A pigeon is sitting in the yard of our London flat. I don't think it can fly very well: it's been mostly walking for the past few days, though it will flap away if alarmed. It has two mangled feet and doesn't walk all that tidily either. We took pity on it and gave it… Continue reading City pigeons
Author: Chris Cannam
Single-key menu shortcuts with Qt 5 on OS/X
Several of my Qt-based applications, including Sonic Visualiser and Tony, have some menu actions attached to single-key shortcuts without a modifier key. Examples include the Space bar to start and stop playback, or the "f" key (without Ctrl, Alt or any other modifier) for zoom-to-fit. While testing the update from Qt 4 to Qt 5.1… Continue reading Single-key menu shortcuts with Qt 5 on OS/X
Undergraduate programming languages
I read two quite different articles about programming in academia today. I don't know Yossi Kreinin, and when his piece Why bad scientific code beats code following "best practices" appeared on the Hacker News front page, I guessed that I probably wouldn't agree with it. I'm a programmer working in academia who has spent some… Continue reading Undergraduate programming languages
T40p, T60p, T540p, go!
I recently replaced my desktop machine at work with a Thinkpad T540p. This laptop has had some bad reviews online: terrible trackpad, keyboard a great disappointment, Windows drivers problems, not the proper colour for a Thinkpad (it's dark grey instead of black), installing Linux will brick it. I read a few of these and did… Continue reading T40p, T60p, T540p, go!
Proprietary Unix
From 1992 to 1998, every paid job I did came with a Unix workstation on my desk. Admittedly that only covers three employers, but it covers a lot of different kinds of workstation. In those days, selling Unix software (unless you could dictate the hardware as well) involved a lot of porting, and companies would… Continue reading Proprietary Unix
Small phones will rise again!
In 2007 Apple launched the iPhone. It was a fancy phone, but big and heavy by the standards of the time. For the first few years after that, it seemed to be generally accepted that the iPhone was big. Even by 2010 commentators were writing things like "Apple has to expand its product range [with]… Continue reading Small phones will rise again!
The Breakfast Post 