Saturday, January 31, 2004
SSCrabble
Here's a Scrabble® game done completely in XHTML/CSS and Javascript. It includes its own dictionary and can be played offline in a browser.
Protecting your "secret blog"
Do you want to keep your blog secret? This article offers some useful tips on what to do (and what not to do) to try to maintain anonymity. The last item is worth keeping in mind:
For the record: this blog isn't secret. Even my boss reads it. (Hi Roy). And, no, I don't have a separate secret blog. It's hard enough to find the time and content for this one. (Via Scripting News)Remember that this is the Internet. Somehow, some way, someone you know just might fall upon that little secret blog. Even if you've done everything suggested above that someone might be able to read between the lines and see you behind the curtain. Keep that in mind before you press "post." This doesn't mean self-censorship should be turned to "high," because that would defeat the point. It just means that common sense should prevail.
Binary M&Ms
M&M candies have gone black and white. It's one of those "find the bag that's different" contests. There's a cash prize for the six people who find the special bags. We bought a bag -- not a winner. I was more intrigued by monochrome M&Ms than the contest anyway. To me, they're binary. Let's see I eat a white, black, white, black, black -- is that 01011 or 11010? Man, I'm such a geek. 
Friday, January 30, 2004
Nit-Picker's Guide to The Lord of the Rings
An obsessive list of differences between the Lord of the Rings books and the films. Wow.
BottomFeeder
BottomFeeder is a news aggregator client (RSS and Atom) that runs on Windows, Macintosh, Linux and a variety of different Unix platforms. It's written in VisualWorks Smalltalk which has a great runtime based development environment but also can create single-file executables that only include the Smalltalk code that is needed. Jim Robertson, the lead developer of BottomFeeder, blogs about this in reference to Joel's plea for Microsoft to provide a linker for .NET. Take that, .NET and Java...
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Exploding Whale
You find a 50-ton beached whale. It dies before you can attempt a rescue. What do you do? Load the whale onto a flat-bed trailer-truck and haul it off for an autopsy. But don't drive through town. The whale may just explode. No pictures, but you can imagine what this must have been like. Yuck.
Inconceivable!
This dialog from The Princess Bride cracks me up:
Probably not as funny if you haven't seen (or better yet read) The Princess Bride... But that's Inconceivable!Vizzini: He didn't fall?! Inconceivable!
Inigo: You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
palmOne releases update for the Sprint Treo 600
There's a ROM update for the Sprint version of the Treo 600. I'm in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp and my Treo 600 has been working just fine so I was going to take a pass on this. But Sprint sent an SMS message today indicating that they were upgrading their network and installing the update was required. Oh well. The update flashes the ROM and does a hard reset. I ran the installer, followed the directions and in less than 10 minutes was running fine again. I backed up to a SD card first using BackupMan and restored after the update. The main feature of this update, besides bug fixes, is that Sprint now supports normal, regular SMS text messaging.
Comments are back
Squawkbox seems to be back again. Comment away!
Please Sir May I Have a Linker?
Good rant by Joel on the massive (and changing) .NET runtime. Joel would like Microsoft to provide a linker so he can build standalone executables that can include only the parts of the .NET runtime that they use. Don't hold your breath Joel. .NET seems to be going the same route as Java -- large monolithic runtimes have become a fact of life.
Comments
Squawkbox seems to be down at the moment so you can't add comments. Sorry about that. One more incentive to use my own.
Dancing Bears
If you've ever watched the Moscow Circus, you've seen the dancing bears. As John Irving has written: "the wonder of a dancing bear is not that the bear dances well, but that it dances at all."
In his book, The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Alan Cooper uses the term "dancing bear" for any product that in spite of its weak and clumsy design, is still a wonderful thing. Cooper uses his car's keyless entry system as an example. It's difficult to use but still useful. The benefits outweigh the annoyances.
The technology world is full of software and gadgets that are difficult to use. We put up with them because they're useful. There ought to be a label for products like this but I'm not sure that I'd call them "dancing bears". Getting a bear to dance is an amazing feat but it isn't useful. I'd apply "dancing bear" to technology that was created "because it could be" rather than because the end result is something useful. Technical bravura rather than fulfilling a need. Here's an example from the Computer History Museum: an IBM 1403 printer was programmed to "play" songs such as Raindrops Are Falling On My Head and Born Free
In his book, The Inmates Are Running The Asylum, Alan Cooper uses the term "dancing bear" for any product that in spite of its weak and clumsy design, is still a wonderful thing. Cooper uses his car's keyless entry system as an example. It's difficult to use but still useful. The benefits outweigh the annoyances.
