Why There is So Much Tech in Ag Today
The short answer is some people are too stupid to be farmers. True, nobody wants to hear that, but, it’s a fact none the less. The stupidity progresses all the…
Our Recent Blog
HUAWEI and the Phallus of Clouds
I have blogged for many years that cloud computing was a train wreck waiting for a plane crash to hit it so it could roll down the hill into a…
MOC Parse error at “std”
You’re being a good little geek. You need to write a Qt program for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms so you are using multiple VMs and keeping the repository on…
Statify WordPress Plugin
I must admit I’m starting to like this Statify WordPress plugin I installed a few days ago. Admittedly it took a bit of playing with to get functional, but it…
Theranos – How All AGILE Projects End in a Regulated World
It’s rather fitting that this story breaks shortly after I finished the first draft of “The Phallus of AGILE and Other Ruminations.” The tale of Theranos is the tale of…
How Canonical Fixes Most Major Ubuntu Bugs
Artful is EOL. ** Changed in: gtk+3.0 (Ubuntu Artful) Status: Triaged => Won’t Fix — You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a . . . Got…
Popups and Popovers are Physically Inexcusable Design Failures
You know, when I’m driving around, I listen to WBBM News Radio 78 quite a bit if I’m close enough to pull it in, this is especially true if I’m…
Walmart to Go Out of Business Soon
I have never been a fan of Walmart (WMT). It’s enslavement and exploitation of the most unfortunate in the world I have always found repulsive. There are also those persistent…
QtCreator – no qmlscene installed
QtCreator, during various stages of its life, has spit the “no qmlscene installed” error out for quite a few people. If you are reading this you probably search for “no…
Linux Anti-Virus Software Experiments
At some point we Linux users have to install anti-virus and malware software, if for no other reason than to protect the token few completely useless Windows boxes left in…
XJed Looks
Since nobody voiced an objection, I wanted to record this here where the pictures would survive. Chris wrote on the jed mailing list that he applied the CBrief patch to…
Elementary Isn’t Free Anymore
The other evening I came into the office and noticed one of my older BOINC machines had the hard drive light seemingly stuck on. I switched the KVM over to…
Another Shining Example of AGILE
Facebook (FB) is one of the most notorious proponents of AGILE. “Move quickly and break things.” AGILE – hacking on the fly without any design or road map while committing…
Never Do a Friday Interview
I have one policy which, every time I break it, ends in tragedy. Never do a Friday Interview. I started this policy over twenty years ago while under contract at…
The Standard Rate Trap
Quite some time ago I wrote a three part series on how to calculate your billing rate. Not enough of you appear to have learned from it given various conversations…
Don’t Brag About Your Software When Your Website Looks Like This
A couple of days ago I drove to my local Casey’s with my little barcode tag in hand looking to rent a movie. I was shocked, shocked I say, to…
Worst User Interface In The History of Man
Once you’ve been in IT for a while you get really offended by sucky user interfaces. For quite some time the rank of worst user interface in the history of…
Why You Suck As a Technical Recruiter – Again
It never ceases to amaze me how the most unqualified people tend to become “technical recruiters.” I had a big conversation a while back with the head/owner of a “consulting”…
Jed – Windows 7 binary
Another on the Jed mailing list created a fresh build for Windows 7. You can find it and other things here.
