How to contribute to this site

Sometimes you see something interesting, an elegant and inusual solution for a common problem, the application of an obscure alghoritm or you get the kick and you want to figure out "how did he do that"

It could be that you want to share some informations with somebody else, or maybe you want to receive opinions about something. Or you're so smart and clever and everybody has to know about it.

In any event, you could want to send me some article, document or an idea for an article or a document.

Code without comments, badly intended or not intended at all
Part of an article without an explanation
Incomplete documents or articles
Part of articles or documents of which you don't have the rights to redistribute

If you do it, you'll get a box of curses, and one or two could work.

Ideas for new articles

Everything that appear here is passed and approved by me, and everything appear if I decide so. No appeal and no bargain. So if you send an idea and I shot it down don't take it badly, is just the way it is.

If you want to send an idea drop me a mail and specify exactly what the heck do you want to see.

Wrong	Good
I'd like to see something on e-mail	I'd like to see an article explaining how the SMTP protocol works and how to use it using C language

Ask before send

As said before, all the articles, documents and the like are checked by me, so is really possible that your document about the migration pattern of alaskan squirrels will never be published. Hence, before writing it, maybe you should drop me a mail and ask if it could be interesting or not.

To me (and to you too I suppose) practical things are more interesting than purely theoretical things. Ok the theory is very important, but without practice it just doesn't cut it. So the best to do is always to drop me a mail and specify what is your idea, how do you plan to write it, how long is going to be the document and so on and so forth.

Take your time

You have no deadline. Not from me anyway. So instead of sending the mail today, you can check what you wrote with ease, fix the text, eventually add some references, check your sources and so on. If you send the mail tomorrow, or next week, nothing bad will happen.

Wrong:

I wanna write an article about new technologies to monitor Windows' registry.

Which technologies?? And how long is supposed to be this article? What's the code like?

Right:

I'd like to write an article explaining how to use ActiveX components to access ATL API that are used by all the programs to interact with the Registry. This allow a software to monitor in real time changes applied to the registry. The software in C++ will be around 500 lines of code and the article about a thousands.

What to send and how

Write the article with whatever you want, but send it to me as a TEXT file, if the article require pictures, convert them into PNG or JPG (no BMP or GIF).

If you send code with the article please check it before sending it and send also a list of everything required to make it work. And be prepared to receive a bunch of mails from everybody whom your super-tested code won't work.

With the article is better if you send a (short) description of yourself, it will be included with the article itself, if you want to be contacted add a mail address.

FAQ

A FAQ is a short article that explain something from a strictly practical point of view. So if your idea is not broad enough for a full-fledged article, maybe a FAQ is more suited.
As per articles, I'm the one calling the shots.

Windows or Linux?

It's about 6 years that I'm no longer using Windows, hence I'm in no way able to test or check stuff wrote for Windows. If you want to send stuff wrote for Windows you'll have to do the testing. And don't ask me about Windows 'cause I really can't do it.

Personal Opinions

Keep them for yourself.

Don't take this as a punishment, but after the 13thousands mails that I get and takes me 3 days to put it back together...

REREAD WHAT YOU'VE WROTE
Do not send me a mail that begin with "maybe there is some errors 'cause I wrote on the fly", if you've sent it tomorrow and after a check it was better.
SAVE AND SEND THE DOCUMENT AS PLAIN TEXT ASCII
I'll write it again 'cause somebody doesn't read or doesn't want to liste:

PLAIN

TEXT

ASCII

Do not send me stuff written in Big-Endian UNICODE, Worp, War(im)Perfect, MacWrite, KWrite or whatever, and don't send it compressed either. If the mail is so big that your provider doesn't send it, don't send it to me I won't accept it.
PUT A CR/LF AT ABOUT 75 CHARS
Or something similar. Don't send me a document with lines more tha 100 chars long. I hate it when I can't see the doc in a terminal window.
SPACES, CAPITALS, COMMAS AND THE LIKE
thatlookohsonicewhenyouseeonyourscreenandthenIgetsomethinglikethis, andIspend3fsckingdaysputtingitbacktogetherorthrowitaway.whatodyouthing?
And in specific, the ellipses (...) is NOT a substitute for every other punctuation.
BETWEEN PARAGRAPH PUT AN EMPTY LINE
So is clearer when one ends and the other begin.
DO NOT USE ACCENTS, USE THE QUOTE (')
Instead of using accents that then have to be encoded, use the quote (') that is always displayed correctly.
DO NOT SEND HTML PAGES
Especially if you used a "composer" like Mozilla Composer or FrontPage. An html document "hand written" is about 50% shorter than one wrote by a composer.
THERE ARE 102 KEYS ON YOUR KEYBOARD
So use them!
If you want to send a "tale" send a TALE!
I quote bookcafe' about this:
A story that in the course of not too many minutes (fifteen, thirty, sixty) let us know the beginning, the development and the end of an human action.
Ok, they specify "invented", but the concept is that the thing has to contain the beginning, the development and possibly the end of something, so before sending, ask yourself if what you've wrote is a tale or not.

Am I asking too much? I don't think so. Anyhow, from now on, every document that doesn't match my criteria will simply be trashed. Sorry, but I have no more time to spend on this.

Se mi mandate un documento assicuratevi che il vostro indirizzo di posta sia valido, perche' prima di pubblicarlo in "definitiva" chiedero' la vostra autorizzazione, specialmente se l'ho modificato aggiungendo commenti ed altro. Quindi se non mi mandate un'indirizzo di posta valido e/o non ricevo risposta, il documento non verra' mai pubblicato.

This site is made by me with blood, sweat and gunpowder, if you want to republish or redistribute any part of it, please drop me (or the author of the article if is not me) a mail.