The Pensieve

Beyond STL The Standard Template Library has made its way into the standards, being shipped as an indispensable object oriented core low-level library. Known to most C++ developers fondly as the STL, it provides standard object oriented reusable components that allow developers to focus on the problem in hand rather than think in terms of storing, retrieving and sorting data-structures. The most common classes that you might have encountered would be the string, the vector and the list. There is more than just these in STL and plenty of books and articles have been devoted to the innards of STL and how to use them effectively. STL liberates the developers from constructing custom linked lists and hash tables by using templates thereby aiding them in focusing at more higher level goals of the software. My aim in the article is to focus at the next level of software development. Though not focused at topics like architecture and design patterns, we will be looking at a public domain C++

Yahoo! Pipes – News nuggets served piping hot A news feed aggregator recently released by Yahoo is not just an aggregator. It allows users to configure your various news feeds, consolidate them, filter them by specific keywords, cull out redundant news items and present a single feed. Not much? They provide basic building blocks to perform all these operations and allow users to program by plug in the blocks very much like Lego in a graphical manner! Check out http://pipes.yahoo.com to create your own. Yahoo Pipes is named after the Unix Pipes where the output of one application is 'piped' to another application for further processing. A simple consolidator for a few sites that I frequent is here

Space sims / shooters and true 3D Recently, I had a craving for space sims and shooters and a tendency to blast off a few aliens. As the system I own is no gaming rig, I look for older games that are cheaper or requirements and on the purse as well. Nowadays, most publishers are keener in releasing games that fall into the FPS or MMORPG categories. After rummaging through the bargain bins at Landmark, I acquired Freelancer , a space shooter from Microsoft. You play a freelancer who takes odd jobs, make money so that you can retrofit your ship or weapons. One key differentiator of Freelancer is its open-endedness. Though the game features a central theme and a plot, the player is free to do whatever he / she chooses, like accepting odd jobs that are randomly generated, thus enhancing the playability. An oddity of Freelancer and most space shooters are, though the action takes place in deep space, all items and objects of interest are located in the same plane. Compare t