8 February 2010
Book review -- JavaScript: The Good Parts
Anyone doing a lot of JavaScript development would benefit from reading this book. [...]
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29 January 2010
John August: How screenwriters will use the iPad
Another interesting post, showing how people are excited about the iPad. I see a recurring theme of using the device as some sort of ereader. I love my Kindle, and I'm not interested in replacing it. The observations here are compelling, though. I would like to see and hold one for comparison, but given the limited Apple stores in my area and my circle of friends (i.e. free/open source software hackers won't run to this), I don't see that happening anytime soon.
28 January 2010
Yup, I'll Be Buying an iPad
Cory has another nice post on why the iPad might be not teh suck device it seems to be at first glance. To be clear, I'm not running out and buying one. But my wife might like one... my dad... my sister.... you get the idea. Now, why is that? :-)
JeffCroft.com: iPad thoughts
Jeff is spot on about this device. Geeks are underwhlemed, and rightly so, but we're not the target audience. These things will start appearing everywhere and rather than going "bah, I don't get it!" we should be asking why.
20 January 2010
Virtual KinoEye: Kinetic Camera, Machinima, and Virtual Subjectivity in Second Life
I really enjoyed reading this essay on virtual subjectivity and Second Life. Some nice machinima pieces accompany the article. I'm glad to see a scholar (Lori Landay in this case) exploring what a virtual self means for our sense of self. While this article is specific to Second Life the questions raised and observations noted here apply to any virtual world experience, gaming or otherwise. I like, too, how Lori ends her piece on the notion of the trickster, suggesting we're all playing the role of the trickster in Second Life. I hadn't quite thought about it like this, but I find myself intrigued and convinced by this suggestion. I'd love to read more on this idea if she continues this work.
17 January 2010
NY Times To Charge For Online Content -- Slashdot News Story
You have to take everything posted at Slashdot as if it's a lie or 6 months late, but let's assume this is true, that the NY Times is about to start charging for access to it's content. Don't be fooled by any arguments of falling advertising sales because of the great recession we're in or some desire to fund the high-minded journalism the NY Times purports to have. If the Times goes behind a pay-wall, it's just good, old-fashioned, 19th-century, industrialist greed. They don't just want to make a profit. Like all news papers, they want to operate at 25-35% profit margins, like they did pre-Internet era. Sadly, those days are gone, and no pay wall will bring them back.
15 January 2010
Turning Work into Play with Online Games | h+ Magazine
This article has some interesting ideas about the convergence of games and the Internet from Google's Eric Schmidt. I find it interesting that he says, "Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game." I totally agree with this, but I find it's uncommon among people doing work on the Internet today. Usually, people are apt to get stuck in the document-centric view of the web today and neglect the forces of convergence and Moore's law. It's just natural that the Web and 3D worlds will converge over time, and more rapidly than people expect today. Via Google Blogoscoped.
14 January 2010
You can always do less - (37signals)
I've always bought into 37 signals' mantra for "less." I find myself really buying into this concept even more the longer I work as a team lead on a large project. Resources -- be they time, developer attention, money, etc. -- are always limited. You will eventually reach the point where you're trying for more than your development efforts can sustain. So I would agree "you can always do less" and add you will do less. The earlier you can accept this fact, the better the development process will go for you and your team.
12 January 2010
Perfection kills » Understanding delete
Here's a nice tutorial on JavaScript's delete operator. I always thought of delete in simple terms of just working on object properties or methods, but this article goes into nice detail about the ins and outs of the operator.
11 January 2010
Britain's Digital Economy Bill will cost ISPs £500M, knock 40K poor households offline
For all the talk of stopping "piracy," which is such a loaded word anyway, this post on Boing Boing shows why this kind of legislation is insanity. Sure, if countries really want to do this they can make their old-media lobbyists happy, but the consequences are far-reaching and very damaging, and likely in ways that current research can't predict.
10 January 2010
2010 is here, now what?
With it being the new year, I feel compelled to do one of those predictions or new-year-resolutions posts. I'm not big on either so here's a bit about where I've been and where I'm going.
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7 January 2010
Growing up Heroes
I soooo love this site. I've just now discovered it via Kottke as I was catching up on old feeds from my time off. I have many (humiliating!) photos of myself in super-suits as a kid. I have never wanted to put them online. This site makes me consider it. For about two seconds. :-)
Vid-Biz: 3DTVs, DirecTV, Fox-Time Warner Cable
Does anyone really think 3D TV channels are the way of the future? Yes, I'm being completely sarcastic and will make fun of your 1950s-doo-whop singing, stupidly sitting in your home wearing those dumb glasses for a hoo-hum movie experience self. But if you do get excited about these new TVs, please comment here. I'd love to know if there really are any of you out there.
