Good Bye, Dr. Dobb's Journal

Just 3 months ago I lamented the decline of Dr. Dobb’s Journal.



Crate Gallery - Friday Fun

Here’s some Friday fun to waste your day with, and a bit of a poke at this website’s namesake: the empty crate. It seems that crates are used in so many video games that there is a rather disturbingly large collection of screenshots of crates in games.



Getting the List of Default #define's From GCC

Most of the postings I make to this website are for my own personal reference. They are things that I want to make sure I don’t forget, or at least have easy access to. Today is no exception. For some reason, I can never remember the following command and have to track it down every time I’m interested.



When to use reinterpret_cast<> vs. static_cast<>

The boost developers mailing list recently discussed the differences between reinterpret_cast<> and static_cast<> C++ casting operators.



Windows XP Netbook Backup Options

After a recent problem with my master boot record on my netbook, I decided it was time to make sure I had a backup and recovery option.



Booting the Windows Recovery Console From a USB Drive

This process only worked with Windows XP at the time this article was written. Use these instructions at your own risk.



Mini Roundup of Inexpensive Bible Software

My Acer Aspire One is quickly becoming the only “book” that I carry. To be a complete replacement for books that I like to have around, it was necessary to find some Bible software for it, so here’s a quick wrap up of what I found. I had a few requirements:



How Do You Know If You Have a Hash Collision?

Suppose the following situation: You have two devices, one collecting data and one inserting that data into a database. The two devices are separated over a network connection with individual data messages kept short. Each unit of data that is collected must necessarily have a unique key to bind its pieces together. While it would be possible for the data collector to query the data inserter for a unique key, is it worth the additional complexity? The collector would have to request the key and wait for a time out. If the key is received it is good to go, if not then a retry must occur. The situation is also complicated from the standpoint of the database inserter because it needs to have some way to generate unique keys and deal with keys whose data is never populated. A less complex, and perhaps better, way is for the data collector to have a method of autogenerating its own unique key in a reproduceable way. A one-way hashing algorithm which is a hash of some unique piece of data would work nicely for this. We end up with a series of messages: ` `



When to use #include "" verses #include <>

Different compilers treat the two types of includes:



Soundex Algorithm

Last week I noticed that the MySQL “sounds like” operator uses the soundex algorithm to determine if two words sound alike. The algorithm is English centric and was designed around the time of the time of the 1880 census. It has been used in the US census since 1880 to account for miss or different spellings of family names.