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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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(Wednesday, March 28)
Puzzle Quest, Oh How I love thee...
Someone (a programmer) once told me that programmers are like chefs, we really don't create anything from scratch, but we are really good at creating combinations. Maybe that is the reason I am totally addicted to Puzzle Quest on the DS. There really isn't anything new here, it is just really really well done. Think Bejewled + Magic The Gathering + some random RPG * 1^2. Thats how much this game rocks. There isn't anything new game wise, they just seemed to merge them all flawlessly. Might be the best game I have ever played on the DS.
UPDATE: Someone emailed me asking how I got a copy of puzzle quest (it seems they are hard to find.) I actually order mine off Amazon, got it to me quick as hell.
Puzzle Quest
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28 Weeks Later Trailer
Hadn't heard anything about this till just saw this trailer. Kick total ass. 28 days later is the definitive zombie Psuedo-Zombie-Movie-That-Isn't-Really-About -Zombies-But-Just-Infected-People movie of all time for me. Hopefully this will be just as good.
Apple - Trailers - 28 Weeks Later
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(Monday, March 19)
Memory Man & Under The Influence of Giants
2 parts Scissor Sisters + 1 part Fountains of Wayne+ 1 part Parliament = Under The Influence of Giants [Self Titled]
Stream
Strange and Beautiful was really a dark horse album in 2005, it released to little or no fan faire (at least here stateside) and seemingly came out of nowhere to be one of the best albums of 2005 in my opinion. Well written, well played, mellow Thom Yorke-ish voice. Some electronics, but not too much. I think it got some radio play and was on some WB show, but overall it really was a great album. The release hoopla (or non-hoopla) surrounding it is very similar to Aqualung's second release Memory Man which came out last week, and to me the album is just as good. Pressure Suit sounds like it could have been strait off The Bends, and I imagine it will probably be the first single from the album. The back of the album is much more somber than the front, but all is great. Certainly pick it up if you like Strange and Beautiful, not much of a different recipe (except a little more added guitar), but when the first album was so great they probably didn't want to change much.
Stream
Album @ Amz
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(Thursday, March 15)
Sanjaya makes sweet sweet love harmonies..
The Wife is a big idol fan, so I catch bits and pieces of it every now and this kid cracks me up. I have actually gotten to where I want to see this kid sing, just to see how awful it is. The Kid has a decent voice (not amazing) but compared to the rest of the people on the show it is atrocious. So last night I was playing 2142 and I heard Lindz start screaming at the TV and it seems this little tigerbeat made the next round. I say woohoo! I hope he goes all the way to the finals just make a mockery of the show. Although I will say that the shorter non-ghetto black girl should win. Girl got some pipes.
Also today's indexed also mentions "his hairness".
Keep Voting America!
Sanjaya Malakar @ American Idol
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(Friday, March 9)
Sex, Spartans and Pokemon
Everyone always talks about Search Engine's Prize value being their "database of intentions" (que Battelle) and the selling of that trending analysis as the goldmine so it always interests me when I see the Zeitgeist produced by Google or any of the "intention" reports come out from any of the search engines. Usually (as in the case with Google) they are striped of any of the juicy terms and end up being big fluff lists, but I saw this one today about wikipedia searches for the last 8 days live and it really is a goldmine of data when you consider the movie 300 coming out this week and it's relevance in searches on wikipedia. Given this IS wikipedia and still a subset of net users, still very very interesting list:
Wikicharts - Top 100
Correction: These are page views, not searches. I still think the value of intention holds though.
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(Wednesday, March 7)
Dawning of a new age?
"A recent government report forecast that robots would routinely carry out surgery by 2018.
The Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.
In part, this is a response to the country's aging society and also an acknowledgement that the pace of development in robotics is accelerating."
(that guy on the left knows it is coming)
BBC NEWS | Technology | Robotic age poses ethical dilemma
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(Friday, March 2)
The Windows Messenger  Initiative
I use MSN throughout the day for both personal and professional messaging. I was greatly impressed when I read this article this morning about how you can choose to have some of your proceeds from the advertising revenue go to a good cause of your choice, just by utilizing this specific emoticon  within your MSN name. I emailed asking if they could add the EFF to the list, so we shall see if it shows up.
Details on the link. Very cool, I will probably be paying more attention to the ads on MSN now, and utilizing them if something looks interesting.. which is a win win for everyone involved. Click the link to see more.
Wonderful! How does it work?
1. Use Messenger 8.1
2. Add the i'm emoticon to your display name by entering the code of the cause you would like to support (hint: I suggest adding it at the end of your name so you still appear in the correct alphabetic order in your contacts list)
3. Send and receive IMs
4. A portion of the advertising revenue generated by your usage of Messenger will be donated to your cause. So the more IMs you send and receive the more money will be donated to your cause.
note: currently the donation only applies to Windows Live Messenger users in the United States. If you are in the US and you are IMing with a contact in another country your IM activity will be counted towards the donation.
The i'm Initiative and new secret emoticon
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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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