100 Best Gadgets of All Time
Sunday, February 27th, 2005A neat list for the gadget-obsessed. I own, or have owned, 15 of the 100 items --- what's your score?
Archive for February, 2005
A neat list for the gadget-obsessed. I own, or have owned, 15 of the 100 items --- what's your score?
AJAX: Asynchronous Javascript + XML
Sunday, February 27th, 2005An interesting overview from Jesse Garrett about the new wave of web applications, which are based on: presentation using XHTML and CSS; dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model; data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT; asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest; and Javascript binding everything together. I wondered several years ago whether Javascript ...
RIP Peter Benenson
Sunday, February 27th, 2005Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty International, has died at the age of 83. Amnesty has been a voice for the voiceless around the world, and is proof that anyone who wants to can make a difference. We'll miss you, Peter...
Possible vs. Feasible vs. Trivial
Friday, February 25th, 2005A sociologist I once did some work for once told me that all human activities could be classified as belonging to one of a small number of natural timescales, which he described as: continuous; sip of coffee; fresh pot; tomorrow; and sometime. A continuous activity is one that you're completely absorbed in, like typing a blog ...
Evolution and Language
Friday, February 25th, 2005Yet another fascinating article from Carl Zimmer, this one about the evolution of linguistic ability. If I had another twenty-four hours each day, I still wouldn't be able to keep up with all the reading I'd like to do...
News Roundup
Friday, February 25th, 2005Three pieces of news: A paper by Vlad Mnih, Jonathan Taylor, Lee Zamparo, Paul Gries, and Greg Wilson describing their addition of memory visualization to DrJava has been accepted by the Frontiers in Education 2005 conference. This work was done as a 49X project in the summer of 2004; congratulations, ...
Technical Writing Decisions
Sunday, February 20th, 2005The Python Software Foundation has given me a grant to open source my course on software engineering for scientists and engineers. I've been consulting with several people on what the course's exact content should be; the other issue I have to sort out before I start work is its format. The course will ...
On the Size of Programming Teams
Friday, February 18th, 2005I once heard an anthropologist ask a room, "How big is a sports team?" When people said, "They're all different sizes," she said, "No, actually, they all have about half a dozen members. Anything larger than that (football, rugby, baseball) immediately splits into smaller groups (forwards and backs ...
Paging Dr. House…
Thursday, February 17th, 2005This week's episode of House (the only new show this season I bother watching) chronicled the good doctor's attempt to go a week without using painkillers for his leg. I sympathize---thanks to some drywall dust and a burned-out power supply, I was unable to access my personal mail for ...
Real Development Life Cycles
Monday, February 14th, 2005Here are descriptions of some real development lifecycles: Dana Epps Nick Bradbury Adam Stiles Anyone know any others?