The Daily Parker

Addendum to my previous reading list.

I'm now reading Microsoft's Framework Design Guidelines, written by the guys who wrote the .NET Framework.

Add this to my list of recommended books.

The Poynter Institute today sent around a link to the best newspaper corrections of 2005.

Since they also linked to the 2005 plagiarism roundup, I thought it best to give Poynter proper attribution.

I've just finished Edward Tufte's essay, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint." It is now on the Inner Drive Technology required reading list:

Explanations of these choices to follow shortly.

In the Northern hemisphere, yesterday's was the earliest sunset of the year. Kieron Taylor, writing for the Sheffield Astronomical Society in the U.K., has a pretty good explanation of why this is so. Suffice to say, it's because the earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical.

Here, then, is a quick chart of the shortest days of the year, for Evanston, Illinois:

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

I have never, as far as I can remember, in all my years, seen a traffic report like this. I can't imagine it's accurate, showing as it does five hours from Northbrook to the Loop (a distance of 40 km, 25 mi.):

As I mentioned earlier this week, my friend Danielle is returning today from Peace Corps duty in the Republic of Kiribati. For her entire tour she has lived in a place that almost never gets below 30°C (86°F). At this writing she's waiting at LAX for her flight home.

Here is what home looks like as of 15 minutes ago:

The airline claims her flight is on-time. I guess I'll find out later tonight...

Update, 3:56pm CST/21:56 UTC: The airline now reports a two-hour delay, so technically Danielle won't be getting home today.

Late update: The airline cancelled her flight after all. Still waiting...

Yesterday at the gym's coat check, I got claim check 404.

The coat-check guy didn't find this nearly as funny as I did.

Even more funny—to a software nerd, anyway—was that when I gave him check #404 after working out, he found my coat.

One can imagine other possibilities. But 404 is the best, I think.

The record-breaking 2005 hurricane season may finally be over. National Hurricane Center forecaster Avila writes this hour:

CONVECTION HAS VANISHED AND EPSILON IS NOW A TIGHT SWIRL OF LOW CLOUDS. THE CYCLONE IS WEAKENING RAPIDLY.... I HOPE THIS IS THE END OF THE LONG LASTING 2005 HURRICANE SEASON.

Good news for North Atlantic shipping, I suppose.

In Chicago, however, we have a good winter storm on its way. I'll keep you posted. Look for art around lunchtime (1:00pm CST/19:00 UTC).

Read, understand, and then fix your compiler warnings.

Compiler warnings let you know that you've either done something wrong, or you've done something non-standard. Either way, ignorning compiler warnings shows a lack of discipline and skill; it's something like ignoring big red "warning" signs in real life.

I'm working on a .NET solution that, when last compiled, generated over 60 warning messages. A couple of them I put in to let other developers know about problems I found, but most warned about things that actually needed to get fixed.

For example, the following line of code:

if (comboBox.SelectedItem == "Do stuff")

generated the warning, "Possible unintended reference comparison; to get a value comparison, cast the left hand side to type 'string.'"

In other words, the if statement was evaluating whether the object comboBox.SelectedItem was the same object as the string "Do Stuff," which is an impossibility. So the comparison would always fail, making it look like the feature was failing. Yet the compiler warned the developer about the problem, and even said how to fix it.

If you're wondering, the corrected line looks like this:

if ((string)comboBox.SelectedItem == "Do stuff")