The technology world is full of software and gadgets that are difficult to use. We put up with them because they're useful. There ought to be a label for products like this but I'm not sure that I'd call them "dancing bears". Getting a bear to dance is an amazing feat but it isn't useful. I'd apply "dancing bear" to technology that was created "because it could be" rather than because the end result is something useful. Technical bravura rather than fulfilling a need. Here's an example from the Computer History Museum: an IBM 1403 printer was programmed to "play" songs such as Raindrops Are Falling On My Head and Born Free
Folklore.org
Folklore.org is "devoted to collective historical storytelling". This is a great idea. Currently, Folklore.org is devoted to a single project: the development of the original Macintosh. Lots of interesting stuff. The Folklore website scripts are written in Python and will be made available.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Fore sail, cheape: eBay bargains, spelling optional
This article from the NY Times explains how buyers can exploit poor spelling to find bargains on eBay. Misspellings in listings (such as "labtop" for laptop) often means few buyers will find what you're selling. This quote from an eBay "educator" is pretty funny: (Via SlashDot)
Um, Mr. Griffith, it looks like I can buy a dictionary on eBay (and I can buy a dictionery too)Jim Griffith, whose official title at eBay is dean of eBay education, teaches 40 to 50 seminars a year around the country. Although eBay points out common misspellings, he said that the most common question he gets is, "When will e-Bay get a spell checker?"
His answer? "You go to a store called a bookstore, and you buy something called a dictionary."
(Via SlashDot)
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Bye Bye COM
I never was a huge fan of COM. The basic COM model is fine but when you add all of the chrome plating needed to build a COM-based application such as an OLE2 server the complexity quickly gets out of control. Some frameworks such as MFC make it easier to build COM-based applications at the cost of carrying around a large runtime. Moving COM up the food chain to a distributed object technology via DCOM never became popular. Worse yet vulnerabilities in the DCOM RPC service have been exploited by recent virus attacks.
Microsoft is now telling developers that it's time to move away from COM and DCOM and adopt service-oriented interfaces. Not distributed objects but loosely-coupled services. The J2EE world has been moving in the same direction for a while. RMI/CORBA aren't dead technologies but exposed APIs are moving to service-oriented interfaces.
Microsoft is now telling developers that it's time to move away from COM and DCOM and adopt service-oriented interfaces. Not distributed objects but loosely-coupled services. The J2EE world has been moving in the same direction for a while. RMI/CORBA aren't dead technologies but exposed APIs are moving to service-oriented interfaces.
Spaced Penguin
Tired of smacking the penguin? (No, that's not a euphemism). How about launching Kevin the Penguin back to his spaceship using a slingshot? The higher levels get tricky.
Columbia's Final Minutes
This article on Newsday has an excerpt from "Comm Check... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia" by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood describing the last minutes of Columbia's final flight. An incredible account of a tragic event. (Via SlashDot)
Yellow Snow
Interested in doing some winter calligraphy?. Note: this is pretty funny but some folks might consider it to be NSFW
Monday, January 26, 2004
Atom Feed
I've added an Atom feed for my blog here. No real work on my part, Blogger added an Atom feed generator. Cool.
Macintosh Turns Twenty, Apple is turning Twenty-Seven
The Macintosh turned 20 this month (officially it was two days ago). Here is Apple's original press release. A couple of things to note fro the press release. It mentions that MacWrite and MacPaint were bundled applications. Bundling these applications was key to the early success of the Macintosh. An equally important move by Apple was the subsequent release of the Apple LaserWriter which finally moved us many of away from crappy printed output. The press release also mentions Microsoft Multiplan which failed miserably on the Macintosh as well as Lotus 1-2-3 (which became Lotus Jazz) -- which also failed miserably. Microsoft Excel was released first on the Macintosh in 1985.
The other day while digging through some boxes in my home office, I found an ancient copy of Scientific American (September 1977). It has one of the first Apple ads, a two page color ad for the Apple II . (Here's the print copy). It's pretty amazing to compare the early "milestone" hardware with what you can buy in the same price range today. For comparison, here are the basic specs of the original Apple II and Macintosh compared to a reasonably configured eMac at the same price point as the Apple II.
