The other day my PC started beeping at me. Every "Are you sure?" message box was accompanied by a "beep". I don't know how or why this started...I only wanted to make it go away. First check, Control Panel -> Sounds. I confirmed that I had my sound scheme set to "No Sounds", but the beep stubbornly refused to budge. Next, Google. Did you know there's a "Beep" driver? Neither did I! The HowToGeek has a nice article on disabling this driver on XP, only issue is you have to be admin. I rolled up my sleeves, ran an elevated command prompt using...

Jeff Atwood blogged about the free online book Almost Perfect earlier this week. Author Pete Peterson was part of WordPerfect for 12 years and opens a window into development process, marketing, competition, and highs and lows of the company, from a small starter to a big corporation. I think the broader themes in this book are still applicable today - the enthusiastic team learning on its feet, finding creative ways to compete, dealing with customers and incorporating feedback, handling "feature creep" and release schedules, and the culture of an organisation (in this case, run by programmers). Pete doesn't come across as...

OK, I’ll admit I got got by a couple of the April Fool’s pranks around on Wednesday. I was duped by Bill Harris at newly-subscribed Dubious Quality blog with his corker post on asthma and gravity. I was suckered by TheRuntime’s own Jay Kimble who had me worried when he blogged about closing this site. I only raised an eyebrow at the phoney SaveIE6 campaign...at least I think it’s phoney... I feel like about 10% of an April Fool. I’d better pay more attention next year :-) Tags: april fool, funny