About the Cobras
I'm a C, C++, Objective C and PHP programmer. I develop various things for PCs, Macs and the iOS platforms. On and off I'm developing an iPhone game which I expect I shall never finish. I feature progress reports on how far I am from completing it in this blog along with me rattling on about learning French and any other junk I need to get off my chest. I shouldn't really need to say it in this day and age, but obviously, the opinions here are mine and not those of anyone who pays me... unless I've been bribed, in which case, all bets are off. There's more here.-
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Tag Archives: rants
Overcomplicated shark is overcomplicated
“This is my 22nd year doing this, and every single console transition we’ve seen an increase in development costs. Over long periods of time it gets smoothed out, but I would say this is not a transition where that’s going … Continue reading
Posted in Armchair general, Software development
Tagged bad planning, cobra art, complexity, rants
1 Comment
Duh duh duh. Duh duh duh. Duh duh duh
Duh duh duh. The sound of GSM digital phones interfering with electronics. It’s also the sound of lies, as I enjoyed witnessing on BBC breakfast a couple of months ago. They’d wheeled in a chap called Michael Roberts from ATOC … Continue reading
Posted in Armchair general, Rants
Tagged 18:14 party train, rants, train
Comments Off on Duh duh duh. Duh duh duh. Duh duh duh
Rollin’ contracts rollin’… Until the END OF TIME ITSELF
We’ve all laughed and giggled at pictures of those people on TV queueing on launch day for some device or another. Well, back in May 2010, I was those people. At 7AM (and this was pre-baby cobra, so 7AM was … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
Tagged castle-nine-popes, cobra art, customer "service", downright thievery, Internet Publicity Wan Kenobi, iPad, O2, rants
2 Comments
P P P Pick up a patent (portfolio)
“If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.” – Bill Gates, Challenges and Strategy Memo, 16 May 1991 … Continue reading
What does this button do?
“The only ‘intuitive’ interface is the nipple. After that, it’s all learned.” Well, restring my guitar, this is interesting in a “come back and haunt you” sort of way. The gist of the article is a bloke from Samsung saying … Continue reading
Posted in Rants
Tagged armchair general, Captain Rattles McCoils, cobra art, rants, snake, user interface
3 Comments
These are the wires used to make my intergalactic spaceship
Ihave been becoming increasingly disheartened in recent years by how little the new generation of programmers know about how computers work. Their understanding of the relationship between what they tap into a computer and what the microprocessor actually ends up … Continue reading
Posted in Software development
Tagged C++, intergalactic spaceship, pointless observation, rants, text adventure
8 Comments
Fire sale: everything must go!
“Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.”— Robert G. Ingersoll Politics is a very difficult subject to have an opinion on: if we all agreed, we would all live in peace and harmony. Regrettably, it has been … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellaneous rubbish, Rants
Tagged braiiiiins, cobra art, education, ill-informed opinion, long post is long, rants, snake
2 Comments
Imbuing a certain niceness on one’s formatting
Oh my, std::locale(“”) is gorgeous when slapped on a std::stringstream. So long as you’re not writing super-duper-performance-sensitive code, you can do wonderful things like this: #include <string> #include <sstream> #include <locale> #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> int main() { std::stringstream ss; … Continue reading
Posted in Rants, Software development
Tagged broken, gcc, irregular pigeon, khaaaaaaaaaan!, rants, std::locale, tedious programming post
Comments Off on Imbuing a certain niceness on one’s formatting
Stop the universe, someone knows everything
“”You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish, only if the folly of it escapes you. Ionce met a man who claimed to know everything about C++. Everything. Indeed, he was now looking for something that … Continue reading
A bad travel day
So my conspiracy theory is that Shell, Esso and BP sponsor our county council to ensure that there is always at least one set of complex roadworks making town ‘bastable’1 – that’s ‘not quite impassable’. I imagine council bastabling clerks … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellaneous rubbish
Tagged bastable, bus, guided bus, rants, train, travel nightmare
2 Comments