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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Author Archives: Chief Cobra
The Bedroom Programmer: Cycle over?
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.”Don Marquis It seems only reasonable that the first (and possibly only, I’m really not doing well with this blog lark recently) post of 2014 consists of some editorial that leads to … Continue reading
Posted in Armchair general, My iPhone game, Rants, Software development
Tagged cobra art, excuses, iPhone, slow progress
9 Comments
Conversational Geography
“Civility is only a passenger – not a driver – on the information superhighway.” – Don Rittner So, this is interesting. Jeff Atwood, one of the chaps who was instrumental in building what has become, without a shadow of a … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellaneous rubbish
Tagged cobra art, discourse, discussions, forums
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Square wheels are better than no wheels at all, right?
“The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, who led them into … Continue reading
Posted in User experience
Tagged cobra art, Gary the sea snail, Spongebob Squarepants, stuck record, UI
2 Comments
Opinion! Quick, someone tell the Internet!
The problem with walled gardens is forgetting who’s supposed to be on each side of the wall. In the past half year or so, though, it looks as if Apple have managed to manoeuvre the wall between themselves and their … Continue reading
Posted in Armchair general
Tagged Apple, appleocalypse, cobra art, conclusions from no data, internet opinion, iPhone
2 Comments
This nudist play can wreck a nice beach
“Any artificial intelligence smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.”1 – Ian McDonald (2006) River of Gods Here’s a picture illustrating a simple problem that humans find utterly trivial to solve but … Continue reading
Posted in Cool stuff, They're coming to get us
Tagged AI, cow, creatures, farm, machine learning, the future
Comments Off on This nudist play can wreck a nice beach
Would you like to play a nice game of chess?
If you’re my age then as well as lurking in your secret lair plotting your takeover of the universe, you’ll almost certainly remember War Games. War Games is an utterly fantastic movie of its time and it is still, all … Continue reading
Posted in Rants, Security
Tagged 20 megaton giraffe, guest-art, hacking, modem, nuclear war, over-dramatic, passwords, security, smart tv, war games
Comments Off on Would you like to play a nice game of chess?
I know what I did last summer
You, like most people on this planet, probably have a dishwasher. Even if you don’t, you almost certainly know how to use one. I, on the other hand, had neither owned nor used a dishwasher until last summer when thanks … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellaneous rubbish, Software development
Tagged cobra art, dishwasher, flood, UI, user interface
Comments Off on I know what I did last summer
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
The Incredible Adventures of Rattles McCoil
Imagine this scenario. You are sitting in front of the TV watching the Spongebob Squarepants movie1 and you’re a little peckish. In fact, what you could really, really do with for that authentic movie experience is some popcorn. No problem! … Continue reading
Posted in Software development
Tagged adventure game, cobra art, Rattles McCoils, schedules, slow progress, snake, specifications, Spongebob Squarepants
8 Comments
Book Club episode II: Wool and the art of software documentation
“Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.”Sam Redwine, 4th International Software Process Workshop, 1988 Occasionally, but just occasionally, you end up reading a book that is so good that you can’t stop … Continue reading →