I played Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 today and got the song : Teenager in Love stuck in my head. Then I found this awesome flash version on youtube, made my day while I am digging my head around Rails STI for a project at work.
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Despite Apple stores being successful and thus hints that retail stores are not dead, retail stores are dying and the remaining of this species have to evolve and adapt. The recent crumble of CompUSA was not a surprise. Retail store as its current model offers no more than instant gratification of overpriced product fed by staff who know little more than the normal customers. For a professional who knows what he is talking about, CompUSA (and Bestbuy, Circuitcity, ...) offers little to no value. The price is much lower on online stores. Customer service is lousy in most cases. Knowledgeable staff is nearly non-existent as well. That is why people don’t shop at CompUSA anymore. As an example of how bad the price is at CompUSA, here is my story.
I went to CompUSA at Galleria today in hope to find a decent deal since they are closing all their stores. I spent more than 2 hours searching through the aisles trying to find a decent price. There is nothing to be found. Everything was marked as 10-30% off. However, none of the sale price is even close to the price normally found in online store (shipping included). I found my moral of the story 2 hours later: retail store is really dead.
Some retails stores are adapting and transforming into a showroom lounge. Apple store fits this description and thus they have been quite successful. Apple has showed that despite their tactically high price, they can still appeal to their customers via excellent service and respect. Elegant design is also helpful as well.
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During my software engineering class a year ago. I wrote BibSync, a system that allows you to manage references. It can import and export these references between in own databases and formats like Endnote and BibTex. The application was written using CakePHP running on LAMP task. At the time I think that it was quite nice and functional. However, I recently looked at it again and I could not believe that I was the one who generated those ugly codes. Truth to be told, PHP (and CakePHP) is very heavy on LOC (line of codes). It takes more lines of code to achieve things than RoR.
Thus I am rewriting this application in Rails. Many will think that I am crazy for making such a decision. However, I am a strong believer that a language can make a big difference. I read a recent blog post on Coding Horror about Size Is The Enemy. I found it most inspiring. I will be the person who will maintain this piece of software. i want to be able to look at it and start working on it right away instead of wondering why the heck did I wrote these lines in the first place.
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When it comes to programming, editors matter. Despite what others might say, I truly believe that the right tool is required for a good level of productivity. My work environment involves a nice mixture of Windows, Linux and OSX. My choice of editor for each platform is quite clear: Textmate for OSX (it is THE editor), E-Text Editor for Windows and gvim for Linux. I would like to spare the discussion of why those editors are great choice for each platform in another post. In this post, I shall discuss the importance of a good editor.
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You are what you read
In one of Dr. Venkat’s inspirational speech, he emphasizes the importance of readings for Computer Scientists. Reading opens many doors to knowledges. Many goes as far as claiming that "You are what you read"
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I have been a fan of Asus motherboards for some time now. I bought my first motherboard from them back in the socket 939 age. I recently bought another board from Asus with SLI capabilities. What really bugs me is there bad website. It is really hard to go through and find the driver for my board and download them. The website responses very slowly on my Comcast connection and this has been aggravated me quite a lot. On the contrary, this morning I put together a Gigabyte motherboard computer. Downloading driver was extremely fast and their website is nicely designed in a way that I can find my driver with 2 clicks. I know where I will be buying my future motherboards from.
Manufacturers, please keep your website sane.
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