Many, many years ago I ran a BBS called The Programmer’s Corner. It provided a place for software developers to hang out and share information, all pre-Internet. It was a great experience, and I met some great folks while building the platform. Recently I found my archive, and I have resurrected parts of the site on the domain that I first setup to provide access to the Internet from the BBS. You can find parts of the original site at The Programmer’s Corner. I have added over 25K files that were once available, many of them containing source code that is still useful today! Many of these files have not been available anywhere else.
It has been interesting going back into time and seeing what was state of the art twenty years ago. I am still restoring files, and hoping that I will soon have more info available. Check back often! A full listing of all the files available can be found here.
In the Mid-Atlantic, the mighty stink bug is only a few weeks away from moving from the fields towards your home. Now is the time to start implementing this years preventions. The number one myths about Stink Bugs is that pesticides will not kill them. This is false, and is probably spread because the newspapers are interviewing farmers, and that is true, farmers do not have food-safe pesticides that are will kill the stunkbug reliably. However, there are household pesticides that will work.
Last year, many homeowners and pest control companies were very successful at controlling incoming bugs with Cyper WP. This is a relatively safe (always read the manufacture’s Product MSDS) pesticide thatcan be used indoors and outdoors. At the end of Aug through Oct, it can be applied to outside surfaces where the stink bug travels as it searched for an entrance to your house. It creates a barrier that when the Stink Bug travels over, will kill it within 2-3 hours. It can also be applied indoors in attics, crawl-spaces, and basements. However, for best results, apply every other week to your roof eaves, tops of outside walls, around vent entrances, and anywhere that you have seen Stink Bugs crawling. It will not 100% eliminate your problem, however it will have a huge impact.
In the Spring as the Stink Bugs leave your house, you can reapply to affected areas. Cyper WP will leave a reside, so only use where it will not be seen, or will not be noticeable (roof eave). As an added benefit, Cyper WP will also help to control bees and wasps who try to nest in your eaves and crawlspaces. It will also eliminate spiders and ants in basements. Spray in on the outside of your house, and you will notice a significant reduction of outdoor pests, including scorpions, roaches, wasps, etc.
And, as I wrote about before here, go buy a BugZooka Bug Catcher VacuumNOW to capture the stray bug that does make it past the Cyper WP into your house.
PLEASE, do not buy expensive books or traps, they are almost all scams. There are only three proven ways to protect your home from invasion. Seal all cracks and opening as best as possible, use a barrier pesticide like Cyper WP, and clean up any strays with the BugZooka.
I think this just may be the most important piece of information for any software developer today. Whatever you do, don’t forget it.
Although many software developers have been using PHP and Javascript for years, many do not know about ===, also called “The Triple Equals”. In the simplest terms, it means equality without type coercion. In other words, if using the triple equals, the values must be equal in type as well as value.
0==false // true
0===false // false, because they are of a different type
1==”1″ // true, auto type coercion
1===”1″ // false, because they are of a different type
Many developers will first encounter === when using JSLint to test their Javascript. JSLint was written by Douglas Crockford, one of the more outspoken proponents of Javascript and JSON.
JavaScript has both strict and type-converting equality comparison. For strict equality the objects being compared must have the same type and:
Two strings are strictly equal when they have the same sequence of characters, same length, and same characters in corresponding positions.
Two numbers are strictly equal when they are numerically equal (have the same number value). NaN is not equal to anything, including NaN. Positive and negative zeros are equal to one another.
Two Boolean operands are strictly equal if both are true or both are false.
Two objects are strictly equal if they refer to the same Object.
Null and Undefined types are == (but not ===).
Many experienced JavaScript and PHP developers will advocate ALWAYS using === and !=== instead of == and !=. The reasons are obvious, you will never find yourself finding out that:
0 == ” is true
false == ‘false’ is false
false == ’0′ is true
and the non-transitive demonstration is as follows:
You guys have probably seen the Microsoft Kinect for the Xbox 360. It is a motion control accessory that allows you to interact with your video games, just like the Wii. Microsoft has done a pretty good job with this device, although it seems as if they are still waiting for the killer app to really drive sales. Recently when I was at the Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta (a Simon Mall), I caught a glance of this guy getting his inner groove on with a public demo of the Kinect and Dance Central. This guy really got into his dance routine. Got love it…. Can you say hilarious!
A configuration error occured when connecting to Cisco VPN with Mac
On too many occasions my new MacBook Pro will no longer connect to my work’s Cisco IPSec VPN. The error message displayed is not very helpful, it simply says:
“A configuration error occured. Verify your settings and try reconnecting”
I have been unable to determine a pattern of when this happens, but it seems to occur quite often when bringing the laptop out of sleep. Although, it does happen at other times as well. Rebooting has appeared to help, but the whole reason I bought a Mac was because I was sick of having to reboot my PC everyday.
After a little investigation, I determined that there is a process called “racoon” which is responsible for the VPN connection. – it performs key exchange operations to set up IPSec tunnels. The Apple MAN pages say that racoon speaks the IKE (ISAKMP/Oakley) key management protocol, to establish security associations with other hosts. If you Kill it (using kill or activity monitor), your VPN will start working again.
You can also do :
~ ps -ef | grep racoon
0 5861 1 0 0:00.09 ?? 0:00.15 /usr/sbin/racoon
~ sudo kill 5861
~ ps ax | grep racoon
<wait until it shuts down. sometimes you may need to SIGKILL it (kill -9 <pid>)>
~ sudo /usr/sbin/racoon
~ ps -ef | grep racoon
0 6786 1 0 0:00.08 ?? 0:00.15 /usr/sbin/racoon -x
Some folks have also reported that running multiple copies of racoon can also cause the problem. In that case, kill all. The Mac VPN client will auto-restart as needed.
Like most folks in the Mid-Atlantic states, our house has been infested with Stink Bugs. They first invade the home in early Fall, looking to find a warm place to hibernate through the Winter. Whenever a warm day appears, some will awaken, and crawl through your house looking to get back outdoors. These pests first arrived from Asia several years ago, and have quickly become a major nuisance. Our home is surrounded by Soybean fields, which is where the Stink Bugs love to spend their Summers.
Because there are so many of them. catching them is a very tedious process. To make matters worse, if they are scared, or you crush them when removing, you will get stunk! You can try to use a vacuum cleaner, however this quickly causes an unpleasant odor throughout your house. We resorted to catching in tissue and releasing outside still alive. This reduced the smell, but was time consuming and still resulted in stinky fingers.
I finally found the solution, the Bugzooka! I had tried several battery powered bug catchers, however they did not have a strong enough suction to reliably catch the tenacious stink bug. The Bugzooka is manually powered by large set of bellows at the end of the unit. You simply press them in until cocked. With a push of a button, the bellows expands and creates a strong vacuum that will catch almost an bug almost 100% of the time. The great thing about the Bugzooka is that it requires NO batteries, with a simply cocking of the device, you are ready to catch more bugs. The telescoping tube will allow you to reach stink bugs on the ceiling, top of walls, etc. No more mess, and also works on all other types of crawling insects as well.
In the first three minutes of using the Bugzooka, I caught over a dozen stink bugs. After turning it over to my kids, the rest of the house was de-stink-bugged within another 20 minutes. There was little odor, probably because th bugs are not actually killed. Simply unscrew the top, and dump the stink bugs outdoors.
If you are faced with a Stink Bug infestation, don’t wait, buy a Bugzooka today. You can click on the handy link below, and Amazon will have it to your door in just a few days.
ps -ef | grep racoon
0 5861 1 0 0:00.09 ?? 0:00.15 /usr/sbin/racoon
~ 
