CHRIS KULBACKI

What do Shakira and software have in common?

chris | 19/07/2011 06:56 | Categories: Development, Technical No, I'm not turning this into a celebrity gossip blog, but there's one thing I noticed about Shakira that software developers would do well to learn from: her songs come out natively in two languages. The video clips are not just translated, the footage is actually recorded with Shakira singing in Spanish and in English. And regardless of whether you like her music or not, you have to [More...]

The End of a Nightmare

chris | 24/03/2011 16:56 | Categories: Development, Technical If your local video store is closed and you are in the mood for watching something scary, I've got just the thing for you. Take a modern website and try porting it to Internet Explorer 6. [More...]

European Union Doesn't Like Sweets

chris | 05/03/2011 08:00 | Category: Technical European Union keeps coming up with new legislations painted with broad brush strokes. Here's another one: starting on the 25th of May 2011 all websites hosted in the EU will need to obtain permission before storing cookies on the user's computer. It almost looks like the EU Council is purposefully trying to drive away business from its shores. [More...]

Captivating cryptography! Part 2.

chris | 02/07/2010 14:12 | Category: Technical | Comments : 2 If you have ever used a program like PGP, which uses public and private keys, you may be wondering how it is possible to encrypt something with one password and decrypt it with another. I'll show you how a public key algorithm works on an example of one of my favorite algorithms: RSA. [More...]

Searching for talent

chris | 28/06/2010 20:23 | Category: Life

It seems like the ability to find talent in people is a talent in itself. Goethe said, "The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources." Those who want to succeed in life should learn to find that hidden potential in other people and then bring it out. Here are a few "hidden potential" examples I found:

Albert Einstein was four before he could speak and seven before he could read. Isaac Newton did very poorly in elementary school. Walt Disney was fired from the newspaper where he worked because "he had no good ideas." Werner von Braun failed ninth-grade algebra and Leo Tolstoy flunked out of collage. Haydn gave up on teaching Beethoven, who seemed to have "no apparent musical talent."

Funny designer mistakes--Part 2

chris | 15/05/2010 12:14 | Categories: Life, Fun More pictures of strange design mistakes. [More...]

Funny designer mistakes--Part 1

chris | 15/05/2010 11:38 | Categories: Life, Fun If you are planning to hire a designer, make sure you don't hire the one who designed these things! [More...]

Captivating cryptography! Part 1.

chris | 12/05/2010 15:33 | Category: Technical | Comments : 1 Did you ever wonder how encrypting programs scramble your files and render them unreadable? Believe it or not, it all started with Julius Caesar. Let's explore some interesting facts about cryptography and learn to create good passwords! [More...]

Old age - the best is yet to come!

chris | 05/05/2010 12:24 | Category: Life

I was thinking recently about how quickly life passes. One week follows another and before you know it, several months have gone by. It really makes you want to live life to the full. But even if we do, we're not getting any younger. Now, here's something positive about getting older:

Not long ago I saw the results of a research that analyzed the histories of about 400 famous people: statesmen, scientists, painters, warriors, poets, etc. Out of the subjects' greatest achievements, 35% came when they were between 60 and 70 years old; 23% when they were between 70 and 80 and 8% when they were over 80. So 66% of the world's greatest works have been done by people over 60. I guess the best is yet to come! :)

Windows progress dialog

chris | 03/05/2010 11:43 | Category: Fun

I enjoyed this little cartoon, although having programmed several time estimation dialogs myself for different programs, I have to tell you that sometimes it's not easy to make them work properly. Even a simple copy operation can depend on different factors that vary the transfer speed, so especially at the very beginning of the operation it's not easy to come up with precise estimates.