Programmer competency matrix, in case you want to know what your good and bad traits are.

The Ultimate Guide to Rock, Paper, Scissors, if you find the original game somewhat lacking.

FlyBack is a GUI to provide similar functionality as Apple’s Time Machine for Linux using existing tools.

PDF format becomes ISO standard ISO 32000-1.

Computerworld - Hands on: 12 quick hacks for Firefox 3 contains some useful tricks that apply to, you guessed it, Firefox 3. Such as having gmail handle mailto: URLs or installing extensions designed for Firefox 2.

DIY Drones is a community of people who are building their own unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Martian Headsets is an interesting analysis of the state if IE8 being “standards compliant” by default.

My first but awesome NESp is a portable NES in a NES cartridge and I want one!

RailsConf Git Talk by Scott Chacon.

When all your troubles seems so far away…

An Introduction to TCP/IP, written so that most people should be able to grasp the concept.

HowTo: Create a Reverse SSH Tunnel is a handy guide for those times when you need access to a machine protected behind a firewall outside of your control, i.e. at work.

Gary’s weather forecasting stone

Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits and save yourself some time by doing it right the first time.

Elevator Psychology, fascination and hilarious all at the same time. (Flash required)

Logic Goats, even your children will understand how a CPU works thanks to the logic goats.

An lsof Primer for those of us who have happened to walk past this excellent little tool.

Miss iPhone Piggy tries to buy several thousand dollars worth of iPhones only to discover there is a one phone per person limit. (Flash required)

RBuild is a build system similar to Linux’ kbuild written in Ruby.

List of problems solved by MacGyver, found via xkcd 444.

SystemTap is an instrumentation framework for Linux and a reinvention of DTrace.

Linux EEPROM Programmer is a description on how to build a really cheap EEPROM programmer that you can use in Linux.

MorphOS 2.0 release notes, apparently hell froze over in the middle of the summer. After 3+ years of waiting a lot of people should be celebrating right about now.

Interactive Linux Kernel Map provides a graphical overview of the Linux kernel source. You can even click on specific parts of it to locate the related source code.

vNES is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator written in Java. They have several games available on their website which you play simply by clicking on them. Apparently support for non-x86 is sketchy.

VX32 Virtual Extension Environment is a library which provides a sandbox for executing untrusted x86 code.

pw0nd.com - Internet humor and funny pictures, the title says it all.

Ubuntu appreciation, always welcome.

Why I Run UNIX is an insightful collection of arguments why this particular person has chosen UNIX over other operating systems.

YTMND for the Blind, crazy blue balls accompanied by a vocal explanation of what is going on.

Anarchaia: A tumblelog by Christian Neukirchen is the tumblelog that ignited my love for tumblers. It has a healthy mix of technology, art and poetry and is updated almost daily.

SNES APU on a PC, a project to create an interface between the audio processing unit of a SNES with a PC.

POHMELFS is a new distributed networking filesystem for Linux which is showing remarkable results when compared to NFS or even localized filesystems.

Xpra, Persistent Remote Applications for X, is like screen but for X applications. This is something I think we have all been waiting for a very long time.

Epic take-apart: HP Color LaserJet 2600n, apparently these printers cost less new with fully loaded OEM toners than buying replacement toners does and for that reason people rather buy a new printer than only replace their toners. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories got their hands on one of these throw-aways and decided to take it apart.

Google C++ Style Guide. If you need a good basis for your internal style guide or just some good ideas to expand an existing guide this is a good place to go. I do not agree with all of their rules though. I can also recommend the Ellemtel Telecommunication Systems Laboratories, Programming in C++, Rules and Recommendations, although it is slightly dated.

Bannalia: trivial notes on themes diverse is the personal blog of Joaquín M López Muñoz. A really smart guy doing some awesome stuff with C++ template metaprogramming which I have been enjoying for a couple of weeks now.

C++ FQA Lite, an interesting analysis of the well known C++ FAQ Lite by Marshall Cline.

LGD, since the Atari STe was my first computer Little Green Desktop has held a special place in my heart for a long time. Oh how I miss those old days when computers (as in hardware) were still exciting.

