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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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(Monday, January 8)
IPTV via the Xbox360
If you look at my 4th prediction on my 2007 Predictions Post (a few posts down) then you will say I said that "The x360 will continue to gain market share because of it's "marinated" network service." Well I did think it would continue to gain market share, but did I expect it to go for the axe kill of old school cable television? Yeah, but down the road some, not now. This just came out awhile ago from the MS Keynote at CES 2007. In a word? Awesome. THIS PUSHES THINGS FORWARD. I am extremely excited that IPTV will be coming to the x360. On Demand, anytime.
Couple of things I am gonna be watching out for which will stifle this bold jump:
1.) Whats the DRM going to be like? Are we locked into the x360 to view the shows that are time shifted? Will this be the jumpstart to the Zune (ie will you only be able to watch shows on the go via the Zune?) . This is a biggie with me. I understand OnDemand shows being DRM'd to the x360 I have no problem with that, but what about the all the divx vids I have on my computer. I use TVersity now to watch them all on my 360 because I don't want to worry about Windows Media Encodings and I want to keep them Divx when we watch them. Same with TV shows off the net. Same with my mp3 collection. Thats the one pet peave I have with my 360, why no "official" Divx support? Also where the hell is my on console browser? ;)
2.) MS has already succeded in getting me to convert every album I buy off iTunes into mp3 so that I can listen to it on my 360. I find the UPNP interface quite clunky, but it works. Is this MS's sword rattle at Apple's iTV announcement a few months back? I have heard rumors that Hollywood and TV stations are already amazed at how well TV shows and such are selling on the Xbox Live Marketplace, I guess this is a natural evolution, but is the IPTV gonna entail points purchasing or a monthly fee?
3.) This really might give IPTV providers a great way to leverage cost of contract. It might be pretty soon that we see Cable/IPTV companies giving away an x360 with every 2 or 3 year subscription to thier service, taking a hit on the hardware price and making it up on the backend with the contract. Much like the cellular industry. This will also give MS leverage with those companies for making mass market deals. It also gets MS's trojan horse into more houses.
4.) Like I said above, I hope this is a really fleshed out IPTV solution for the xbox 360 and not just a souped up version of their Xbox Live Marketplace (pay per media item with MS points). If it does go on a points system, then man we might have to start looking at Xbox Live as a actual market where people might start trading these things around and making money off the shifts.
5.)I run a podcast that is geared toward a subset of MMO players. One thing I love about itunes is that it puts us on even ground vs larger podcast creators (think ABC, NBC, etc) and levels the field for everyone. Their ranking is based on a large part on listenership and comment levels on the podcasts (don't get me wrong I have no delusions that if those larger networks threw money Apple's way this might change) but at least for the time being as long as we create a podcast that people enjoy we have a fair shot at being publicised via iTunes. It will be interesting to see if this new MS IPTV infrastructure gives avg joe and his videocast the ability to mix in with the big boys on IPTV. Will I be able to DL/Comment/Socialize/Discuss about a home brewer videocast by 3 guys in Michigan in the same way that I will be able to DL/Comment/Socialize/Discuss about last week's episode of Heroes? I sure as hell hope so. I tend to find that I like the avg joe's podcasts/videocasts as much (if not more) than I like the major media produced stuff when it comes to non-fiction.
Still in all very exciting. The cable industry (minus DVRs in almost every home now) is EXTREMELY slow industry. They have been collecting our flow for awhile now with not much advance (my god look how long it has taken HD and some people still can't get all their local channel in HD).
Of course Sony and the PS3 are going to try to chase this down and create a system of their own, but they are so far behind on the network sub systems of the consoles, that I might even venture to guess that Nintendo would be ahead of them on implementing something like this.
Very Exciting.
Microsoft Unveils Wave of New Products and Services at CES
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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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