Evolutionary Goo

My last post was on December 31 of last year. I know everyone is waiting on pins and needles for my first post of 2009. I’ve been very busy with work and life as well as suffering a writers block, so I thought to get things going again I’d post an update of what I have been up to.

• I’m now managing a software group at IEI. I’m also still writing code. Balancing both responsibilities will be an exciting challenge for me this year.
• Java is the primary technology and language I develop software in. The new language I am focusing on is Python. I already written a number of things in Python, but still have a long ways to go in mastering the language.
• I didn’t get a chance to attend No Fluff, Just Stuff in St. Louis this weekend. Last year’s was very good, so this is a bit of a disappointment.
• I’ve attended a couple of the Lambda Lounge meetings, so far this year. This is an exciting user group focused on functional and dynamic languages.
• I went skiing in Breckenridge a couple of weeks ago. The weather and the snow were both great. It rocked.

My blog got hacked a couple of weeks ago by someone who was inserting hidden Viagra and other assorted drug links into my pages. This was actually brought to my attention by Google, who said they were temporarily removing my blog pages from their indexes until the problem gets fixed. I believe that I have the problem fixed now, but will need to wait a few days to see if the hacker comes back and is able to get around the security I know have in place.

The drugs ads are showing up, because the hacker tricked Google into thinking my site was related to the drugs found in the hidden links. Therefore, Google serves up the drugs ads to match what it thinks is on my site. If I can get a fix in place, I will notify Google to reindex my pages. I figure I will leave the drug ads up in the meantime, because I wouldn’t want to deny any of you the chance to get some great medications over the web.

What was reported on this blog almost a year ago, is now making the national headlines.

Keep your blog reader pointed here for up to date information on the things that matter!

Back in early June, I asked the question “Do you use two spaces between sentences”. I was surprised by the amount of response I received. Well, now I can claim that I CORRECTLY type one space between my sentences. I think I was actually cured of my double space problem a couple of weeks ago. So instead of taking two weeks to convert, it took more like eight. Old habits die hard.

If you track a ton of blogs, I’m sure by now you have found out that when you return from an offline vacation you will have thousands of unread blog posts. Obviously, you can’t read them all in just a few minutes, but its fun trying to make a quick pass through them in twenty minutes or so.

Here are the best three I found tonight:

• Learning from Dave Winer
• Welcome to a MetaMatrix Blogger
• Why there’s no Rails Inc

Since I learned to type on a typewriter (am I dating myself here?), I have used two spaces to separate sentences. Today, I still use two spaces when I type on the computer. You haven’t seen those spaces on this blog, because WordPress, like most other blog software, removes the second space.

This begs the question, “are two spaces appropriate when typing on the computer?” I have come across multiple sources suggesting that two spaces are not appropriate. They argue the extra space creates unwanted space between sentences and that variable width fonts will take care of the spacing for you. I happen to agree with the arguments. I am now trying to retrain myself to use only one space. Even as I write this post, I am going back and removing the extra spaces. I know WordPress will remove them, but all software will not, so I feel the need to change my typing habits. I’ve read that it should take me about two weeks to retrain myself.

What about you? Do you use one or two spaces between sentences when typing on a computer?

I’ve been using Firefox since its 1.0 version and it is by far my favorite browser. I think the killer feature in Firefox that caused me to switch to it from Internet Explorer was tabbed browsing and how fast it started up. Last month Microsoft released a new version of Internet Explorer (version 7.0) that includes the tabbed browsing feature. However, Mozilla released a new version of Firefox (version 2.0) shortly after that includes another killer feature - SPELL CHECKING. I would never have thought that spell checking would become such an important feature to me. Now I never have to worry about whether a Web site provides spell checking or not, as Firefox takes care of it for me. Any form field will automatically be spell checked and misspelled words are underlined in red. You even get the option of adding words to a local copy of the Firefox dictionary. This is especially handy when writing blog entries, since the version of WordPress I am using doesn’t have a spell checker.

It is Blog About 5 Things Week at the Instigator Blog. A previous list posted on this site last month has been included on the blog - Five Way To Indentify Increasing Software Complexity.