Steve Rowe's Blog
Ruminations on Computing - Data Science, Programming, Test Development, Management and More
Vista SP1 Release Candidate Available to the Public
Vista SP1 RC1 has just been released for public consumption. If you want to try it out, you can do...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 12/17/2007
Dynamic Range and Color Spaces
Bill Crow, best known for his work on HDPhoto/JPEG-XR, has a great post about dynamic range and...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 12/07/2007
Design Principles To Live By
Object-oriented design and design patterns can seem complex. There are a lot of ideas and cases to...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/30/2007
Inbox Zero
If you're anything like me, you have way too much e-mail to read it all. To try to cope with this,...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/29/2007
Video Podcasts
With my new Zune, I've started watching some video netcasts. Here are the ones I've found the most...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/25/2007
The New Zune Revue
Over the past few years I have become an avid podcast listener. I've been using Creative MP3 players...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/24/2007
Resume Advice
Some resume advice from Steve Yegge. I don't agree with all of it but it's good stuff to consider...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/17/2007
Phone Screen Questions
Steve Yegge from Amazon offers his Five Essential Phone Screen Questions. It's an old post, but a...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/16/2007
"Everyone" Is Not A Valid Owner
Saw this over on {Codesqueeze}. He talks about the danger of self-organizing teams. When people...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/14/2007
Analog to Digital Conversion
If you want digital audio in a computer, you have to get it from somewhere. Usually that means...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/13/2007
Always Question the Process
Let me recount a story from the television show Babylon 5. In one episode there is the description...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/12/2007
The Ultimate Geek Jacket
With Christmas approaching, here is a cool idea for the gadget-lover. The ScottEVest Evolution...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/10/2007
Keep Process Simple
Year ago one of our Software Test Engineers was tasked with documenting our smoke* process. It...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/09/2007
The Need for a Real Build Process
Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has a good post about how "F5 is not a build process." In it, he...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 11/08/2007
Happy Halloween!
It is once again Halloween which, here in the U.S. means a time when all the kids dress up in...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/31/2007
Vinyl Better Than CD?
An amazingly lucid discussion of the benefits of Vinyl over CD (or lack thereof) is going on over at...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/29/2007
A Little C= 64 Love
Here's a fun one for the weekend. A retrospective of the Commodore 64 and it's place as a great game...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/27/2007
Testing A Daily Build
It is becoming accepted in the industry that teams should produce a build on a daily basis. Every...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/25/2007
New MSDN Tester Center
MSDN now has a home for test information. Check out the new MSDN Tester Center. It has articles,...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/24/2007
What Self-Taught Programmers Are (Often) Missing
Some self-taught programmers can hold their own with the best coders out there. Others, although...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/23/2007
More Amiga History From Ars Technica
Ars just released another edition of its history of the Amiga series. The first deals with the...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/22/2007
Helping Groups Succeed
or What to do when you aren't in control but neither is the leader. A while back I wrote about...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/22/2007
Another Project BBQ is in the can
It's October and that means it is once again time for Project Bar-B-Q. This is the premiere computer...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/20/2007
Interviewing the Experienced
This week there was an interesting conversation over on Slashdot. The subject of the post is an age...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/12/2007
Understanding MP3 Compression
Another great article from Ars Technica. This time about MP3 compression. If you'e ever wondered how...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 10/04/2007
Digital Audio Primer
Ars Technica has a new primer up describing digital audio. A good read if you want to introduce...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/27/2007
Saying Goodbye to Illinois
I'm about to head out from my trip to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I've...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/26/2007
Enjoying Pandora
I've really been enjoying listening to Pandora lately. It is a net radio service that builds a...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/25/2007
What Is A Microphone Array?
One of our program managers, Richard Fricks, just had a piece posted on the Windows Vista blog...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/25/2007
A Little Design Advice
A recent article on InfoWorld lays out "The eight secrets that make Apple No. 1." There are many...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/24/2007
Metrics of Software Quality
This post over on TestingReflections brings up an interesting point. Michael answers the question,...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/21/2007
Visiting UIUC
If you follow this blog, you'll know that I'm currently working on my Masters in Computer Science...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/20/2007
Do We Still Need Test Developers?
In my post, Test Developers Shouldn't Execute Tests, Antony Marcano asked if we actually need test...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/19/2007
Test Developers Shouldn't Execute Tests
This view puts me outside the mainstream of the testing community but I feel strongly that test...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/14/2007
Managing Mistakes
A promising young executive at IBM was involved in a risky venture that lost $10 million for the...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/13/2007
Practice, Practice, Practice Makes Perfect
I was sent a link to this article as a followup to my post about learning to program over a long...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/12/2007
You Can't Learn To Program In A Hurry
A friend turned me on to this essay from Peter Norvig entitled Teach Yourself Programming in Ten...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 09/04/2007
iWozn't Impressed
I just finished listening to the unabridged version of iWoz. It's basically the autobiography of...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/31/2007
An Explanation for the "Music Slows Down Networking" Issue
Last week there was a small storm on the internet when it was discovered that playing music on...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/29/2007
Test Automation in Crackdown
An interesting report over at Gamasutra. Jami Johns from Microsoft Game Studio gave a talk at...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/25/2007
Why Algorithms Matter
New programmers often don't appreciate the power of algorithms. They have one criteria for a piece...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/24/2007
My Team Got Me
It's a tradition at Microsoft that when someone leaves for a while, their office is vandalized in...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/24/2007
HD-DVD Wins Over Dreamworks and Paramount
Recently people have begun to declare a victor in the next-gen DVD wars. Because of the PS3, the...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/22/2007
Tacit Approval Often Isn’t
Most of us have found ourselves in situations where we need someone’s approval to get something...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/20/2007
XP Machine Can't See Vista Computer - Solution
I'm at my brother-in-law's place and had to troubleshoot a network issue. I didn't see quite this...
Author: SteveRowe Date: 08/17/2007