The other day while digging through some boxes in my home office, I found an ancient copy of Scientific American (September 1977). It has one of the first Apple ads, a two page color ad for the Apple II . (Here's the print copy). It's pretty amazing to compare the early "milestone" hardware with what you can buy in the same price range today. For comparison, here are the basic specs of the original Apple II and Macintosh compared to a reasonably configured eMac at the same price point as the Apple II.
Comparing raw processor speed doesn't really tell the full story. The 6502 in the Apple II was an 8-bit processor. The early Mac used a 68000. The eMac runs a PowerPC G4 chip. The eMac could probably emulate a Classic Mac emulating the 6502 and still run substantially faster than the Apple II
1977 Apple II
1984 Macintosh
2004 eMac
RAM
4K
128K
1GB
ROM
8K
64K
Who cares?
Processor
1MHz
8Mhz
1GHz
Storage
Cassette tape
400K floppy
160 GB disk
US Price
$1298
$2495
$1299
Destructo Mode
I'm in the process of cleaning up my home office. The "process" is long overdue. I've got several large boxes of personal papers, receipts, etc. to wade through. I've also got a large collection of old floppies and CDs that I want to get rid of. I'm quickly realizing how much more work it is to collate, collect and dispose of things than it was to accumulate them in the first place. Shredding papers is tedious. Scanning through floppies and CDs for useful content and then making them unreadable is a huge pain. I think the lesson learned is to be careful what you keep.
Spirit Is Willing...
This article describes the current theory on Spirit's glitches:
I'm struck by how mundane this sounds as a software problem. After an amazing 300 million mile trip finished off by an acrobatic landing on the surface of another planet, the rover was sidelined by storing too many files in flash memory? Mundane or not, I hope they can work out the kinks and keep Spirit running.Over the weekend, scientists traced the problem over the weekend to a glitch in its flash memory. Engineers were working around the flash memory problem by telling the rover to store data in its random-access memory instead.
[Mission Manager Jennifer] Trosper said the "too many files" problem was the current leading theory for why Spirit failed last week. She said mission planners had not expected the rover's flash memory to accumulate so many data files during its trip to Mars and investigations on the surface.
"This is a new problem that we've encountered, based on having many files," she said.
During the weeks-long process of reviving Spirit, hundreds of unneeded files from Spirit's cruise phase would be deleted, she said, and controllers would keep a closer eye on memory management for Spirit as well as Opportunity. "We will be more conscious of this limit that we have," she said.
USB Flash Drive
My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. Floppies are dead. They just don't store enough data to be useful. But what should I use for a quick backup? I can burn CDs for bulk backups but it takes time. I want something simpler. So I'm considering whether to buy a USB Flash Drive. USB support is ubiquitous and these drives don't require drivers to be installed. I found this one at CompUSA. 256MB seems like sufficient space for my needs and the drive is only $50 (after two separate rebates). Anyone out there using a USB Flash Drive and care to comment?
Free After Rebate
I still dislike rebate programs but I know that not everyone feels the same way. Free After Rebate points to stores that sell products that end up being free after you send in for a rebate. Their tag line is "The Best Things In Life Are Free (After Six to Eight Weeks)". They point to eCost.com's deal on the "Syntax USB Wireless LAN Adapter" ($29.95, free after rebate). This deal includes free shipping as well.
Bloglines for Mobile
I've been using Bloglines as an RSS aggregator for several days now. I like it. The UI is straight-forward and response time is quite good. I just noticed that there's a Beta version of Bloglines for Mobile devices at http://www.bloglines.com/mobile. I tried it out on my Treo 600. Very nice.
Friday, January 23, 2004
timeanddate.com
I was looking for a quick way to determine the number of days between two dates from a browser. I thought that there was a way to do this using Google but I can't recall if or where I saw it. I ended up at timeanddate.com. Not the slickest UI in the world but you can use the URL syntax directly. For example, compute the duration from now until April 1, 2004. You can also use this site to generate printable calendars including moon phases and holidays (and for different locales)
RSS Headlines for My Yahoo
Yahoo! has a RSS aggregator in Beta for use with their My Yahoo! service. This should move RSS syndication even more into the mainstream but the UI is nothing special so far. Bloglines is a lot better.
