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	<title>Philosophical Geek</title>
	<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com</link>
	<description>Code and musings by Ben Watson</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 09 May 2008 22:21:21 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>Now twittering</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Thought I&#8217;d try it out. You can follow me at my twitter page and I&#8217;ll follow you back. Also trying out putting twitter status on my blog.
I&#8217;ve been thinking about twitter for a while, but still not sure how I&#8217;ll use it.

	Tags: Personal, social networks, twitter
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/05/09/now-twittering/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Software Pick: SyncMyCal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With the acquisition of a Blackberry I wanted to be able to sync both my work and home Outlook setups to the Blackberry (and to each other). I tried a number of free tools (though they aren&#8217;t that easy to find) and quickly concluded I would need a better solution.
Enter SyncMyCal. It&#8217;s easy, it&#8217;s cheap [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/05/09/software-pick-syncmycal/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>4 Principles of Not Wasting Time</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There are so many postings out there on all sorts of blogs about how not to waste time that I&#8217;m not sure I can contribute something very meaningful (certainly not new), but since it&#8217;s something I&#8217;ve been thinking about, I might as well spill some ideas about it.



Definition
Any discussion of time-wasting is profitless unless you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/05/06/4-principles-of-not-wasting-time/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Announcing: GeekSoftworks.com</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve setup a new domain for a front page for my software hobbies and what will eventually be my &#8220;store front&#8221;:
Geek Softworks
It uses WordPress, but it&#8217;s not a blog&#8211;it&#8217;s for the software I write. So far, only a few products are up, including DiskSlicer (a new version!), Windows Media Top 10 Plugin, and Word Count [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/05/05/announcing-geeksoftworkscom/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>I could get cable for this&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My wife and I only recently bought a TV, but we still don&#8217;t get cable or even have an antenna. If we ever did, the only things we&#8217;d watch are Discovery, History, and Food.
This is the closest I&#8217;ve come to signing up:






	Tags: inspiration, music, Personal, science, tv
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/29/i-could-get-cable-for-this/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Please help with Word Count Plugin</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I was taking a look at the download page for my Word Count Plugin for Windows Live Writer.
It&#8217;s gotten a few hundred downloads (thanks!), but the single review is actually spam. Unfortunately, I can&#8217;t remove it or even report the review from my account since it&#8217;s my own software.
Plea for help: Can a helpful reader [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/29/please-help-with-word-count-plugin/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Rudeness is destroying the arts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[or Why I Don&#8217;t Leave The House Anymore



&#8220;Am I disturbing you?&#8221;
The last movie I saw in the theater was the 3-D version of Beowulf. The theater was fairly empty&#8211;maybe 30-40 people total. Two teenage girls sat two seats to my left. A man was in front of me. The two girls talked loudly through before [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/28/rudeness-is-destroying-the-arts/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to enable Simple Tags support in Windows Live Writer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m using Simple Tags to do the tags on this site. I wanted to enable support for these tag links in Windows Live Writer (it beats having to log in and edit each post after publishing).
Quite easy:

Click on Insert Tags 
In the Tag Provider combo, scroll to the bottom where it says (Customize Providers&#8230;) and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/18/how-to-enable-simple-tags-support-in-windows-live-writer/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>In this universe we obey the law of commutativity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This kind of thing has happened to be a few times now, so I thought I&#8217;d share the fun.
In one of our pieces of software we have a process that looks like this:


void MyThread()
{
    while (true)
    {
        DoFunctionA();
     [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/17/in-this-universe-we-obey-the-law-of-commutativity/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Need some new audio cable?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Get it from Blue Jeans. Awesome.
(BlueJeansCable.com)
(via digg)

	Tags: Links/News
]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/15/need-some-new-audio-cable/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to work an 8-hour day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[


One of the things I decided when I started working was that I was not going to be one of those guys who worked 12 hours a day for a company (if I ever become an entrepreneur, all bets are off since I&#8217;m working for myself). So far, I&#8217;ve been pretty successful, and I&#8217;ve noticed [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/14/how-i-work-8-hour-days/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>GetTextExtent vs. DrawText (with DT_CALCRECT)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Working on an MFC app that has just been converted to Unicode (finally!), I noticed that one button (which is created dynamically) is too small to fit the text in Korean (and Russian and a few other languages).
The code was calling something like:


CSize sz = m_btAdjustColors.GetDC()-&#62;GetTextExtent(sCaption);


It seems correct, but these script languages are throwing it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/10/gettextextent-vs-drawtext-with-dt_calcrect/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to catch a NetFlix thief</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Via Geekologie comes the hilarious tale of a man (boy, really) caught stealing NetFlix DVDs from a mailbox. The comments are funny, too. Some seem like they&#8217;re obviously written by the neighbor.
One issue I didn&#8217;t really see addressed in the comments on the post is the overall issue of mail safety. People need to consider [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/08/how-to-catch-a-netflix-thief/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Bugle podcast</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I just discovered this gem of a podcast. The Bugle is a podcast published by the Times Online. Better writing than the Onion, and funnier than the Daily Show. It&#8217;s basically two Brits being witty about the week&#8217;s news. I&#8217;ve only listened to episode one so far, but found myself laughing too hard to concentrate [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/03/the-bugle-podcast/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>10 Ways to Learn New Things in Development</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Expanding upon one of the topics in my post about 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Developers, I&#8217;ve been thinking of various ways to kick-start learning opportunities in my career and hobbies.
1. Read books. There are tons of books about programming&#8211;probably most of them are useless, but there are many, many gems that can greatly influence [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/04/01/10-ways-to-learn-new-things-in-development/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Installed Vista SP1 - no problems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this morning. It took about 45 minutes, two reboots, and afterward I had no problems. It never showed up in Windows Update for me so I used the standalone installer (linked to above), fully prepared to reinstall some drivers. But afterwards, no drivers seemed to have any problems&#8211;Device [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/03/21/installed-vista-sp1-no-problems/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>How to file good bug reports (from Frank Kelly)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is an issue I run into constantly at my job.
Frank Kelly wrote up a good summary of some items. They&#8217;re simple, easy to understand, easy to follow, even for non-programmers.  
In fact, I&#8217;m sending this link out to everyone in my group here at work.
Technorati Tags: testing,programming,bug reporting

	Tags: bugs, Links/News, programming, self-improvement, teams, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/03/19/how-to-file-good-bug-reports-from-frank-kelly/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Never make assumptions about performance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The importance of measuring performance changes is a topic that has been covered by others smarter and more experienced than me, but I have a recent simple tale.
I&#8217;ve simplified the code quite a bit in order to demonstrate the issue. Suppose I have a wrapper around an image (it has many more attributes):


   [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/03/17/never-make-assumptions-about-performance/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>6 Ways to Increase Your Confidence As You Code</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the key requirements for being able to reliably update software is the confidence that the changes you are making are safe. The amount of confidence required increases with the complexity of the system.
In my day job I work on a real-time messaging system that can have very, very little downtime. As the service [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/03/06/6-ways-to-increase-your-confidence-as-you-code/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Why I love LEGO</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For Christmas, I got my wife a neat little townhouse. A LEGO townhouse. She loved it&#8211;until she got towards the end of the first model. There was a single piece missing. I went to LEGO&#8217;s web site and filled out a simple form. A few weeks later, I got the part and a really nice [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philosophicalgeek.com/2008/03/03/why-i-love-lego/</link>
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