Making Serial Connection Programming Easier

Hey all,

Okay, so I've just posted a small class, serial_interface, to codeproject.com. I wrote this class to make setting up serial interfaces clean, easy and fast since the MSDN Library article makes it messy, overlycomplicated and slow. Not to mention the code quickly becomes a maintenance headache. If you're interested in reading the article or downloading the code, just click on this blog title or go here:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/serial_interface.aspx

The Genesis of Geekdom

Hey all, I thought it would be appropriate to follow up the previous posts with a great article I read on Gary Gygax and his contribution the beginnings of what is currently considered 'geekdom'. This article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2185914/pagenum/all/#page_start

talks about that man's ingenuity and origins of the Dungeons and Dragons game. Thought it would be a great thing for everyone to read.

Vive Geekdom, Beholder, and the Kvorak identity

Today, I would like to give a little bit of perspective on what is going on in my world and take a minute to make a personal introduction. Hi, my name is Jason Hamilton, let me show you my world.

I am a professed geek, anyone who knows me will attest to that fact. I began playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was 9 years old, starting hacking windows when I was 12, was developing web pages and Internet content at 14, started developing real software at 16 and have spent the decade since learning as much as I can about all of the above. As I write this, I am sitting at my desk, finally fed up with Windows and am setting up a dual-boot configuration on my dinosaur desktop with Fedora9 and Windows XP (while writing this from a much better laptop). I have a (dated) personal web page on Geocities (http://www.geocities.com/kvorak), which desperately needs an update, but I have been spending most of my time setting up this blog, working on my Sourceforge.net project, codenamed 'Beholder', and working at my dream day job (where I get to write software from home).

The Beholder project is my little baby at the moment and likely to be a frequent topic of discussion here on this blog because it blends all of my favorite things together. It is a C++ static library of classes and functions that will, when it is done, allow programmers with any level of understanding of the D20 game system to develop digital products based on the 4th edition rule set. The project is hosted over on Sourceforge.net (http://www.sourceforge.net) and is accepting more team members at the time of this writing.

During the day, I work for Abeo TS, a security software company based out of New Jersey. This really is a dream job and it gives me access to all sorts of resources that I didn't have before for learning new things, tips and tricks about software engineering. Unfortunately, it's time for me to join the morning huddle, so I'll send this post and follow up with any more thoughts later on.

Welcome to the Genesis of Vive Geekdom!

The principal purpose of this personal promotion is to proliferate philosophies and ideas pertaining to the preoccupations of a professed geek; i.e. myself. If you'll pardon the prestidigitation and appalling verbosity of this pioneering post, I promise to recompense your patience with pertinent poop.

Okay, enough with the Ps already. All of that is to say that I will be using the blog space to discuss matters that may be relevant to my two greatest hobbies, namely Software Engineering and the Dungeons and Dragons game. There may well be references to other peripheral topics as well, such as Linux, Windows hacks and utilities, and other such nonsense. Since this is the first post, I'll keep in brief; in fact, I'm done! More will be posted later....