The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

<P>If you were to log into your Blogware Control Panel right now, you might be surprised when you see that the Navigation Bar now has a new tab:</P>
<P><IMG height=130 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz001.jpg” width=645></P>
<P>The new tab, the <STRONG>Post Tab</STRONG>, is simply a more convenient version of the <STRONG>Post Menu</STRONG>, which is tucked all the way up the upper right-hand corner of the page:</P>
<P><IMG height=181 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz007.jpg” width=304>
<P>Using the <STRONG>Post</STRONG> tab is simple: whenever you want to post a new entry, click the <STRONG>Post</STRONG> tab. You will be immediately taken to the <STRONG>Post Article</STRONG> page, as shown below:</P>
<P><IMG height=382 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz002.jpg” width=649></P>
<P>The Options submenu for the <STRONG>Post</STRONG> tab allows you to choose the kind of entry to post. The default is <STRONG>Article</STRONG>, but you can also click on <STRONG>Photo</STRONG> to post a photo to one of your photo albums…</P>
<P><IMG height=382 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz003.jpg” width=649></P>
<P>…or <STRONG>Music Review</STRONG> to post a new music review…
<P><IMG height=382 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz004.jpg” width=649></P>
<P>…or <STRONG>Movie Review</STRONG> to post a new movie review…</P>
<P><IMG height=382 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz005.jpg” width=649></P>
<P>…or <STRONG>Book Review</STRONG> to post a new book review…
<P><IMG height=382 src=”http://blog.blogware.com/images/2004/03/post_tab/FirefoxScreenSnapz006.jpg” width=649></P>
<H3>Note</H3>
<P>Switching from one entry type to another (say, from Article to Book Review) in the middle of working on an entry will cause that entry you were working on to be erased.</P>

All kinds of tasty geek reading in today’s edition of The Farm, the blog that I’m actually paid to write!

Tomorrow (Saturday, March 27th), Cory Doctorow is having his last book signing in Toronto for the forseeable future at his old employer’s: Bakka Books.

Bakka Books is at 598 Yonge Street, near Wellesley and specializes in science fiction and fantasy. The store derives its name from Dune; Bakka is the weeper for all humankind in Fremen legend.

When he worked at Bakka, it was located in my neighbourhood, the Queen West area, on Queen Street between Soho and Beverley. I remember going there back in 1992 and having some geek heartily recommend Snow Crash (“You’re in computer science? You’ve got to read this Stephenson book — he’ll be required reading for programmers someday!”). I have no idea if it was Cory or not, but it’s pretty likely.

It’ll be a don’t-miss-it geek event. Be there and be square!

(This article also appears in The Farm, but I gave it a more clever title here.)

[ via java.blogs via

Brian’s Waste of

Time ] The late great computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra’s

contributions to the field are many. Among the best known are his

solution to the Shortest

Path Problem, his invention of the Dining

Philosophers Problem and semaphores,

and his classic paper, Go To Statement Considered

Harmful.

As a computer science student, I’ve read many of his papers, but here’s

a little-known one that he wrote in 1995 — by hand,

no less — called Why American Computing Science Seems

Incurable. It’s

available as a PDF file contaning scans of handwritten sheets. Here’s a

sample:

In the essay, Dijkstra argues that the pressures that the high-tech

industry is adversely affecting academic research. He says that

industry pressure is causing the definition of being a good programmer

to change from someone who is “able to design more effective and

trustworthy programs” and who knows “how to do it efficiently” to

somewho who thinks of “‘industrial acceptance’ as quality criterion”

and writes programs such that “its main feature [is] that one could

apply it unthinkingly.” Programming, he says is becoming less a branch

of applied math and more a branch of keeping the high-tech industry

afloat, a problem aggravated by “a total lack of faith in [America’s]

educational system and a deep-rooted mistrust of

intellectuals.”

It’s a fascinating read, and it just might send you running to the

bookstore to buy all those Knuth

volumes and start brushing up on your algorithms.

On the Blogware site, I cover how to integrate Blogrolling.com blogrolls into your Blogware blogs.