Bag of Beans

• Link [xkcd.com]

This article has some tips and a list of programs you can use to recover data off of damaged or corrupted NTFS and FAT partitions on your hard drive.

I had forgotten that FDISK, in the process of checking the disk before it prompts you for the size of the partition, writes information to certain areas of the hard drive. This data writes over whatever might have been there before. Meanwhile, there I was, watching the ‘%complete’ counter and wondering why a little red warning flag kept going off in my brain? I restarted WinXP and waited for it to boot, and waited… and waited… Oops.

• Link (via Digg)

This is a useful article on metaprogramming idioms in Ruby.

I have been thinking much about Metaprogramming lately. I have come to the conclusion that I would like to see more examples and explanations of these techniques. For good or bad, metaprogramming has entered the Ruby community as the standard way of accomplishing various tasks, and to compress code. Since I couldn’t find any good resources of this kind, I will start the ball running by writing about some common Ruby techniques. These tips are probably most useful for programmers that come to Ruby from another language or haven’t experienced the joy of Ruby Metaprogramming yet.

• Link (via Digg)

DailyLit has broken down their collection of classic texts into small portions and will email them to you one at a time. Just select a text and a delivery schedule, and start catching up on your reading.

Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don’t find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. This works incredibly well not just on your computer but also on a Treo, Blackberry, Sidekick or whatever the PDA of your choice. In the words of Dr. Seuss: Try it, you might like it!

• Link (via Lifehacker)

This is an extremely cool java applet that graphically demonstrates how a file is shared over Bittorrent. Just add some seeds and peers and watch the packets fly!

• Link (via Digg)

This site is similar to Digg but it is aimed at software and web developers.

• dzone (via the DonationCoder forums)

Borland has recently released a number of free (as in beer) Turbo Explorer edition developer tools (Turbo Delphi, Turbo Delphi for .NET, Turbo C++, and Turbo C#). They also offer Pro versions which you have to pay for.

Note that according to their site, you can only install one of the Explorer editions on a machine, and you also cannot install the Turbo editions if you already have Borland Developer Studio installed.

You will also need to register for an installation key from Borland’s download site.

• Link
• Get activation keys from here

I came across this link on reddit and discovered a number of inspirational accounts of developers who took the plunge from writing software in their spare time to building relatively successful ISV businesses. Well worth a read.

From The Road Less Traveled:

When discussing the indie dream much fuss is made about “making the leap.” This idiom can be applied to many risk-taking situations, but in this context it usually refers to that fateful day when an individual decides to stop receiving a steady paycheck, in favor of some pursuit which probably offers less certain financial rewards.

Your familiarity with the phrase is inextricably linked with another well-worn utterance: “don’t quit your day job.” This phrase probably started as a cautious piece of well-meaning advice, but has evolved into a nasty weapon, used by terminally unhappy people to assassinate the dreams of those who aspire to something different.

• How to become an independent programmer in just 1068 days.
• The Full-Time Gap
• The Road Less Traveled

This site has a large collection of articles on how various things are manufactured.

How Products Are Made explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step by step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams) Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc.

• Link

This is a hilarious transcript of a naive script-kiddie being baited into trashing their own machine.

<Elch> You’re a real computer expert
<bitchchecker> shut up i hack you
<Elch> ok, i’m quiet, hope you don’t show us how good a hacker you are ^^
<bitchchecker> tell me your network number man then you’re dead
<Elch> Eh, it’s 129.0.0.1
<Elch> or maybe 127.0.0.1
<Elch> yes exactly that’s it: 127.0.0.1 I’m waiting for you great attack
<bitchchecker> in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
<Elch> Now I’m frightened

• Link (via Digg)

The Road to Know Where has compiled a list of over 150 free programs for Windows and Office that have been released by Microsoft. Check the comments at the end for a few more as well.

• Link

This is a cheat sheet of windows programs you can launch from the command-line or the Run menu.

• Link (via Digg)

This site has a really nice Flash implementation of the German Enigma cipher machine. It does a great job of illustrating conceptually how the internal mechanism worked.

• Link (via Digg)

• Link [xkcd.com] (via reddit)

If you think the Brainfuck programming language is twisted, how about a language with only two symbols?

For todays dose of pathological programming, we’re going to hit the worlds simplest language. A Turing-complete programming language with exactly two characters, no variables, and no numbers. It’s called Iota. And rather than bothering with the rather annoying Iota compiler, we’ll just use an even more twisted language called Lazy-K, which can run Iota programs, Unlambda programs, as well as its own syntax.

• Link (via reddit)

This article shows you how you can evaluate arithmetic expressions using GNU make, and even includes an implementation of a reverse polish notation calculator. Not only did the author spend the time to come up with this wild hack, but then he wrote an article about it!

GNU Make has no built-in arithmetic capability. In this article I present a collection of GNU Make macros that implement functions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of integers. Functions are also provided for integer comparisons such as “greater than” and “not equal.” These macros are implemented entirely using GNU Make’s built-in string manipulation functions.

• Link (via reddit)

A new web-based riddle, similar to Notpron, and the Python Challenge.

The goal of the Antiriddle project is to not only entertain those that enjoy intellectual challenges, but also to teach a certain degree of computer literacy and to foster a sense of cooperation in solving an issue.

• Link (via Digg)

ThePCSpy.com has compiled some benchmarks to find out how much your system is bogged down by various software packages. Norton Internet Security 2006 tops the list with a 57.78% increase to boot times!

The aim of this article is to find out what types of application slow down a computer the most. I’m going to be measuring the“speed” as the time it takes to shutdown, restart and get back to desktop (with auto-login) and start an application in the computer’s start-up settings.

• Link (via Digg)

Another nice collection of optical illusions.

»Optical illusion« sounds pejorative, as if exposing a malfunction of the visual system. Rather, I view these phenomena as bringing out particular good adaptations of our visual system to standard viewing situations. These adaptations are »hard-wired« into our brains, and thus under some artificial manipulations can cause inappropriate interpretations of the visual scene. As Purkinje put it: »Illusions of the senses tell us the truth about perception« (cited by Teuber, 1960).

• Link (via Digg)

Here’s another extensive list (with reviews) of lots of useful programs in many categories. Includes both free and non-free software.

• Link (via the DonationCoder forum)