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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. |
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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. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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(Sunday, July 23)
Guster / Ray LaMontagne - Chastain Amplitheatre 7/21/2006
We bought these tix a few months back when Chastain announced the show (a little later than they announced their summer schedule package). I was excited to actually get to see Guster in a larger venue and eager to see if they would pack the place which is a step up from the normal Athens/Atlanta area venues they play. I think around 4k/5k people were at this show. I am sure that the double billing with Ray LaMontagne brought in a bunch of people also.
LaMontagne opened, was kind of a disappointment. I really love Trouble, and I don't think there a bad song on the album. LaMontagne played about 6 songs off this album and 2 from a new album which I believe will be coming out in late August. He seemed fairly charismatic, I don't know if it was the oppressive heat, or just not enough riffing with the bandmates, but all the songs sounded EXACTLY as they are on the CD with no variation. There are a lot of people that enjoy this, but I personally don't. I like to see some variety, sometimes it can erk me when it just doesn't sound good, but I love a good jam band, and I also love it when a band slows something down and create something new with a song. After seeing LaMontagne i don't think I would ever pay to see him solo unless it was at a much smaller (read: BAR) venue. It seems like you need to see him in a setting like that after hearing his part of the show.
Guster was as good as Guster always is. They are just the definition of a band that gets the crowd into the show. I think they may have actually surpassed DMB (for me personally) as the band that dialogues with the audience to a large degree and switches stuff up based on how the audience is giving the band feedback. Ryan the lead singer had multiple dialogs with the audience in which he repeated that he was majorly weirded out about the all the wine and cheese eaters at the tables surrounding the stage, and commented about the lavish flower arrangements people had brought in. He also must have been really into food at some point (or still is) because he asked the crowd to bring him something to eat at one point, and there was a ton of food brought on stage and he was rolling off the names of foreign dishes and french cheeses like it was old news to him.
The setlist was pretty big (maybe 20 songs) which spanned all 5 albums, which was great. Although I enjoy the new album I really like the older, more up beat, songs of Gold Fly and Lost and Gone Forever. I was really hoping for the old school bongo cover of Killing the Name of, but alas it seems that might only be a college memory. If you have never seen Guster live, then the next best thing is to poke around the Live Music Archive and pull some live shows or grab some of the better recorded ones off iTunes. They simply rock live.
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Travis - The Boy With No Name
Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho. |
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Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross)
One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake. |
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Feist - The Reminder
I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice. |
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Catan - Xbox Live Arcade
I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game. |
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Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare
No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say. |
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Beautiful Evidence (Tufte)
Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting.. |
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Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better. |
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Game of Thrones (Martin)
I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more. |
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
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