Cheat Sheets

I’m not sure if you already cheated a test without the instructor’s knowledge by using a cheat sheet.  Nevertheless if you did it or not, following some of my favorite cheat sheets.

• Computer Language chart
• C++ quick reference
• GIT cheat sheet
• Google Guide quick reference
• Mercurial cheat sheet
• OSI Model
• Ruby quick reference
• Search Engines Query cheat sheet
• Subversion cheat sheet
• UML reference card
• VI Graphical cheat sheet

Despite this, you can find more cheat sheets via the following links:

• Over 30 cheat sheets for developers
• refcards.com – free quick reference cards
• Quick reference cards

How clever are you?

A friend of me always gets bored during the Christmas vacation. Because of this I’ve made a simple brainteaser for him. If you can answer all questions properly you will learn something about cryptography, history and poesy.

Task 1: Encode the following message.

OMVMU LYJQG AHIAP LIXIN WXUBV
VUUNE OFIWD CZVBI HCHNJ BBHJD
MOTMK CJXHM UHTEJ EMPLL OFJOZ
XQVIR KJJYG TSMTZ SLPSD BNRXH
CKXAA ESJAC KHDJ

Note: The message uses the following abbreviations and guidelines.

1. Replaced “.” with X.
2. Replaced “ch” with Q.
3. Doubled proper nouns and enclused by X.

The message was encrypted with an Enigma mechanical device. You can you an Enigma simulator from http://www.xat.nl/enigma/ to do this. I used the following settings to encrypt the message.

Number of Rotors	: 3
Left Rotor	: Type I
Middle Rotor	: Type II
Right Rotor	: Type III
Reflector	: Type B
Wheel Order	: 123
Indicator Settings	: HJS
Ring Settings (Ringstellung)	: 1 1 1 or A A A
Plugboard (Steckerverbindungen)	: BT CE MU Q

Task 2: Find the historical background of this message.

Task 3: Find the name of the poet who wrote the poem that is included in this message.

Task 4: Translate the poem into its original language, which is French and not English.

… so do your best, it’s not an easy quiz as you normally can find on Facebook. ;-)

Vista—is it just a rip-off?

Today, I’ve chatted with a university friend about the new version of Mac OS X, which is called Leopard. He really loves Microsoft Windows and like every Windows lover, he believes that Vista is not a cheap rip-off? After a one-hour discussion, the following video convinced me that he was absolutely right. ;-)

Typewriter Magic

I saw the movie “Shadows in the Sun” recently, a film that tells the story of two men who’re struggling to overcome their fears of not being good enough—to find his own path in life.

An aspiring writer tracks a literary titan suffering from writers block to his refuge in rural Italy and learns about life and love from the irascible genius and his daughters. In one scene of the movie, the literary titan tells the aspiring writer not to use his computer for writing. When you write on a computer, you can type words very fast and easily remove them by just pressing the backspace key. In his opinion, you can only turn raw words into something you can be proud by putting the words in your mind together before bringing it finally onto paper. Because of this reason, he told the writer to use an old-fashioned typewriter.

I really like this idea. In my opinion, writing is an intensely personal thing. You spend hour after hour nurturing your words to get the best way to convey your message. It’s outstandingly gorgeous!

At the end of the movie I asked myself how I could turn my PowerBook G4 into such an old-fashioned typewriter and found a very nice and almost useless Mac OS X program. It will not prevent you not to use the backspace key, but it makes your keyboard to play typewriter sounds. The program is called “Typewriter Keyboard”.

P.S. You can see a wonderful Rumba in the movie, too. ;-)

The Best Christmas Classic

Today I heard in the radio one of my favorite Christmas classics ever, which is “Feliz Navidad” from José Feliciano. I can listen to this song all year long and in my opinion José is a tremendously underrated talent. He is a Puerto Rician singer and guitarist and was left permanently blind at birth, but he overcame the effects of his impairment and scores many international hits. If his brilliant voice and his classical guitar inspire you—I’m sure you will love “Que Sera”, too. Gracias por siempre… José!

Mac OS X Felling in Microsoft Windows

Five years ago, I decided to move completely from Microsoft Windows to Mac OS X. I did this because Mac OS X has sitting a real Unix operating system underneath of an awesome graphical user interface. I never understood in Windows why I have to press on “Start” to put my Laptop in standby mode. Despite this, I never was a huge advocate of the Windows graphical user interface, because I think it is not according to Fitts’ law.

Fitts’ law is pretty straightforward; the time to acquire a target is a function of the proximity and size of the target. For example: A user can click on a very large button that is close to the current pointer position more quickly than they can click on a small button that is further away. It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? Unfortunately I have to use Windows on my IBM Thinkpad T41p company laptop.

Last Friday evening I was too tired to go out with friends, so I decided to rework the look and feel of my Windows desktop. As dock I use ObjectDock from Stardock. Following you can find a screenshot how desktop looks now.