Paul Graham wrote an essay about what great hackers have in common. Here are some quotes.

Their defining quality is probably that they really love to program. Ordinary programmers write code to pay the bills. Great hackers think of it as something they do for fun, and which they’re delighted to find people will pay them for.

What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that’s an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They’ll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.

Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it’s better, but because it gives them more control.

Along with good tools, hackers want interesting projects.

Along with interesting problems, what good hackers like is other good hackers.

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If you are interested in game and graphics programming and its related technologies such as OpenGL and DirectX, here is a good resource website for you to get started with. It features a fairly large set of examples, source code samples, and tutorials. Happy computing. CodeSampler.com

Hello, my name is Kevin Harris and I welcome you to CodeSampler.com… home of the simple sample! This website is devoted to 3D game and graphics programming using DirectX and OpenGL. Here you can find and download source code samples and tutorials written in languages such as C++, C#, Python, and Lua, which I think will be very helpful to anyone wanting to program and design their own games, games engines, or level editors.

Just wonder what greasemonkey is. I heard of this term many times in my daily feed of web news. I think the following site should be a good starting point to learn more about it. (more…)

Mainland’s first foreign-managed university opens in September 17, 2005. It is the University of Nottingham Ningbo Campus (UNNC), which offers British degree courses at half the cost of studying in Britian. The courses will be taught entirely in China and mainly by British academics. The costing formula is designed to appeal to mainland’s growing middle class.

I learns this news from Hong Kong South China Morning Post this morning. I then search the Internet to find some related information. I find the following worthwhile to have a look.

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Here is a good article that gives a gentle introduction to Web 2.0.

Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype

Web 2.0 isn’t a ‘thing’, but a collection of approaches, which are all converging on the development world at a rapid pace. These approaches, including APIs, RSS, Folksonomies, and Social Networking, suddenly give application developers a new way to approach hard problems with surprisingly effective results.

The author is Jared M. Spool. He is founder of User Interface Engineering, which is a large usability research organization.

Besides the recommended lists of freeware that I recorded down in my previous posts, Freeware for PC Users, Open Source Software for Windows: do you know you have many choices?, here is another one, in which the author lists 91 of his personal pick of great freeware and open source software (FOSS).

Software List For a Better Computing