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Fun with Pointers (not the dogs)
One of the aspects of programming that took me a long time to understand was (memory) pointers. I grew up with BASIC, learned Pascal and C where I always used fixed length structures or types and never cared about memory allocation as it was way too confusing to me. In college, I majored in engineering and only took 1 computer science class, so most of my programming knowledge is self-taught, on the job training. It wasn't until a few years out of college that how pointers worked really clicked. These days, with high level frameworks and languages such as Objective-C and Cocoa, I don't use pointers all that often (I still have to deal with allocation and de-allocation of memory), but when I need to use them, they're a piece of cake to use. I find that I only use them when shipping data across a wire, i.e. to/from a handheld device. Knowing how to use pointers, walk pointers, etc. makes complicated code very easy. I think that understanding how pointers work is essential to being able to write applications that aren't self-contained, i.e. only run on a desktop machine. I wish I had learned about them earlier as I'm sure it would have made my life easier.
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Samsung A900 Update - Almost golden!
Samsung/Sprint released an update to the A900 phone today or yesterday (version ZB12) which directly addressed the "phantom ringing" issue that I, as well as others, reported. This is excellent as I can now use a Bluetooth headset with the phone. However, my Parrot EasyDrive carkit doesn't work with it, yet. I'm not sure if this is a Parrot problem or a Samsung problem, but I suspect Samsung as I can use the carkit with a GSM phone I have on my desk.
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Boy Scouts (again) sued over land access
Today's paper had an article about the Boy Scouts in court again over lease agreements with the city of San Diego claiming that the Boy Scouts are a religious organization. This is the biggest bunch of bull I've ever heard. Just because the 12th point of the Scout Law is "Reverent" and the Scout Oath has "do my duty to God and my country", it doesn't mean that it is a religious organization. US currency has the word God on it; the Oath of Office for various top positions in the government end with "So help me God.". Does this make the government a religious organization? While I completely respect people's views in whatever religion they may have, I see nothing wrong with the Scout Law and Scout Oath as they are today. I agree with the Boy Scouts of America on this point, I completely disagree with them on their stance on gays as leaders. Being gay doesn't mean that someone is morally wrong, does it? It isn't my choice, but why should I care what others choose? It also doesn't mean that a leader will act inappropriately around the scouts.
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Aging Hardware
Every now and again, I tend to look at the equipment I have on my desk and think about how long I've had it. The oldest piece of "equipment" is a pair of Apple Design speakers that I got in 1996 or 1997. They still are in use and work quite well. The second most ancient piece of equipment is my PowerMac G4/500 dual processor which I bought in late summer 2000. This machine, despite being 5.5 years old, still serves as my test and build machine. My builds now take 20-25 minutes as there are a ton of components and I keep considering if I should upgrade to a newer machine. I'll still need a PowerPC based machine for testing, so maybe I'll be able to pick up a G5 dual processor machine cheap as soon as the Intel based towers come out.