Blog Posts

All my blog posts and articles

Page 107 of 142 (2828 total posts)

December 2006

JRuby 0.9.2

I was discussing with a friend yesterday, really, what’s the difference between a scripting language and a ‘real’ language? Is Java a ‘real’ language? After all it does run on top of an interpreter (the JVM.) But what’s an interpreter anyway? Is the only ‘real’ language C++? Even C# is questionable? Ah I think that’s all old think. I do think there’s a qualitative difference between a Ruby and a Java, but it’s not about scripting versus real. It’s about something else…. and by the way, what happens when Ruby is run on top of the JVM? Check out this post from Artima Java Buzz: The JRuby development team have released version 0.9.2. "This release has some great improvements: extensions openssl and readline now working, code for a new graphical irb console, partial support fo… (from: JRuby 0.9.2)

Capital of Kazakhstan to be Covered in Gigantic Tent; Gizmodo HQ Moving to Kazakhstan

Check out this post from Gizmodo: Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, will soon become one of the coolest cities in the world. Why, you ask? Because they’re planning to build a 500-foot-high "tent" over the entire metropolis to keep it… (from: Capital of Kazakhstan to be Covered in Gigantic Tent; Gizmodo HQ Moving to Kazakhstan)  That’s pretty cool, check out the whole post. And isn’t Borat (supposedly) from there? 🙂

fire at one broadway

My buddies at wis.dm had a real scare today as our offices and the rest of the building was evacuated in a big rush due to a terrible and terrifying explosion in the basement. I was in California at the time and got word of this when Brian called my cell phone while I was in a meeting. All the wis.dm folks are back home and ok now, but some actually had to go to the hospital for some treatment. Scary stuff… Here is the post from Brian Del Vecchio’s blog: Today at about 11:00am the alarm went off in our building at One Broadway in Kendall Square. This was followed by a panicky PA announcement from the security desk that there was an emergency in the building and everyone must evacuate. As we made our way down through the crowded stairwells, thick smoke filled the tight space with that acrid smell of burning electronics. (from: fire at one broadway)

2006 Fall Leadership Forum

I am at the 2006 Fall Leadership Forum in Sonoma, CA. Wine is everywhere, even a free bottle in the hotel room. And all that wine and wine information is kind of squandered on me. So I won’t talk about wine, but here are some tidbits from the conference… Check out PicLens, a Safari-only (so far) plug-in. It adds a very cool photo browsing experience to sites like Flickr. Check out Mashery, a service that front ends other services that offer web APIs. It adds functionality for registering users, issueing API keys, etc. It is a service that would be offered to other companies that want to...

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Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook

Check out this post from Schneier on Security: "I’ll be the first to admit it: I know next to nothing about MySpace or Facebook. I do know that they’re social networking sites, and that — at least to some extent — your reputation is based on who are your "friends" and what they say about you. Which means that this follows, like day follows night. "Fake Your Space" is a site where you can "hire" fake friends to leave their pictures and personalized comments on your page." (from: Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook)  Read the whole thing: Hacking Reputation in MySpace and Facebook

November 2006

What’s a meme and how fast does it travel?

Some clever scientists are trying to measure how fast meme’s travel on the web. My contribution to the experiment is to add a link to their article to my article. What’s a meme, anyway? Think of ideas as little organisms that live in a person’s mind (metaphorically.) And think of how good, meaningful ideas will tend to infect other minds, almost in a biological sense. And how some ideas are so powerful that they travel incredibly fast until everyone understands and thinks in those terms. In this kind of scenario, the idea that travels is said to be a meme. (Self referentially, the idea of a meme as I described it here i...

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Does a network enabled USB hub exist?

Ok, assembled masses: I’ve rearranged my office and now my USB connected printers are farther away from the computer and closer to an ethernet connection. So, what I need is a USB hub which connects with an RJ45 rather than to a computer. I guess that would make it a Netwrok Enabled USB hub. Can’t find it on the web, but maybe it has a different name. Anyone know what I need? Technorati Tags: networking, USB

AllofMp3 Getting nervous

I’ve written about AllOfMp3.com before. I can’t say other than it’s a pirated music site. You can buy mp3’s of music of all kinds, from a nice catalog, at ridiculously low prices (like $3 or less for a complete album.) Some wags have suggested that AllofMp3 proves that people are totally willing to pay for downloaded music as long as the price is right. Yeah, like people are totally willing to pay for a BMW as long as the price is right. Other rumors have been that AllOfMp3 is always one step away from being shut down because the WTO has made closing down of ...

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Who comes to your thanksgiving dinner?

Kottke points to anamusing set of logic questions posted by  “3 Quarks Daily” with the (silly – you’ll see why) suggestion that it might make good dinner table conversation this Thanksgiving (in the US , of course 🙂 I won’t repeat Kottke’s quote of the Rope Burning Question, but you should check it out. The scenario is about two ropes which burn at different rates, but take always take exactly an hour, and you have a lighter. It ends with: “Now you are asked to measure a period of 45 minutes. How will you do it?” I thought about it for about 60 seconds. Clearly the answer is: “I use a stopwatch.” I don’t think that’s the answer that Kottke or Abbas Raza had in mind, but that’s the kind of crowd that sits around my table… You?

If you’ve ever had to carve the Thanksgiving turkey, this will be funny

Yes, every year some wag writes a funny article about carving a turkey, but this one is really funny! Among the many chuckles: All conversation dies when he picks up his weapons. The festive warmth that filled the room moments earlier is replaced by a merciless judgment that records every failure of knife work like points lost in a troubled double axel at the winter Olympics. From the Boston Globe: Carving out his niche – The Boston Globe

Code Monkey: Funny

Came across Jonathan Coulton, the songwriter who embarked on a ridiculous challenge to write a song each week, for a whole year. Quite a crazy thing, but he pulled it off.  “Thing a Week is a project I’ve been working on since September 2005 in which I record and post a song a week as a podcast. It’s a way for me to keep the creative juices flowing as freely as possible, and a way for me to push myself to take risks, work quickly and trust in the creative process. It’s also a form of protest – I will keep doing this until someone pays me to do it.” (from Thing a Week) One of my all time favorites, that you gotta check out, ...

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