Ruby on Rails diagram generator

Ruby on Rails diagrams generator Rails applications are so well-formed (by definition), I'd expect more of these sorts of tools as Rails matures. It will definitely help with wider adoption.

Quicksilver

Wow. If you're a Mac user, do go ahead and download Quicksilver and give it a try. It is amazing.

It can read your mind. Type stuff and it brings thing forth from your computer. Kind of like Spotlight on speed. This is the application Steve Jobs wished Apple and invented.

Thanks, Arjen.

The Next Big Thing in Baseball?

Baseball's evolved a lot over the past 100 years. It wouldn't surprise me if professionals cultured this opportunity to add a completely different capability to their staff.

Trialware

I don't think PC vendors understand how much of a turn-off their preinstallation of trialware is to people.

Last time I set up a new PC (for my in-laws), I believe I spent 2 to three hours just uninstalling junk software, and applying MS patches. This involved many, many restarts. It was a ridiculous experience--and one of many moments in which I vowed that my next computer was going to be a Mac.

Smart PC vendors should add a configuration option to allow the customer to opt out of this preinstalled junk. I'd pay another $30 to get a clean PC.

Working with the Instrument

“…I walked down the end of the hall, went through the door, and in ten seconds I learned why Princeton was right for me—the best place for me to go to school. In this room there were wires strung all over the place! Switches were hanging from the wires, cooling water was dripping from the valves, the room was full of stuff, all out in the open. Tables piled with tools were everywhere; it was the most godawful mess you ever saw. The whole cyclotron was there in one room, and it was complete, absolute chaos! […] I suddenly realized why Princeton was getting results. They were working with the instrument. They built the instrument; they knew where everything was, they knew how everything worked, there was no engineer involved, except maybe he was working there too. It was much smaller than the cyclotron at MIT, and “gold-plated”?—it was the exact opposite.”

Richard Feynman, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”

Execute Beautifully

From Signal v. Noise:

So keep core value in mind. Execute on the basics beautifully and leave the “it would be nice” and “wouldn’t it be cool if” extra features for another time. Get 90% of the value out the door as quickly as you can. The remaining 10% often sucks up far more development time than it’s worth.

This is your Grandpa's Computer

..or this is the "grandpa" computer. Really, this is both ends of about 10 generations of Macs--spanning 23 years. On the left is my original 128K Mac from 1984. On the right is the modern MacBook Pro.

My mom alerted me to the fact that she still had my old computer in her closet.

"It was too cute to get rid of," She says.

Thanks mom.

When I get my iPhone, I'll post a picture of my original Newton along side that too!

The following link is not for mom

The following link is not appropriate for my mom. I've read The BileBlog on and off for years--especially when I was big into J2EE (less so now). Hani recently moved his blog off JRoller (thankfully). Hani has always had an interesting perspective on the Java development community. He has the gift of creative use of profanity. If you're jaded over Java, and up for some creative use of language, check out The BileBlog.

Old Google Jokes (beta)

I happened across the Gmail Paper and Google TiSP jokes and found this 404 page that has links to older jokes as well..