain in SQL 2000, but it's possible and the article above shows you how. Thank goodness the new ROW_NUMBER() function in SQL Server 2005 will let us do this in the future with a minimum of fuss.

An Overview of SQL Server 2005 for the Database Developer

What's New in FOR XML in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

XML Support in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

ADO.NET 2.0 Feature Matrix

Various noteworthy SQL2005 and .Net 2.0 articles that I've been perusing recently

IE content-type logic

IE's content-type sniffing has been the subject of much debate over the years and a headache for many a developer, so it's nice to find out why things are the way they are. And why it's too late for Microsoft to change it.

First, a couple of posts from scripting guru Eric Lippert whose posts are always as amusing as they are informative - how he manages to spend so much time blogging, I'll never know! Anyway, once again he offers more insight into the inner workings of the windows scripting engines:

Integer Arithmetic In VBScript, Part One
Integer Arithmetic in VBScript, Part Two
Why do built-in JScript functions not appear in the typeinfo?
VBScript Constants Are Not Hoisted

By now, world + dog should have heard of XMLHTTP and know of 101 things it can be used for. It has recently been thrust into the limelight thanks to the beta launch of Google Suggest (and GMail - if you want an invite just let me know, I've got plenty to spare), and Drew McLellan of AllInTheHead.com fame offers some commentary in his recent post "XMLHttpRequest for The Masses".

However, it's not just Google that's at it... there are plenty of other excellent examples of what can be achieved with asynchronous browser HTTP requests, and my current favourite is an interactive map of Switzerland (found via Simon Willison's blog). Incidentally, some time this week I intend to post some VBScript that I wrote a while ago which wraps up all the XMLHTTP code in an easy-to-use HTTP class, and adds a bit of handy higher-level functionality.

Of particular interest to me (because I have a Sony Ericsson P900, and I can run a fully-featured mobile edition of Opera 6 on it) is an article at StopDesign on Targeting Small Screens.

Finally, and on a more light-hearted note, The Daily WTF continues to provide regular chuckles... there's so many there that I'll leave you to check them out yourself.

Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content
The way we surf is changing, and so home pages are becoming less important

The Fallacy of Cheap Programmers
Amen, brother. A must-read for management.

Optimized ADO.NET
Looks like ADO.Net isn't so different from classic ADO... all of the old rules still hold true, but there are plenty of new ones.

An Overview of SQL Server 2005 for the Database Developer
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Overview

Some great Microsoft reference material on the new features in SQL 2005 - the "XCopy" database deployment feature is pretty cool...

Scrollable tables in IE
At last, how to make a table scroll while keeping the headers in place (without having to use two equal-width tables). This is an IE solution, but it's also possible in other browsers (read the comments). Hopefully someone will come up with an crossbrowser hybrid solution... in fact, it probably wouldn't take much work to do one yourself.

SQL Tricks & Tips
Some good tricks here, including efficient CSV generation

XSLT Questions and Answers
David Pawson's invaluable XSLT site - an oldie but a goodie, and well maintained. It's required reading if you're involved with this technology.

A few excellent articles shamelessly stolen from Joel Spolsky's "Best Software Essays of 2004" nomination list... my personal pick of the bunch really:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
This document is an excellent guide on how to ask questions intelligently (and thereby receive relevant answers), and I wish that as many people as possible would read it. During the years that I was the "ASP guru" and mentor at SitePoint Forums I became known for occasionally scolding people for not doing their own spadework before posting, so it's reassuring to see that my views on the subject *are* shared by others, and the author (Eric Steven Raymond) puts the case across very eloquently.

Software Copy Protection
When you decide to start selling the fruits of your labours, how to approach the issue of software piracy is something that all developers must face. Here's some excellent guidance on the topic.

Boosting your search engine ranking: it's no trick
If your site's not any good, you might be able to fool the search engines into ranking you, but users will see straight through it. Instead, focus on delivering useful, well-written, navigable, and standards-compliant content.

How Microsoft Lost the API War
I think I've linked to this in the past, but it's an excellent read, so read it again if you haven't already!

Ronco Spray-On Usability
An extremely amusing look at the major usability problems that Linux users experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any particular camp, it's just undeniably funny (and spot-on).

The Secret Source of Google's Power
Interesting insights into the fully-scalable custom supercomputing network that powers Google. On a related note, this is also worth a read.


Also, now that I've taken a step back from coding and have become a business analyst, I've found these articles particularly poignant:

On Reqs And Specs
Requirements and specifications. Nightmare. Enough said.

The 5 Pitfalls of Estimating a Software Project
The title says it all. Ironically, having hated not having sufficient requirements to work from in the past, I'm still in the same position now, but furthermore I have to pass inadequate info on to the developer that now does the coding that I used to. And so the cycle continues... lol

Ten Ways to Kill Design
All 10 sound strangely familiar...

Dear diary, it's been a while since my last entry...

Microsoft Research DRM talk
Enjoyable and accessible talk about DRM and why it stinks

Hack A Day
Hardware & software hacks galore

Murphy's Law Formalized
Pseudo-science comes to the rescue

Seven Pillars of Pretty Code
How to write readable code

The Dangers of Redesigning a Web Application
It's always tempting to tweak apps and release the code straightaway, but Drew makes an excellent case for waiting a while and batching them as a new release...

Can you think of a worse solution than this?
Another excellent WTF but it's of doubtful authenticity...

Time Travelling
As if jetlag wasn't bad enough, here's another way to get a headache!

Web development mistakes, redux
This list of web dev no-nos is definitely worth a read... no we've all been there, we've all done it. Make sure you're not still doing it! (hat tip to Drew... like the redesign, btw!)

Riddle Me This, Google: Part Two
Another classic post by Eric - the mysteries of the universe explained for all!

Klingon Software Development
The less said about this the better...

Secrets of Great Architects
Abstraction, abstraction, abstraction!


And finally, a couple of handy (and quite definitive) references have appeared on the excellent TopXML site:
XHTML & CSS