Thought I’d share with my fellow programmers my latest finding: Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers. You can download the entire book (approx. 15MB) on individual chapters in PDF format. Now, if Microsoft would only release the bloody thing already! ;) If anyone know of a similar book for C#, please post back.

Over the weekend I finally took the first step towards my resolution to take a more active role in helping out the open source community. As of last Friday, I joined the hordes of developers and open source enthusiasts who signed up for Ubuntu’s LaunchPad project and offered to help with the ongoing process of translating applications and documents from English to Portuguese (Brazil). I spoke with the organizer for this specific translation effort and was told to submit suggestions to some of the sections still pending.

Yesterday a lot of people hanging out on #ubuntu @ FREENODE were complaining of Firefox crashes in Ubuntu Linux after upgrading to the latest 1.0.7 version. This will only happen if you’ve enabled Ubuntu Backports in your apt-get setup. Luckly, Cyphase took the time to write up a small HowTo that will help you fix this minor glitch. For the console-afficionado out there just execute: sudo apt-get remove firefox firefox-gnome-support mozilla-firefox mozilla-firefox-gnome-support sudo apt-get install mozilla-firefox mozilla-firefox-gnome-support

KPL, or Kid’s Programming Language is modeled on the simplicity and readability of BASIC, but it is a structured rather than linear programming language. KPL lets kids see eye-catching and immediate results from their programs, while teaching them fundamental concepts like variables, data types, loops, decision structures, methods and functions. KPL’s data types include integers, decimals, strings, booleans, arrays, and user-defined structures. Visual Studio users will feel right at home with KPL’s IDE as it will, as the web page smartly states, “graduate” young coders to the more professional interfaces.

On his latest post about Linux usability, St. Hermann replies to Andres Solomon’s comment about the typical Linux developer’s mentality and how users choose their favorite distros. It has been shown (through blogs, mailing lists, etc) before that the typical Linux developer (here I’m mostly refering to application developers/maintainers) will often feel irritated if someone doesn’t follow the proper protocols for giving him feedback… Let me say this again so not to leave any doubts: Some user finds some application/code appealing to their need and wants to provide the author/maintainer some feedback, in order to improve said application/code… and the author/maintainer gets offended by it!

Hehehe… Too funny not to post here! Be warned that this link will contain graphic scenes of wild penguins doing all sorts of Kama Sutra-like positions, such as: Patching the Kernel Backend Arch Mounting the Hard Disk Embedding the Stack Partitioning the Drive and your favorite: Piercing the Firewall

A big thanks goes to my friend SuperToadman for blogging about Steve Jobs' commencement address to Stanford’s Class of 2005 graduates delivered on this past June 12, 2005. It talks among several things about loving what you do… About being able to look back on your life and “connect the dots…” To make every day of your life count!!! Needless to say I completely agree with what he said and am desperately looking for a way to follow what my heart urges me to do!