The Choose Your Own Adventure book series was one of my favorites as a young reader.

From the ACM Code of Ethics:

As an ACM member I will

1. Contribute to society and human well-being.
2. Avoid harm to others.
3. Be honest and trustworthy.
4. Be fair and take action not to discriminate.
5. Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.
6. Give proper credit for intellectual property.
7. Respect the privacy of others.
8. Honor confidentiality.

It's hard to square that with the following hair-raising tale Dustin Brooks sent me via email:

Well, you won't technically see me at MIX08 this year. But you will see some very cool top-secret stuff Vertigo created in the keynote.

// description of your code here

# for WATIR scripts by marekj testr.us
module TestRun

# TestRun.record(__FILE__,{:1, 'Bacon', :2, 'Apple', :3, 'Cheese'})
#
# writes or appends a yaml doc to file named filename as the file that invoked the method
# ---
# :1: Bacon
# :2: Apple
# :3: Cheese
#
# example: if __FILE__ is c:\foofoo\away\in\windowz\land\scirptname.rb then

This example creates a date and time variable which represents 22nd March 2008 4:30pm and 12 seconds.

d2 = DateTime.new(y=200,m=3,d=22, h=16,min=30,s=12)

what up with this style of google analytics implementation?

Session cookies, the Rails-2 kind, are transient because that's safer. In some applications safety isn't important. The following makes the session cookies persist for a year.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
before_filter :update_session_expiration_date

private
def update_session_expiration_date
unless ActionController::Base.session_options[:session_expires]
ActionController::Base.session_options[:session_expires] = 1.year.from_now
end
end
end

It's a common misconception that JavaScript is just for coders. As Alex explains, libraries like jQuery can make tasks like adding animation or tweaking markup a piece of cake -- even for non-coders!