I spent around an hour piecing information together about how to install this printer on Arch. It seems Canon’s support for this device is near non-existant. Their newer devices seem to be better supported. I recently installed a PIXMA 5350 on my parents Ubuntu 12.04 desktop within five minutes. Installing this older model on Arch Linux wasn’t as straightforward.
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I’ve owned an iPhone since September 2008, so almost 4 years. On Thursday I received my HTC One S from Amazon. I’m still learning my way around but as they’re fresh in my mind, I thought I’d make note of obstacles I ran up against as an Android noobie.
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I’ve always found the people side of software development interesting, and have read various books about what makes developers tick: Peopleware, Smart & Gets Things Done, The Psychology of Computer Programming, Coders at Work, Slack etc.

I asked myself what really motivates software developers?
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Thanks to Kevin Worthington for his installation instructions. Comments are closed on his post so I’ve added these notes to my own blog.
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This isn’t my affidavit of being a copy and paste programmer. vim has recently become my code editor of choice, having used Eclipse for years, and Netbeans for most of this year. Poor network performance at work means both of those IDEs slow me down.

One annoyance with vim is pasting text from another application. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve watched the world eulogise Steve Jobs over the last 48 hours. To me, there’s no better testament to his brilliance than quantity of profound quotes. I found one particularly poignant on focus and simplicity:

Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple

This quote stood out to me because it epitomises what I aim to achieve in my code, I can’t say I’m always successful.

Farewell Mr Jobs, consumer electronics will be a little less brilliant without you.