JED – golang support
I didn’t create this language support file. I’m told it even has a few minor issues. It’s just that attachments have a way of disappearing in the archives, so I’m…
A TCP/IP Software Appliance
In the very near future, every viable business class operating system will incorporate a TCP/IP Software Appliance. This is not a firewall. What we have today serving as firewalls may…
Qt and USB – Pt. 5
My actual USB class changed a bit. #ifndef LOGIKALUSB_H #define LOGIKALUSB_H /* * Copyright (c) 2018 Roland Hughes and Logical Solutions ALL RIGHTS RESERVED * * This code is “as-is”…
Qt and USB – Pt. 4
The physical loading of the database isn’t performed by a class. It is performed by a series of C++ functions all contained in the following source file. /* * Copyright…
Qt and USB – Pt. 3
While this class provides access to the database, the bulk of database creation is split off into a regular C++ file. /* * Copyright (c) 2018 Roland Hughes and Logical…
Qt and USB – Pt. 2
Hopefully you can all see the featured image. It’s a screen shot of our little application so far. No, I didn’t make it pretty. That is not the purpose. Here…
Fake Geeks
One of the most annoying parts about being a geek is dealing with a world full of “fake geeks.” In a world full of fake news, fake sincerity and fake…
Old is New Again
If you live long enough in IT, everything happens at least twice. The first book I ever wrote, “Zinc It! Interfacing Third Party Libraries with Cross Platform GUI’S” has become…
Qt and USB – Pt. 2
Today’s post will be the first of at least two posts about identifying your USB device. I started by adding the following code. out << “ProductID: ” << desc.idProduct <<…
Human Trafficking – Information Technology’s Dirty Little Secret
Rather than cutting and pasting an article I wrote on another site, I’m just going to include a link to the article of same name an ask you to sign…
Qt and USB – Pt. 1
Recently I’ve had some discussions on the qt-interest mailing list about Qt and USB and why it is not integrated in the package. Many of the kids there aren’t old…
The Current eBay Scam
On 4-15-2018 I received the following email: This was for a Guest order placed on 4-05-2018. I don’t run a virus known as Windows, but, being the only member of…
Expires Faster Than Milk
It’s amazing how quickly things become useless and outdated on the Internet. What is worse is people usually choose one of the first five search results and consider it Gospel…
JED – User Manual
Simply because I got tired of looking for it and emailing it around. jed
PhD Job Opening
Since most of you are geeks, and not all of you run BOINC, or you run BOINC but may not be part of GPUGRID I’m sharing this. http://www.multiscalelab.org/jobs/phd-machine-learning-computational-chemistry/ They sent…
A Good Reason to Never Go to Oregon
In the Midwest kids tend to “obtain” alcohol and drive a bit drunk. This is fun. Well, in Chicago they shoot each other, but, that’s Chicago. In Oregon, they run…
An Updated C_MEGA_MAIL Example
Things get dated. It is sad, but true. Time marches on and little snippets of code you squirreled away for future use start to not work as good, or not…
Checking return values
Yes, I had to post one more, hopefully shorter, rant on logger.c. This has to do with “checking return values” in OpenSource code. #ifndef MSG_NOSIGNAL # define MSG_NOSIGNAL 0 #endif…
It’s okay to hate the 12 year old boys who write the bulk of OpenSource code
Even if their biological clock states they are north of 40, they never got past 12 when it comes to coding. In case you can’t see the featured image, the…
The Fight for Net Neutrality
Rather than cut and paste to share I will share this via a link. We are looking at the Savings and Loan scandal all over again. Deregulation creates arch criminals…
This is what happens when you use AGILE and off-shore labor
An account setup form where August is not allowed to have 30 days, but the automated testing via Jenkins passed it with flying colors. off-shore labor combined with AGILE gives…
And to think…
And to think, I wrote what became parts 42, 43 and 44 of “Twenty of Two – The Infamous They” soooo many months ago. Apparently the news media didn’t bother…
And Still We Learn Nothing
People get upset with me when I say the bulk of OpenSource code is written by 12 year old boys, even if they happen to be north of 40 they…
Cadet Bone Spurs – Too Funny
Ah Tammy, I gotta admit you get full points for that one! There was a bit of a kerfuffle when you were running for election involving the VA, but you…
FileZilla and OpenVMS
Oh, you’ve all been there. For whatever reason you are forced to edit something on your Linux desktop (because no professional uses a Microsoft product) Even the editors which _claim_…
Xterm and VT Emulation
Many years ago, when I was writing this book I did so using a Linux desktop using Xterm and the following configuration script. #!/bin/sh # vax # 09-17-96 Bob Ess…
Oops!
