Rock Star alter egos are growing in numbers "You're forming a fake band -- that's what you do," says Sadri, calling the game "the best part of karaoke, adding in a drummer and guitars."
The Magpie Developer Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer.
Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry. (Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that.
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood.
making vodka pills in 24 hours Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms.
Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz.
So what is it? I know I am merely propagating rumor when I post this, but I really want to know what Origami is. Don't get me wrong. There are very few MS devices that I have ever owned. When I say MS device I specifically mean a device from some hardware manufacturer that runs on some O/S that MS developed. Here are basically the devices that I own and would directly see a downgrade in my work ability if I were not to have:
Laptop: Windows XP / Redhat Dual Boot. Could I live without the XP OS? No. I do some programming on my laptop but the majority is daily stuff and I don't use Redhat for that.
Cell Phone: Windows Mobile OS. Could I live without it? yes and I did for awhile. I had some nokia proprietary OS (and also Palm OS for awhile) for a long time on an older cell phone and I got by with it. Yes I enjoy the sync with my laptop outlook contacts/calendar, but ever since MSN started charging for their online sync tool (which was really a great program and shitty of them to start charging a monthly fee for) I have been lax with entering stuff on my cell phone.
Axim A3: I don't use this device barely at all anymore. I keep it around just incase someone asks me to program on it, I have a device to test on it.
iPod: Can't live without it, I have utilized it probably at least 1+ hours every single day since i bought it. Apple OS. It helps me get in 'the zone' when I program and I feel it is indispensable.
Nintendo DS: I love my DS. I don't usually carry it around except on the weekends (and for the wife's shopping trips). But I am excited about the new web browsing components for it, and I love being able to sit outside Victoria Secret while my wife shops and being able to challenged multiple Japanese kids to Mario Kart while she does her shopping. I have wrote about before how I think Google could take advantage of the DS, which I have commented on Matt Cutt's blog about [post seems to have been removed], and I still think that is coming somewhere down the line.
I have seen tablet PCs, and honestly if I did a lot more programming for different sources it would probably come in handy. Gates said it was the future at one point, and I honestly still agree with him. It just isn't really in the cards for me right now. I can use office apps on my laptop to take whatever specs I need. I usually still write everything down on a legal pad honestly.
So what is the origami going to entail? An all in one device? That is what my pocketpc (Axim A3 from above) was supposed to be, but as of now, that has kind of fallen to the wayside. Here is the video everyone is talking about: (NOTE the Halo being played on it). Is it a portable gaming machine? that has yet to be seen, all that I have read on multiple blogs say that gaming platform is a feature, but this is really trying to be the all in one feature. Scoble is not hyping it that much, but after reading his posts, I think that may be a marketing decision for it. I am honestly eager to see what it is, and what I can program on it. Will it be a note taker? I would love something not as expensive as a tablet PC for that. Will it be a small sleek (taken from Jobs grandoise PR style) piece of hardware that will multifunction for people like me? I hope so. Until we find out I am all ears. I will say that since we are so close to Vista launch that i hope it runs on Vista's graphical environ. Would be nice to be able to easily move Media Center stuff to a device to like that for travel, but I honestly don't see myself investing in one until it will do a lot more than the mobile OS.
I guess I will have to wait and see. Let the "non-hype" begin.
