<p>Quick hack/warning for those using an alternative command line processor like <a href="https://jpsoft.com/tccle-cmd-replacement.html">TCC</a> and also use Xoreax’ <a href="https://www.incredibuild.com/">Incredibuild</a> for distributed builds. Incredibuild is awesome, by the way, and if you have a larger C++ project that takes a long time to build, you should use it. And no, I’m not getting paid or receive free stuff for writing that.</p>

<p>If you, like me tend to carry around or “cloud around” a single .emacs file so you end up with similar environments wherever you have an Emacs install, you know it’s a little painful to ensure that you have the same set of basic packages installed on each one of your Emacs installations. As I had mentioned before I don’t use that many third party packages so my Emacs configurations aren’t that complicated, but I always prefer to have the computer remember things…

<p>A common annoyance with Emacs when working on a code base that has duplicate file names is that the mode line tends to display the buffer names as “one.py:<1>”, “one.py:<2>” etc etc. That doesn’t help much with telling them apart and I find it confusing.</p>

<p>Interesting story how a development team at Facebook <a href="https://code.facebook.com/posts/313033472212144/debugging-file-corruption-on-ios/">debugged a resource handling issue</a> in their iOS app.</p>

<p><a href="http://blog.regehr.org/archives/199">A</a> <a href="http://blog.regehr.org/archives/208">couple</a> of interesting articles about debugging. Debugging doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention when people are taught about programming, I assume you’re supposed to acquire this skill by osmosis, but it is actually one of those skills that should receive much greater attention because it’s one of those that separates highly productive developers from, well, not so…

<p>Putting the OpenSprinkler and Raspberry Pi together was easy, getting them to run showed my inexperience when it comes to playing with hardware. The overall install went pretty smoothly and the <a href="http://rayshobby.net/docs/ospi14_manual.pdf">documentation</a> is good and easy to follow so I’m not going to ramble on about it for very long, but just throw up some notes.</p>

<p>The Raspberry Pis have landed. Guess which box contains the sensitive electronics and is worth about twice as much as the other one:</p>

<p>I normally don’t play much with hardware, mainly because there isn’t/wasn’t much I want to do that tends to require hardware that’s not a regular PC or maybe a phone or tablet. This one is different, because no self-respecting geek would want the usual rotary control “programmable” timer to run their sprinkler system, would they?</p>

<p>OK, I admit it - I’m a dinosaur. I still use the command line a lot as I’m subscribing to the belief that I can often type faster than I can move my hand off the keyboard to the mouse, click, and move my hand back. Plus, I grew up in an era when the command line was what you got when you turned on the computer, and Windows 2.0 or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager">GEM</a> was a big improvement.</p>

<p>First, a confession - I actually occasionally call myself a coder, but in a tongue in cheek, post-modern and ironic way. Heck, it does make for a good blog title and license plate.</p>