Practical Common Lisp, a free book for the beginner in common Lisp, a language which is far more interesting than the parentheses give light of.

I removed the “deathtrap” category today since that project never really panned out. The only two articles that were related to it have been transferred to the “personal” category.

Note: His material might not be 100% SFW.

Read the whole story titled “The Source Control Shingle“, it’s hilarious. Surprise, surprise, they are developing on Windows!

The idea was to remove as much of the rust as possible and seal the components to prevent them from future attacks. For that purpose I used a recirculating spot blaster and aluminum silicate blasting abrasive to clean up the worst parts and a steel wire wheel brush fitted on a standard drill to polish the blasted surface. Having never blast cleaned anything in my life it took a while to figure out the proper technique and hence it took me quite some time to clean up the surface but it was a learning experience and I actually enjoyed it.

Sadly the batteries in my camera ran out so I was never able to take any pictures of the polished axle but last week I was finally able to snap a photo of the end result. I’ve been driving the car and apparently have picked up a couple of seed capsules which stuck to the corrosion protection I put on. They account for all the small white spots that you see on the following picture.

My next project will be to convert the air conditioning system from R-12 to R-134a.

I decided to design a generic type that would allow synchronized access to any kind of variable while utilizing RAII to ensure that it is unlocked automatically. The task turned out to be a little more complicated than I first expected but after some trial and error I came up with a solution that I found had a good functionality/aesthetic ratio.

template <typename T>
class SynchronizedVariable : public boost::non_copyable {
public:
    class Accessor {
    public:
        T* operator->() {
            return m_variable;
        }

        const T* operator->() const {
            return m_variable;
        }

    private:
        Accessor(const boost::recursive_mutex::scoped_lock& lock, T* variable) :
            m_lock(lock),
            m_variable(variable) { }

        const boost::recursive_mutex::scoped_lock& m_lock;
        T* m_variable;

        friend class SynchronizedVariable<T>;
    };

    SynchronizedVariable(const T& variable) :
        m_mutex(),
        m_variable(variable) { }

    SynchronizedVariable() :
        m_mutex(),
        m_variable() { }

    const Accessor get() const {
        return Accessor(m_mutex, &m_variable);
    }

    Accessor get() {
        return Accessor(m_mutex, &m_variable);
    }

private:
    mutable boost::recursive_mutex m_mutex;
    T m_variable;
};

SynchronizedVariable is the actual container for the variable and you can either pass it a constant reference to an existing instance which will be copied or create a new empty instance. The idea is that you should not be able to retain an external copy which can be accessed unprotected. It is of course possible to access the original instance if the variable is copied but this is a limited case of programming error.

Subsequent accesses to the variable must go through an instance of the SynchronizedVariable<T>::Accessor object which ensures that the variable is protected by a mutex and that it is automatically unlocked when the accessor goes out of scope. It is of course possible to add lock/unlock methods to it so that the user can limit the scope of the lock. Personally I try to limit all my scopes as much as possible, especially in areas of code which is executed frequently and during performance sensitive moments.

Accessor is storing the variable as a pointer rather than a reference. The reasoning behind this is that operator-> has to return a pointer so storing a reference does not make a lot of sense. There is also a lot of mutex locking/unlocking going on if you instantiate the accessor in frequently called small scopes so be prepared to dust off gprof if you suspect that this is the case.

Wow! Signal - Possibly extraterrestrial signal caught by SETI on August 15, 1977
Valentich Disappearance - Disappeared without a trace in a Cessna October 21, 1978 after reporting that he encountered a strange flying object
The Lost Colony - 16th century colony where all the inhabitants disappeared
Mary Celeste - Brigantine ghost ship discovered outside the strait of Gibraltar in December, 1872
Felix Moncla - USAF pilot that disappeared while pursuing an unidentified flying object in 1953
Ararat Anomaly - Unidentified object visible via satellite and aerial reconnaissance in a hard to reach location on mount Ararat
Oak Island - Location of a strange pit that many believe contain a hidden treasure