Kyocera Finecam SL300R
The new Kyocera Finecam SL300R is very slick. It has very little shutter lag for a digital camera. It's thinner than my Pentax Optio S4 but a little wider and taller. I also prefer the Pentax's solid body and telescoping lens over the Kyocera's swivel design. Also the Kyocera doesn't have a view finder. Steve's review includes photos of the Kyocera next to a Casio EX-Z4 which is the same size as my Pentax.
Big Fish
Filmmaker Tim Burton has had a somewhat uneven career. Some great stuff such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Beetlejuice and some real clunkers such as Mars Attacks! and Planet of the Apes. Big Fish is Burton's latest. Very good cast including Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman and Steve Buscemi. The plot is about a grown son trying to discover the true life of his father, now dying, by reliving fantastical stories that his father told about his life. I found the early stories of the father's life to be amusing but the film finally pulled me in near the end, especially the relationship between father and son. Highly recommended.
Movie Trailers
I saw a few promising movie trailers last night before watching Big Fish
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind written by Charlie Kaufman (this Charlie Kaufman, not this one). Stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson and Elijah Wood. The trailer is pretty funny. Looks like another quirky Kaufman project. According to a Charlie Kaufman fansite, the movie opens on March 19th.
Dawn of the Dead is a remake of the George Romero original. Not sure why this is being remade (as Night of the Living Dead was as well). Perhaps it was from all of the positive buzz from last year's 28 Days Later. Dawn of the Dead is a cult classic, I'm not sure anyone can top the original. Trailer can be found here.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow stars Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Very retro visuals and tongue-in-cheek dialog. This can be hard to pull off successfully. Last year's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tried this but was laughably bad. A trailer for Sky Captain can be found here
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind written by Charlie Kaufman (this Charlie Kaufman, not this one
). Stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson and Elijah Wood. The trailer is pretty funny. Looks like another quirky Kaufman project. According to a Charlie Kaufman fansite, the movie opens on March 19th.
Dawn of the Dead is a remake of the George Romero original. Not sure why this is being remade (as Night of the Living Dead was as well). Perhaps it was from all of the positive buzz from last year's 28 Days Later. Dawn of the Dead is a cult classic, I'm not sure anyone can top the original. Trailer can be found here.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow stars Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Very retro visuals and tongue-in-cheek dialog. This can be hard to pull off successfully. Last year's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tried this but was laughably bad. A trailer for Sky Captain can be found here
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Sidewalk painter Kurt Wenner's 3D illusions
These 3D sidewalk paintings by Kurt Wenner are really amazing. More of his work, including some light-hearted and commercial images can be found here. (Via BoingBoing)
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
SpaceMonger
SpaceMonger is great for visually keeping of track of where all your disk space is going. Highly recommended.
Update: one bug to note in the current version (1.4.0): if you try to delete a directory through SpaceMonger it can crash. It seems to do the delete but then crashes when it tries to redisplay. (Via ScottWater)
Update: one bug to note in the current version (1.4.0): if you try to delete a directory through SpaceMonger it can crash. It seems to do the delete but then crashes when it tries to redisplay. (Via ScottWater)
Java Code Analyzers
The earlier in the development cycle a coding error is found, the less it costs to fix. When you use an IDE such as Eclipse, coding errors can be discovered incrementally -- a missing import statement, misplaced brace, etc. Beyond Eclipse there are static code analyzers that can help find potential coding errors and stylistic issues with Java code. Here are three such tools, all open source projects:
- PMD is a Java source code checker that can flag Java coding issues. It comes with a ruleset that you can extend by writing new rule handlers or new rules using XPath expressions. The integration with Eclipse is quite nice. One cool feature is the ability to find suspect copy and paste which will find runs of code that are identical among the Java source files in a project. The developers chose the name PMD because the letters sound good together. They have come up with several backronyms to explain the name (Via Terse Systems)
- CheckStyle is a tool to help developers write Java code that adheres to a coding standards. It has checks for Javadoc, naming conventions, usage of imports, etc. You can even write your own Checks. CheckStyle can run as an Ant task, standalone or integrated into Eclipse. Very nice.
- FindBugs was written by Bill Pugh. It doesn't come with Eclipse support but can be easily configured to run from an Ant task.
Bloglines
After using FeedDemon for a while, I've decided to give Bloglines a try. Pretty nice for a browser-based aggregator. Not sure what I'll stick with long term. I'll try them both for a while. I may try NewsGator at some poiint too but I don't spend much time in Outlook these days.