Your security is only as good as the staff. Make sure your secure backup cabinet is bolted to the floor. An urgent investigation has been launched by the Australian government…
Why Your LS-120 Quit Working With Windows 7
I have posted numerous times about the LS-120. Just search this blog for LS-120 if you wish to read about it. You can also search on interestingauthors.com/blog. I don’t care…
Bitcoin – Intel – and the Coming Financial Near Apocalypse
Eventually a better version of this will most likely be included in “The Phallus of AGILE and Other Ruminations.” I wanted to get at least part of it written down…
When It Rains It Pours
After having this BOINC machine basically down for a while I decided to give PCLinuxOS another go. I plugged in an external USB drive, inserted my Terabyte Image for Linux…
Just How Poorly are IDE Cables Made?
Since I’m working on two new books, I have, once again, gotten into my LS-120 backup habit. I have been copying files down to a Super Floppy on that one…
Apologies If Posts Were Missing Images
All, My apologies if you visited this blog and found posts missing images making them look ugly. The Media Library for WordPress became corrupted. I spent this morning on-line with…
Another Reason AGILE Sucks
I don’t have a Twitter account, nor do I want one. Interesting Authors Blog has a Twitter feed so once in a blue moon I click the box at the…
Marketing Means Don’t Be an Asshole
Over the past few weeks emails like this one have been circling around. ==== Subject: Do You Want MORE Reviews For Your Newest Book? Hello, I saw on Goodreads that…
Question From a Reader
The following question came in from a reader who happened to catch one of my posts on a programming email list. ==== As usual, I quite enjoy your detailed analysis…
Do You Really Think Any of the On-line Services Keep Your Identity Information Safe?
Maybe the TJ MAXX breach didn’t scare you because you don’t shop there. Maybe the Target breach didn’t scare you because you don’t shop there. Maybe the Yahoo breach didn’t…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 18
The Internet has no shortage of “how to cross compile Qt for Pi Web pages.” Most of them kind of were “right enough” at one point in time for a…
Why 1099?
Some pieces of this content have been in other posts by me. I’m going to put it all in one post so I can just send recruiters here rather than…
Migration Pretty Much Complete
There are always a few tweaks left to do here and there, but the migration is pretty much over. At some point in the next few hours the DNS changes…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 17
On the desktop most of the application looks like this: One of the many things which is nice about widget based projects and the designer is that we get some…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 16
As I pointed out many times in my Qt and databases book, most of the database examples you find online and even in official Qt documentation are shit. This is…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 15
I need to continue yesterday’s discussion about good architectural design a bit. Particularly the part about not shoving everything into RAM. I see two different kinds of C++ developers on…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 14
If this were one of my geek books, we would spend an inordinate amount of time with me dissecting code in order to teach you something. But, you didn’t pay…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 13
Before we jump straight into the code, we need to talk a bit about the design of this application. When I first started coding up a new version using Qt…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 12
We need a third app. While I thought it would be nice to use the other two by themselves, I got looking into the soon to be extinct Android platform…
So – You Think Commodity Hardware and a Free OS are Business Worthy
We may soon, for the first time, see executives go to prison for this ludicrous decision and the actions they took after. If you haven’t heard of the Equifax Inc….
How Far We’ve Come – Pt 11
This post is a bit of housekeeping. Since I started this series my development machines have all moved to KDE Neon so I started reading forward from the original post…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 10
Admittedly we are at the “I hate broken things” stage of this project. The application itself will compile and run locally, but distcc used to work. As you can…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 9
I will begin this post by informing you not everything works yet. I’m including this post in the series because learning how to un-screw stuff is almost as important as…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 8
This is where we begin to merge our discussion of distcc and the Raspberry Pi. The first thing I needed to do was actually get distcc installed on the Pi….
Script Kiddies and the Catastrophes They Cause
This is yet another installment of “Move Quickly and Turn Worthless Shit Into Production.” When you come up through real software development, not this worthless script kiddie shit being touted…
The getkey Trap
This topic came up on my Jed mailing list the other day and, once again, I got in touch with my inner Bill. Your inner Bill? Yes, that cranky old…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 7
Originally I did a stupid thing. It was so stupid I made it the featured image for this post. I used the install/remove applications menu option to install postgresql and…
KDE Neon – Distcc and Qt
One of the tools which was wildly touted years ago was distcc. This is a distributed compilation system which can be brutal to set up, but can also dramatically reduce…
How OpenSource Bugs are -fixed-
These 3 “solutions” are what typically “fix” all OpenSource bugs. Close without testing because “code has changed too much.” Declare it an “upstream” bug so you get…
Some Thoughts on MVVM – Part 2
Relational database vendors stepped up to the plate DEC RDB (Relational DataBase, I know, creative) had long since provided SQLMOD. These were source modules you compiled into object form which…
Some Thoughts on MVVM – Part 1
There is currently a lot of chatter in the IT world involving MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel). While there are merits, there are also drawbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks I’ve noticed is…
The Gender Fluid IT Crisis
Most everyone reading this is familiar with the Y2K crisis where lots of computer systems simply weren’t going to work after December 31, 1999. Many conspiracy theorists believe it was…
Which programming language offers the best job market?
