I’ve actually felt this way for a very long time. If I died and got to come back as something else besides a human, my (presumably non-traditional) choice would be to come back as an octopus.
- They are very well adapted to their environment, and do pretty well in some other environments
- They have ample appendages to manipulate their environment
- They have the ability to live in many places and eat a variety of foods, which makes them resilient to hard times.
- They have turbo boost! And [some have] camoflage!
This article I found on Wired’s website talks about new examples of some species of octopus which have shown real tool use! Not just real tool use, but carrying around tools for later use. And that’s the part that distinguishes intelligent tool use from instinctive behavior. I’ve seen documentaries on them solving various physical puzzles, but this is even cooler. They even have a Beatles song about them.
Yet another mailing list I’m on is Peteris Krumins’ blog, good coders code, great reuse. He posts about software development, hacking, security, code reuse, etc. This post is on advanced use of obscure Perl operators.
There is a mysterious underground Perl organization that hardly anyone has heard of. Their primary mission is to discover new secret Perl operators but they are not allowed to talk about them. I managed to infiltrate this organization and steal some of their secrets. Here are 8 secret Perl operators that I retrieved from their mysterious hoard.
This is a great (and entertaining) article. However, it exposes the thing that I like the least about Perl; its reliance on punctuation marks to greatly change the meaning of a block of code, and the ability to replace a perfectly good explicit code block with a few squiggles and variable names to show how clever the developer is. The trouble is, this cleverness make the code much harder to understand by the next person that needs to work with it. These days, 9 times out of 10, code legibility and malleability will benefit a company much more than brevity.
From the wonderful folks at the Boston Sci-Fi Marathon, I present 13 Things Horror Movies Taught Us. These people run other movie marathons, like HorrorThon (which I attended), but the Sci Fi marathon is their biggie. It’s a 10 day event (starting 02/05/10), ending in the 24-hour marathon (which I hope to go to). I just wish their website was in better shape.
According to this article (and others), Python creator and BDFL (”Benevolent Dictator For Life”) Guido van Rossum froze the Python language’s syntax and grammar in their current form for the the next few releases, and possibly longer. The reasons are good ones; To let developers catch up to the latest release, to let the rich array of third-party tools stabilize, and to improve the quality of the existing libraries. I think it’s a bold move, but the right move.
This is an awesome article. I found the link from the Semantic Web group on LinkedIn. I haven’t spot-checked it for accuracy, but there’s a fair amount of dispute over the history of computers and the Internet anyway. But this article is very enjoyable, and includes many related historical points, like when certain companies formed, and the history of tangential technologies that made the Internet possible. It’s a good read for geeks, and a great primer for geeks-in-training.
I mentioned in this post that I got laid off from Metatomix back in October. I just landed a Java/J2EE Software Engineering job at Litle & Co.. I started Monday, but I wanted to wait a few days to “make sure it takes”. But it feels good, I’ve already checked in some code, and have adapted to their pair programming environment. I wrote a bit about them in this post while I was still researching them, and I liked what I found. I already have a taste for their flavor of Kool-Aid, having done Agile and pair programming before, and similar work in similar technologies. This has all the makings of a good, long, run.
I was just reading this article from Priyank Mohan’s Semantic Technology Blog. He draws parallels between it and the movement to automated online B2B transactions from years ago and linked data on the web, and what lessons we should learn from the (mostly) failure of B2B. Priyank focuses mostly on the similarities of the benefits, which is useful, but I think both movements didn’t have the impact they were supposed to have for the same basic reason; They both require incredible amounts of work that will only pay off if enough other companies follow suit. As much as I would love to see it happen in the near future, I don’t think it will
Read on…
First, a little fun. I found this survey asking just that question, but in a humorous way. Here are the results, which were presented at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto. I also found (through LinkedIn) a post on Peter DeYoe’s blog with a humorous job posting for a Scrum Master.
Now for a real live case study. In my job hunting, I discovered this article by Damon Pool on Litle & Co. The reason I like this story so much is that not only did the push for Agile come from the top, but they started out that way. They didn’t adopt Agile, they were born with it. That eliminates a lot of problems that come along with trying to adopt Agile later on:
Read on…
Many problems have been caused throughout history due to lack of information flow from subordinates to superiors. This post discusses some examples. some reasons why this might be the case, and asks how we can move forward.
Today I’m trying to fix a friend’s Windows Vista laptop that BSODed because we had the audacity to hook up a Bluetooth dongle to it to use Bluetooth headsets with. Now it won’t run for more than a minute or so before it crashes again. My usual mantra of “Install Linux” is not an option in this case, because it needs to run iTunes. So far, the computer is winning. CHKDSK is running, and the percentage done on stage 5 is stuck at 11% , even though it continues to count how many files it’s processed, so I can see it’s about 80% done. Learn to count, and maybe I’ll think about buying your OS.
As a form of therapy, we went to Jake’s Dixie Roadhouse (yes, their food is much better than their website), to help them celebrate Hogtoberfest. For an appetizer, we shared Death By Bacon, which is chicken-fried bacon with southern gravy. I am afraid it was insanely good. Dangerously good. I’m glad this is a temporary special, or my Doctor would probably have me banned from the joint. Memphis dry rub ribs for the main course, natch. I’m not a big fan of BBQ sauce. It takes away from the flavor of the meat too much. Dry rubs tend to complement the taste instead of hiding it. I washed it down with a Three Philosophers, which is a Belgian beer.
For dessert, we had bacon drizzled in chocolate with spinkles. Again, I was pleasantly surprised how good this was. The bacon had a heavy maple component, which made it pair with the chocolate very well. The extra sugar in the sprinkles tempered the salt in the bacon nicely. Note that this bacon was cooked to the point that it was still moist and chewy, not hard.
Evil foods, truly. And I would do it again.