USDA: Tripe still OK to eat
According to the USDA, tripe, made from the lining of cow stomachs, is still OK to eat. Most people would probably question whether tripe was ever OK to eat. I had Tripe Soup at a Salvadoran restaurant many years ago. Cooked tripe is chewy and has a spongy texture. The appeal must be from the texture because there wasn't any discernible flavor. Clearly tripe isn't everyone's cup of tea (e.g. the phrase "that's just tripe!") but people eat all sorts of unusual foods. (Via Meat Facts)
I had Tripe Soup at a Salvadoran restaurant many years ago. Cooked tripe is chewy and has a spongy texture. The appeal must be from the texture because there wasn't any discernible flavor. Clearly tripe isn't everyone's cup of tea (e.g. the phrase "that's just tripe!") but people eat all sorts of unusual foods. (Via Meat Facts)
Television Commercials Come to the Web
According to this article in the NY Times, television commercials are coming to the web. Apparently the rapid rise on broadband connections (38 percent of US households) is a major reason that advertisers are interested in moving beyond pop-up ads.
Churchill's Parrot
Winston Churchill died 39 years ago but his parrot Charlie is still alive and swearing like a sailor. Charlie is 104 years old and her (yes, her) favorite sayings are obscenities repeated "with that unmistakable Churchillian inflection".
Update: I guess the story was too good to be true. Churchill's daughter says Charlie is not her father's parrot. She said: "I'm fed up with this story that my father taught it rude words. He only ever had an African grey parrot and it certainly did not talk" I can't help but be reminded of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. He's not dead, he's... he's, ah... probably pining for the fjords.
Update: I guess the story was too good to be true. Churchill's daughter says Charlie is not her father's parrot. She said: "I'm fed up with this story that my father taught it rude words. He only ever had an African grey parrot and it certainly did not talk" I can't help but be reminded of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch. He's not dead, he's... he's, ah... probably pining for the fjords.
Flash Games
Smack the penguin (aka Smack the pingu) is great fun. My record so far is 319 (587.1 on the smaller version in the second link). (Via Ben Poole)
Test your knowledge of men's room etiquette with The Urinal Game
iSketch is a multi-player drawing game similiar to Pictionary.
Test your knowledge of men's room etiquette with The Urinal Game
iSketch is a multi-player drawing game similiar to Pictionary.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
XPath Explorer
XPath Explorer (XPE) is a Java application that lets you experiment with XPath. You type in a URL and an XPath expression and it will displays the elements or attributes from that document which match that expression. XPE makes it easy to play with and debug XPath expressions. XPE can be used standalone or as an Eclipse or NetBeans plugin. Nice.
BBC News Quiz: The US Presidency
Test your knowledge of all things presidential in this BBC quiz. For the record, I got 8 out of 10 right. I surprised myself, I guessed on questions 1 and 3.
Manneken Pis
Several years ago, on a return trip from the Czech Republic, we had a day-long stopover in Brussels. We didn't have a lot of time so, in addition to stocking up on Belgian chocolate, we did a tour of the city center. One of the oddest city symbols in the world has got to be the Manneken Pis in Brussels. It's a small bronze statue of a little boy peeing. The souvenirs shops near the statue are full of Manneken Pis replicas including paper weights, letter openers and corkscrew bottle openers -- I probably don't need to mention which part of the statue was the corkscrew
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Change In Plans
A few months ago I mentioned in a blog entry that I was going to be doing a presentation on Lotus Workplace Messaging at Lotusphere this year. There's been a change in plan. I won't be at Lotusphere this year. Nothing earth-shaking -- something else has come up so I won't be able to attend. The session is happening and is in capable hands. If you're interested in finding out how Workplace Messaging interoperates in a Domino environment you should check it out. Note: the change in speakers happened after the official schedule was done so I may still be listed in the program. For anyone reading this who'll be at Lotusphere this year: sorry that we won't get a chance to meet this time around.
Free Logo Books
A lot of people, especially children, get their first exposure to programming through Logo. The nice thing about Logo is that it's not a "dumbed down" programming language . It's quite rich and capable of all sorts of cool stuff ala Lisp. The second edition of Computer Science Logo Style, a three-volume series on Logo, is available for personal use here (Via LtU)