TFP (last post) is already introducing me to new things… I came across Microsoft’s WorldWideTelescope project in the book, and decided to check it out. It runs painfully slowly (even on my 2.93GHz C2D MBP), but I can still use it, and determined that it’s extremely cool. That said, I should point out that being […]
Read MoreIt’s the data stupid (“The Fourth Paradigm”) 0
I stumbled across this New York Times article in my RSS feeds this AM regarding a Microsoft research endeavor/book titled “The Fourth Paradigm”. I’ve skimmed TFP so far, and have highlighted a few sections I want to read in depth, and it looks quite good. Essentially, it explores today’s data volumes in the science realm […]
Read MoreDIY desktop glass multitouch/touchpad from a unibody Macbook 0
~6 months or so ago, I purchased a top case from a parted out 13″ unibody Macbook from eBay, with the intent to strip off the touchpad and make a DIY desktop touchpad USB device out of it. Similar things have been done before, albeit not for these glass touchpads. I thought it would be […]
Read MoreGoogle LiquidGalaxy, would be even better with multitouch :) 0
I came across this rather awesome Google project in my RSS feeds today, LiquidGalaxy Essentially, it’s 8 large screens integrated as a single Google Earth UI, complete with a gazebo for the user to stand in. After reading this, I had a thought. This would be even better if the screens incorporated multitouch!, perhaps using […]
Read MoreClosure, perhaps it will convice some JavaScript haters to stop… 0
Google open sourced their Closure JavaScript Tools! If you’re not familiar with them, and you do any web development at all, now’s the time to read up. In short, this is a set of groundbreaking tools for the JavaScript developer, which bring some amazing capabilities to the table. If you are in any way involved […]
Read MoreCalendar Heat Maps 0
I’m a huge fan of data visualizations, and this one is pretty cool. calendar heat maps of two different time series data sets 1. Performance of Microsoft’s stock 2. Airline Peformance This certainly has potential a little closer to home than some of my other favorites, and may end up finding its way into some […]
Read MoreTo Wave or not to Wave ? 0
I’ve had access to Wave for a tad over a week now, and so far I have to say that I see the potential, but I will withhold judgment until it’s a final product, or heck, even a Google Beta(tm). The integrated communications platform that is Wave allows one to combine communication mechanisms in new […]
Read MoreGoogle Voice on iPhone :( 0
Like a few others, I am disappointed by Apple’s decision to prevent Google Voice for iPhone. I am not as upset as some, but do think the situation is unfortunate. The startup I worked for a few years ago was doing something very similar to Google Voice, called VerbalOneNumber, which wasn’t as successful as GrandCentral […]
Read MoreiPhone 3GS GPS disappointment 0
I’ve been mostly pleased with my 3GS, with one exception: GPS flakiness. The hardware upgrades certainly make a difference, not only in applications but general UI responsiveness, which makes the whole experience of using the device better. The GPS however, bluntly put, sucks. In Maps, I’m lucky if it ever uses the GPS (yes, even […]
Read MoreWhy is engineering software so hard/different than other engineering pursuits ? 0
I’ve been pondering this topic a lot lately, and have had several discussions with colleagues and friends on what steps one might take to improve matters when working on a project which has issues associated with this topic. This Dr. Dobbs article brought the topic to the forefront of my mind and has recently resulted […]
Read MoreMapReduce becoming ubiquitous ? => Collaborative Map-Reduce in the Browser 0
As an academic exercise, myself and a colleague at Sun are currently implementing a MapReduce client for iPhone which has a server component, and a number of other clients we’ve written in various programming languages (currently Python, Ruby and Perl). Our hope is to statistically prove iPhone and similar devices can be useful in a […]
Read MoreMaking Things Happen 0
Added Making Things Happen to the book page. Check it out.
Read Moreprogramming language typing, static and dynamic 0
I just read Bruce Eckel’s blog entry which discusses programming language typing, static vs. dynamic. His conclusion is that we, software developers, need “Strong testing, not strong typing.” and I couldn’t agree more. I’ll expand on his statements and reiterate that all too often software folks get caught up evangelizing their chosen technology and lose […]
Read Moreroot cause analysis – keeping software simple and high quality 0
I posted a brief thought on RCA on my Sun blog In short, software developers could improve quality and simplify by employing RCA during development. Avoid getting caught up in what’s new and cool and focus on what your intended users really need.
Read MoreXCode breakpoint speech synthesis! 0
In mid December I attended iPhone dev camp Colorado, and among many other things, learned about the very cool ability of XCode to speak the value of variables and other items at breakpoints while debugging. XCode uses whatever voice you have configured in OS X to do the synthesis, and spits out not just variable […]
Read MoreRating Software Developers 0
It takes all kinds of people to make any project successful; designers, code monkeys, requirements junkies, architects, and there are no repeatably good mechanisms for evaluating folks to determine if you want them to be a part of your team or not. This sort of rating or measurement is something people from all three perspectives […]
Read MoreiPhone development joy 0
Seeing as it’s been a year now since I began coding for iPhone, I felt like rambling a bit on that topic… I got my 1st gen iPhone in September of 2007, and knew within minutes of actually using the thing (rather than just drooling over photos and videos) that iPhone was going to be […]
Read Moresoekris embedded linux devices 0
For years I’ve had a number of systems that have been retired to my server closet as they’ve lost favor as my primary desktop, only to be reborn as a server of this, that, or, something else… Unfortunately, these systems are power hogs and are getting old enough that replacement parts are available only from […]
Read MoreJavaFX 0
another day, another scripting language… I’ll reserve in depth comment until I’ve had time to thoroughly explore JavaFX, but the choices facing today’s software folks are staggering to be certain. Personally, I’m finding it harder and harder to keep anything in my own memory, syntactic details and the like. More often than not these days, […]
Read MoreUnified Storage Simulator and the 7000 series NAS appliances 0
Have a NAS ? Have a NAS that can tell you graphically which client(s) are hogging the NAS while pushing/pulling which file(s) ? yeah… I didn’t think so. November 10, 2008: Sun announced the 7000 series storage products, which combine some very useful administrative features with the power of Solaris and ZFS. I’ve had the […]
Read Moremmmmmmm, ZFS. 0
First, the background info… We have a family wide NAS which houses hundreds of movies, tens of thousands of songs, hundreds of documents and all manner of other important digital content like vacation photos. Recently, I was listening to some old music (~5yrs) and noticed some degradation (very audible pops and clicks), which is unacceptable. […]
Read MoreAndroid SDK 0
I’ve been developing for iPhone in my spare time for ~8 months now (jailbreak and toolchain prior to the official SDK). For the sake of trying out the competition I snagged the Android SDK and associated plugins and whatnots for Eclipse, and proceeded to implement a simple app. My 2c is that Apple wins on […]
Read MoreChandler 1.0 0
Most folks may not be familiar with the Chandler project, but it has some interesting goals. The project finally hit 1.0 recently, and reached a point that it’s stable enough for serious usage, IMO. I’ve used at various points in the past, and I must say that they’ve done a great job. I’ve been using […]
Read Morejpeekaboo, java based auto hide drawer note 0
pwsidenote is becoming far more painful than I’d hoped to strip down and end up with what I want. In response, I’m shelving it as is and starting a new project, jpeekaboo. Same goal, auto hide drawer note that can be pinned to any screen edge and sync content offsite. I also need an app […]
Read More