I got sucked into a discussion on Reddit with this very question. No, I don’t hang out on Reddit. I wouldn’t even go there but a couple of technical writing…
JED – Long delay at launch issue
Since the mailing list archive isn’t much in the way of searchable or at least doesn’t seem to be well indexed by search engines I will be keeping a series…
A Bit of Green Bar for Your Blog
Those of us old enough to have worked with actual continuous form printouts have a certain soft spot for printed code. Oh, not on that nasty loose white paper which…
How Many Browsers do You Test Your Blog With?
It was Friday and I spent the morning visiting my father. When I got home I didn’t feel much like doing “real” work so once again I spent time changing…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 6
The Backup Script As I started to get back into this I realized I skipped one final yet critical piece of the system. The backup script. I imagine some of…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 5
Copying from a thumb drive into our Termux world takes a bit of doing. It’s actually yet another “expert friendly” part of Android. If you don’t already know where things…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 4
Keep in mind I have not yet rooted the sacrificial lamb. For the initial stages I’m trying to muddle through it as the average user would. Having had Android on…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 3
The Sacrificial Lamb Eventually, if time allows, I will attempt to cross compile both programs to off-the-shelf Android and Raspberry Pi targets. You have already seem the Raspberry Pi target…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 2
We need to establish a time frame before I start showing any code. Yes, you can go visit Source Forge to pull down what is there if you are well…
How Far We’ve Come – Pt. 1
Occasionally life gives you a chance to look back at your past and to allow others to resoundingly embarrass you for it. This weekend is such an occasion. Yes, I…
To Those Who Served
Thank you is an inadequate phrase. May you find warm sun and gentle breezes on this Memorial Day.
Qt 5.8.0 – The Microsoft Blues
Microsoft is long known for releasing bug ridden bloatware then charging for the bug fixes. Windows Vista followed by its bug fix Windows 7 and who could ever forget Windows…
Thanking WannaCry
Yes, the title of this post may sound odd for an IT professional, but that is just it, I’m a professional, not just someone who gets paid to write code….
UC Berkeley – Birthplace of The Fourth Reich
Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. The above quote is from “The Life of Reason” written by George Santayana and published in 1905….
Le Frexit
In a few short days the French will cast their ballots to put Marine Le Pen in office. Yes, there are a good many people who wish to believe the…
The John Smith Act
From time to time I just get fed up and do something. This is one of those times. I finally had enough of CEOs getting away with every crime imaginable…
Your Airbag Might Not Deploy
A neighbor stopped by the other day since he saw my brother and I tugging the lawn mower out of the mud. I hadn’t seen this neighbor in quite a…
The Forth Post
It’s amazing how cranky you get when you become an old man. You become far less tolerant of the low quality half-assed content being foisted onto paying customers in a…
Just How Blatant Can They Legally Be?
Today I received the following email. You will notice they didn’t publish a rate for a natural born U.S. citizen who isn’t a walking talking national security risk. ============== Click…
Google AdWords and the Fool
Some number of years ago I wrote articles for Fool.com or some blog portion of it. I don’t even know if they have that site or any portion of it…
Comet TV – What Syfy Used to Be
It’s no secret the Syfy channel has went to complete shit. They were a big reason I dumped DirecTV. Why pay all of that money when the networks I used…
The Girlfriend Experiment
Time magazine ran an article about “The Girlfriend Experience” quite some time ago. The concept is both intriguing and under explored in general popular works although there has been a…