Archive for December, 2007

Grassroots Extensibility

Monday, December 31st, 2007

Back when I had time to think about extensible programming, I predicted that the most likely route to its realization was some vendor creating a new version of a wholly-owned toolchain.  After all, if Microsoft had decided that VB.NET source code would be stored as XML, in a format that ...

To Do

Monday, December 31st, 2007

There's a light dust of overnight snow on the streets this morning. Maddie's upstairs playing "Climb On Mummy" while Sadie reads a magazine; seems like a good time to figure out my to-do list for 2008. Make Maddie laugh as often as possible (on purpose or otherwise). Do a major release ...

Losing the War Redux

Friday, December 28th, 2007

Twenty minutes ago, I read a post by Diomidis Spinellis in which he cites instructions from the new Sony Ericsson K770i's owner's manual telling people to reboot their phone every day because of a memory leak. Fifteen minutes ago, I tried to buy a movie from Rogers On Demand (my ...

Cover for “A Bottle of Light”

Thursday, December 27th, 2007

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, my next children's book, A Bottle of Light, will be published in the spring.  It won't be available through bookstores (it's coming out as part of a new program for reluctant readers from Scholastic, and will be marketed directly to school boards), ...

Goodbye Oscar

Monday, December 24th, 2007

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, 1925-2007: those were some hands, man.

How Do You Distribute?

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

This poll at dev2ops.com reminded me that I still have to come up with a lecture on software deployment for next term's CSC301 ("Introduction to Software Engineering").  It's a topic most of the classic texts ignore or skim over, but in my experience, getting software onto people's desktops (or onto ...

Champions

Friday, December 21st, 2007

This term's winners of the Pink Hippo award (for the best Speed Scrabble client) were Geofrey Flores, Rubayat Hasan, Rob McWhinnie, and Clara Severino from Team Blizzard.  Congratulations!

Crayon Physics

Friday, December 21st, 2007

Via David Crow, from Mitch Joel, comes a game in which drawings act like real objects. Happy Solstice... Link to demo video.

Walking Spree

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Fresh from Jevon MacDonald: WalkingSpree.com will be giving patients at a Calgary hospital USB pocket pedometers to track miles kilometers walked, calories burned, etc.  Welcome to the future...

“Beautiful Code” Nominated for Jolt Award

Thursday, December 20th, 2007

Finalists for the 2008 Jolt Awards have been announced, and I'm pleased to say that Beautiful Code is on the list. Thanks again to all the contributors for being so generous with their time; we'll know in a month whether we're going to share a "programmer's Oscar".