russell beattie just wrote a long treatise on doing web development in Java. It is the result of many months of meditation and experimentation with different technologies. it's interesting even if you have not used the technologies or java in general.#

boing boing links a review of The Best American Scient Writing 2003 - i read part of one these ones, but hadn't yet committed to getting another, but now i will.#

read ryan mcgee's pre-review of the J. Lo and Ben Affleck movie. i'll probably see it, and then kill myself.#

morendil writes about the "genius of programming languages" and the idea that software development (and languages) are not governed primarily by metaphors, but by idioms. ''An idiom, in natural language, is a ready-made expression with a specific meaning that must be learned, and can't necessarily be deduced from the terms of the expression. This meaning transposes easily to programming languages and to software in general.'' - that's an interesting way to think about it, and he links an Alan Cooper article with a similar statement. this is essentially what people are saying when they say user interfaces should be consistent (have coherent expressions and stick to them so they become idioms of the interface in the user's mind) and warning about searching too hard for the wrong metaphor.#

yes!!!#

matthew's goodbye leaves a pearl of wisdom: ''he Web revolution has been over for a while, and after a couple of years of stagnation, the Web evolution is kicking in. It will be important to continuously question standards and research, update skills (both methodological and UI development), and never give up hope that user-centered design will someday become the process and not just a tool.''#

i would want tony to be my boss - he talks to you and lets you know it's good you're there. i imagine that he'd also make sure you knew if you were doing well or not. i have a boss who i've talked to maybe, 4 times in 3 months. all but one of them in the hallway, so i don't really think i should refer to it as "talking", it's very strange. i think i'm fine.. i mean, i get my paycheck. but you know... you never know?#

if you want to process RDF in lisp, then use Wilbur - i did not get this link from this article by shelley powers that tries to show some applications for using RDF. interesting.#

rory believes in reincarnation - why? because there's lots of hicks and wrestling out there. very funny.#

i like adam bosworth's vision of a web service browser. basically something that looks like a "real" application yet is actually getting everything from the web service, automatically updating when it can. the main problem is having one browser for all services (like a Web Browser) versus one for each service (some services have these... blogging tools for example, and Watson is essentially this except services are implemented as plugins) - the only thing is to add dashboard like functionality to passive tie all the services together.#

richard tallent writes about jobs moving to other countries. he says that companies should protect the economies and people that allowed them to be successful at first or the government should force them to. he makes the point that everyone can't be a check-out counter worker. this is very scary when you also consider Robots Will Take All Service Jobs by 2050 - it's essentially saying that Americans will be the masters of the rest of the world with our money and power; and the slaves of our robotic workforce and workforces we depend on overseas. richard tallent makes the poignant observation: ''Like it or not, half of Americans (by definition, some may argue the figure is larger) are below average in intelligence, creativity, and work ethic. We need good manufacturing jobs for hard-working people who aren't interested in, disciplined for, or capable of the higher education or unpaid overtime requirements necessary to place them higher in the corporate food chain. Manual labor and basic tech jobs are not something to be looked down upon: they are the backbone of our productivity.''#

richard also proposes an interesting way of drawing political maps that is a semi-AI feedback best-fit buzzword algorithm.#

the bitch girls have good news for some of you guys out there#

steven complains about safari's over ambitious caching policies. these always bite me too, i hate them when i am trying to use safari for some web page testing and it keeps showing the old version of the page... aaghhh. steven also had a dream about a secret Jobs keynote he went to where Jobs announced "Roo Puffs": '' I think he even at one point actually said, "This is the best cereal I've ever tasted. It is _awesome_."'' - hah!#

kasia flames the mouse - she says, ''Seriously, mouse decreases productivity.. if you can learn keyboard shortcuts (better yet, just use emacs, dude) you'll find you can work faster, easier and amaze local chicks with your leet text editing skills without touching a rodent.'' - so to impress chicks all i need is leet mouseless skills? awesome!#

courtney corrects copiously crappy grammar with quite some clout. she's a writer after all. but she doesn't mind so much when there's grammar problems on her blog - not like Frank J#

james robertson holds up his hands after reading a wonderful java blog post and says, ''Heh - I don't even have to make fun of that - it makes fun of itself'' - silly java programmers... use Smalltalk or Scheme.#

i think an Alyson Hannigan sitcom would be pretty good, although i'm not sure that it would make me watch tv. from whedonesque#

there's an new lwn weekly edition available. there's coverage of the new Red Hat Linux model, namely that there will be no more boxed desktop distribution. that's it.#

also at lwn is coverage of the 2003 Kernel Developers Summit - the requirements panel is interesting because linus holds ground that linux will not harm the small machines to help the large ones and that people who want large things should first get a big machine (64-bit) before having the OS do crazy things, ''get off the drugs'' - the high availability segement gives the best guidelines: don't write buggy code, and don't crash when you don't need to - more simplicity seeking in regards to I/O clustering - tidbits in the 5 minute brainstorm - reverse mapping is always interesting - the closing session as some great schedule information and this quote about the 2.6 stabilization: ''Ted Ts'o noted the long release cycles in 2.4, and asked whether things couldn't be tightened up, complete with "feature freezes," for 2.6. Andrew thought that could probably be done. Andrew also stated that he wanted to be able to get more ambitious changes into 2.6 than have made it into 2.4 so far. In response to a question from Linus, though, he noted that replacing the entire VM subsystem in 2.6.9 is not in his plans. ''#

don park shares the complaints of tim bray in regards to RDF syntax. except don park goes a step further and says (paraphrased) "You say that RDF syntax is bad, but you should use an editor to make RDF, except that there is none, so why not make the syntax good?"#

tim bray has table of contents for his "On Search" series. a great series. tim bray also has perl angst - i think it's fine code :)#

peter lindberg thinks more on creativity - this time his analogy is cooks, ''Chefs invent new dishes and they reproduce those dishes. Two separate activities. ... For software developers, inventing and implementing are generally intertwined. Invent a little, implement a little, repeat.'' - i think that chefs also have the processes intertwined. Look at a Cook making some soup/broth/etc: They are constantly tasting it to see if it's just right, plus I'm sure cooks test out meals before they start serving them to the public - that's essentially a "invent, implement, repeat" process except that once something is "done" they also have to reproduce the dish many times. the reproduction of this dish could be thoughtful as a few different things in the software world: product "rollout" when the programmers after to configure a product for a particular customer; or (i prefer this way) that the dish is just a "module" of food development that may be combined with some others to form a meal. there are times when i've created something new and wrote maybe 10 lines of code because it borrows so much from other modules, i don't think i really implemented anything, i just configured old stuff. Now, I think Peter's thoughts are great and you can think about the analogy both ways and still benefit. i particularly like his conclusion: ''To put it differently, chefs work in two different constrained universes of expression: one where they invent new dishes, and one where they reproduce dishes, but excel in getting more efficient in doing so. Software developers work in one such universe which it's only about delivering functionality - and this universe seldom contain improving the process (for efficiency) and improving the design (for sustainability).'' - when programmers adopt and research things like XP, other languages, better tools, etc they are better programmers because they extend their effort in to "improving the process" or "improving the design." #

chromatic is an interesting guy#

a time article called The Sleepy Superpower Awakens about the "real" form of the new American Empire. It's name is "Empire Lite" - read at it. (from Critical Section#

rejuvenate your career with a notebook like Matthew Dennis.#

c&c is very good so is chrystal.#