25 December 2009
The end of Virtual Worlds 1.0, now onto 2.0
I just found this post while doing some casual holiday reading on predictions for Second Life in 2010. I love the final point in the 2.0 section that "3D isn't exactly good for communication. What 3D is good for is entertainment." I would rephrase this as 3D worlds are good for *doing* things. IM, IRC, and email are much better at communication than 3D. But 3D excels at getting lost in an experience. Not 3D movies, they suck. ;) When people catch on to this simple fact, developers and creators will be better able to make use of virtual worlds. As a side note, I hope the virtual worlds 2.0 meme doesn't catch on the way the web 2.0 phrase did.
22 December 2009
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem | Wired Magazine
This is a fascinating look at what went wrong in delivering the infamous Duke Nukem Forever game. I couldn't stop reading. I was fascinated as a developer, a manager of developers, and a gamer. Something here for everyone, as the saying goes. In the end, this story seems less about development practice as much as a creator that couldn't let go of the creation.
21 December 2009
Block on test failures
Bjorn Tillenius, who was my manager when I started on Launchpad and is now Launchpad Technical Architect, writes a warning about adding testing infrastructure without adding it to an automated run. We failed at this with Windmill testing, but we're now on the right track. This means our Windmill test suite now runs as part of our normal test suite for Launchpad. I find myself appreciating Windmill one day and hating it the next. Bjorn's done a lot of work to get this running smoothly and integrated into our normal testing environment, and I'm curious to see how this plays out. I'm not sure it's going to be smooth sailing, but I agree with Bjorn that it's the right thing to do. We should either run the tests and fix the problems we encounter or don't use the tool, and I think this is good advice for any project when it comes to testing.
17 December 2009
Mark Shuttleworth -- My new focus at Canonical
Mark blogs about his new focus within Canonical starting around March 2010 -- product design, partnerships and customers. Jane Silber will take over as CEO. The Canonical blog post linked from Mark's blog is a nice FAQ about the change in the form of an interview between Mark and Jane.
The Five Distros That Changed Linux | Linux Magazine
I like this stroll down memory lane of significant Linux distro releases. I have to say as an avid Ubuntu user (and full disclosure, a Canonical employee) that I'm really partial to this ending up at Ubuntu, which is said within the article to be "arguably the most popular Linux of all time." So YMMV with the article. There is, though, a good sense of where the state of Linux is today based on the releases mentioned here. A good article for that reason, regardless of your Linux distro preferences.
16 December 2009
Robin Hood trailer
I can't tell from Kottke's statement if he's positive on this trailer or not, but it looks ridiculous to me. Black Hawk Down in medieval Europe? No, thanks.
15 December 2009
Kindle Crapped with Black Lines but Amazon Customer Service Rocks
I woke up Saturday morning and reached for my Kindle only to find the screen went boom when I slid the power switch to wake the device. Black lines filled the screen and the device was unusable.
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11 December 2009
Neil Gaiman Has My Dog
Pictures from Gaiman's recent post, What I plan to do this week show that his dog and mine could be twins.
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Second Life interview on Copper Robot next Wednesday
Cory Doctorow is doing an in-world Second Life interview next Wednesday, Dec. 16. I'll likely take my lunch around this time next Wednesday to catch the interview in world. I've always wanted to see Doctorow speak, so this will be the next best thing. This is also one of the things I really like about Second Life, that this kind of near-real-life interaction is possible when distance and other obstacles prevent this kind of opportunity normally.
7 December 2009
How to protect your ideas in the digital age
I really like this post from Seth Godin about idas in the digital age. The closing sentence is so nice: "Focus on being the best tailor with the sharpest scissors, not the litigant who sues any tailor who deigns to use a pair of scissors."
3 December 2009
Danger: slipping in progress on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Martin Pool spotted this outside a "local software factory" as he called it. I literally LOL'ed. I would have to move my office, but maybe that's the superstitious Southern in me.
28 November 2009
Book review: Web Component Development with Zope 3
This is a good introduction to Zope 3. I've been reading it off and on since I started working on Launchpad, which uses Zope. [...]
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