Roger Austin

Recent Blog Comments By Roger Austin

• The User Experience (UX) Of Rating Things

  Posted on Aug 14, 2013 at 3:58 PM

  A neutral selection is needed in most cases. It helps you since it increases your population of responses. Ratings starts having increased validity as n increases. In an extreme example, you have ten positive and a thousand neutrals. If all you had was ten positives, you would assume a different ans... read more »

• The User Experience (UX) Of Rating Things

  Posted on Aug 14, 2013 at 11:05 AM

  It is perplexing. Rating systems are fraught with many issues. Most of these are issues where people who have a stake in the outcome of the ratings will game the system. Look at Amazon ratings. These are mostly useless if you just look at the star ratings. Yelp is similar. There are a lot of planted... read more »

• The Anatomy Of An INNER JOIN Query In SQL

  Posted on Aug 2, 2013 at 9:45 AM

  Are you thinking about the RDBMS execution plan or just in terms of human being understanding?... read more »

• SOTR 2013 - The Best Conference I Never Went To

  Posted on Jun 12, 2013 at 9:37 AM

  That was epic.... read more »

• Win A Free Copy Of The Regular Expression Cookbook 2nd Edition

  Posted on Sep 5, 2012 at 9:47 AM

  I have the first edition and it is a very handy reference. I look forward to the new edition. I'll be thrilled to get a free copy of 2nd ed. Thanks for the heads-up on the giveaway.... read more »

• Working With Time Zones And Daylight Savings Time (DST) In ColdFusion And Java

  Posted on Sep 22, 2011 at 11:21 AM

  All you need to store in the db is the difference between your server time in UTC and the time of the event you want to fire assuming your server time doesn't change. Calculating the difference would need your time zone info though. Your SMS system just needs to look at the db and fire when ready.... read more »

• Sometimes, I Feel Like A Man With No Identity

  Posted on Aug 9, 2011 at 7:50 PM

  You need to budget a certain amount of time for self pity every week. I budget a couple of hours. Then, you get on with life and do what you have to do. Life is good. It is also short. Try to go for walks, visit museums or libraries, do stuff that shows off the incredible things that people have do... read more »

• The Sexiest Thing A Woman Can Say In An Elevator

  Posted on Jul 5, 2011 at 4:31 PM

  Women don't need to say anything go get attention from most men. Eye contact and a sweet smile would make it clear she would be receptive to an elevator conversation. A really attractive woman can be very intimidating to many men. Giving the impression that they are approachable will be enough.... read more »

• My First Year As A Mac User On The Apple MacBook Pro

  Posted on Jun 7, 2011 at 6:08 PM

  It is weird that I am the only Windows user in the local Clojure meetup. Everyone else either has MBPs or Linux machines. Many are also young and mostly Ruby people. I understand that the Ruby dev community is almost exclusively Apple oriented from what I have observed. A large number of the local J... read more »

• My First Year As A Mac User On The Apple MacBook Pro

  Posted on Jun 7, 2011 at 2:59 PM

  Ack! Ben's been assimilated to the Borg! Ack! You aren't starting to wear all black clothes yet are you? ;)... read more »

• Generating ePub Electronic Books With ColdFusion

  Posted on Jun 3, 2011 at 7:14 PM

  So when are you going to put the mobi code on git? ;) You make us all look lazy which describes me to a large degree. I love your experiments like this one.... read more »

• At cf.Objective() 2012 Jason Dean Is Going Down!

  Posted on May 16, 2011 at 10:46 AM

  @Jason Apologists are many, but wait to see who the money is on in 2012. I was wondering if people were trying to influence the Vegas line; however, it might be too early for that. Preliminary bout at NCDevCon?... read more »

• At cf.Objective() 2012 Jason Dean Is Going Down!

  Posted on May 15, 2011 at 7:23 PM

  You guys need to get your elbows closer together to do proper arm rastlin. Otherwise, you there is too much leverage and Jason's weight "advantage" overwhelms your small frame. You can use that excuse up until next year. ;)... read more »

• Atlas Shrugged, Part I - The Movie

  Posted on Apr 25, 2011 at 7:09 PM

  @Anna, I suggest reading the book first and waiting for the DVD or the stream for the movie. My opinion is that most of the time this is the best way to go with any book and movie combo. There are exceptions to that rule, but not many IMO.... read more »

• Atlas Shrugged, Part I - The Movie

  Posted on Apr 22, 2011 at 11:49 AM

  Rand and Objectivism is very seductive especially to the young. The problem with it, like most "ism"s is that it assumes rationality and logic of humans. Humans are animals with a wide variety of experiences and upbringings. We all want to have solid reasons for things and the great way fo... read more »

• Atlas Shrugged, Part I - The Movie

  Posted on Apr 22, 2011 at 11:01 AM

  Ben, maybe Ayn didn't blink in her lifetime either. We don't know, but I gather she wasn't all that likeable. That probably defined her books.... read more »

• Seven Languages In Seven Weeks: Clojure - Day 1

  Posted on Jan 20, 2011 at 7:01 PM

  Halloway is CEO of Relevance over in Durham so he is local to me. You can see a number of his talks on the InfoQ site < http://www.infoq.com/Clojure > Stu and Rich Hickey videos are pretty good. I had heard Sean Corfield talk some about Clojure on-line and then I got wind of the first Clojure... read more »

• Seven Languages In Seven Weeks: Clojure - Day 1

  Posted on Jan 19, 2011 at 10:27 PM

  Clojure is mylanguage for this year. I attended the 2010 ClojureConj here in RTP and it was great. There will probably be another one in October 2011 so come on down to North Carolina. I went to hear Stu Halloway last night at the Ruby meeting in RTP. He did a talk "Clojure for Rudy Devs"... read more »

• The School Of Practical Philosophy: Philosophy Works - Week One

  Posted on Jan 18, 2011 at 12:48 PM

  The problem of listening is definitely related to our tendency to race ahead to solutions rather than allow a solution to percolate out in time. Programmers definitely have that tendency since it makes us more valuable in most cases. It is one reason we don't often make good managers of people. Medi... read more »

• Thoughts And Goals For 2011

  Posted on Jan 3, 2011 at 3:30 PM

  There is no question that the retirement account is a big issue. I'm about 20 years nearer to retirement age than you and will tell you that it sneaks up on you so fast while you are busy with life and career. If you wake up one day and realize that you are ten years from retirement and haven't save... read more »