Why your program should have an actual configuration file

Every so often, someone says something like 'you know, our program has aconfiguration file but also supports runtime reconfiguration via somemagic. Clearly this is wrong, so what we should do is get rid of ourconfiguration file and just make sure the running state is persistent'.If they're feeling nice, they add that the running state will be savedas an XML file.

Every time people say this, sysadmins cry. Here is a very importantthing for real deployments of your program in real environments


起跑線

起跑線

「不要讓孩子輸在起跑線」是榮升人母的阿C的座右銘。

當阿C仍懷着女兒時,便密鑼緊鼓,一心要在家裏締造一個良好的英語語境。阿C深信英語無敵,是孩子將來必要掌握得好的語言。要學好語言,就要提供語境,所
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長但幼 or 粗但短

宜家俾兩個選擇你,二選一:

1. 長但幼

2. 粗但短

唔好問有冇第三個選擇,冇呀﹗

世上邊有咁多又長又粗嘅啫?我夠想要啦。

其實,我真係試過唔少ga。

又長又粗嘅,令人好回味好回味。

可惜,我只係遇上過一次。

長嘅,睇起

A thought on deliberately slow disaster recovery

Given my earlier entry , here is athesis: some disasters are big enough that you should stop trying torecover rapidly .

The problem with attempting rapid disaster recovery is that significantdisasters are high stress, high pressure situations. Unless you have very good checklists , this is exactly the sort ofsituation where it's easy to have something go catastrophically wrongthrough various situations; missed steps, miscommunication betweenpeople about who was doing what, failing to notice problem indicatorsunder the pressure of driving full speed ahead, interruptions and


May I have your number?

May I have your number? 這就是朋友和陌生人的分別。地球上有幾十億人,好像香港這麼細小的地方,走一趟旺角,就算是地膽你也可以不停遇見陌生人,所謂朋友,永遠都是一個小圈子,因為我們需要朋友,卻需要更多的陌生人。

對呢,

我等你回來

我等你回來

朋友追問回港歸期。

我說未定。

她說打算在四月到新加坡探朋友,但想到我可能會回港,所以把計劃暫時打住,待我訂了日子再決定。

有人在等我。心裏甜絲絲的。

冷不防她突然反高潮問,你今年可會派利是。

我開玩
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模倣犯

改編自宮部美幸的經典小說,森田芳光導演的這齣探案電影本來是好看的,據說未讀過原著的觀眾是會覺得好的,讀過小說的觀眾卻可能會很失望。

宮部美幸的小說我讀過多部,但兩巨冊的《模倣犯》實在太長篇,我一直不敢碰

我的閱讀習慣



每個愛看書的人都有自己的 閱讀習慣,看那類的書、甚 麼時間看、每次看多少、看得快或慢,可以各自不同,最重要的是享受 閱讀的樂趣。

我的興趣非常廣泛,而舉凡我有興趣的東西,都有大量的書可看,於是我看書難免貪多務

The problem with blog footnotes

Here is something that has just occurred to me (courtesy of seeing anexample of it): footnotes are hard to do well in blogs, and may needactual software support if you want them to be completely correct.

The conventional way of doing footnotes in HTML is to use fragment URLsand anchors, with the footnote text at the bottom of the entry andyour choice of footnote markers in the main text. But, like anythinginvolving anchors, this means that you need to come up with uniqueanchor names.


辯論只是一場遊戲

辯論比賽也許是最奇怪的遊戲,其規則要求人們盡力維護自己所抽中的立場,然後說服評判自己是最為正確的一方。既然要有辯論的味道,題目當然沒有明顯對錯或社會共識,例如甚麼安樂死應否合化法、死刑應否廢除或是複製