Where I agree with Dvorak is on the blandness of most computer products. (I even blogged recently defending crazy game machine designs. )

In the piece he relates a funny story about a vendors attempt to introduce amber monochrome monitors back in the late 70's.

They actually did study it there and found that people not only liked the color, but that it was easier on the eyes and more ergonomic. I asked a vendor why we didn't have those terminals. I was told, "We studied it. Nobody wants them." It's flabbergasting. It's almost as though there is some sinister force keeping us from getting the good stuff—keeping us dull and conformist.

Then just when you think Mr. Dvorak is a smart dude he goes and writes something about how big media is going to kill blogging. I don't know about you, but I don't expect more than one or two people to even read this. The fact that I don't draw more than a few folks to this blog is a GOOD thing. I don't blog for mass consumption. To me blogging is just passive lunch conversation. We may not know each other and that doesn't matter. Its just digital smalltalk.

Like a lot of people I work on a project that strays (for good reason I believe) from the standard Java convention of leaving class and member variables undecorated. We use a leading underscore but I've seen folks that use m_ or i_ too. (I really hate the this. hack, its too optional. Unless there's a namespace conflict the compiler wont help you enforce the policy of using it). What I envision is a refactoring option called 'Force Conformance' that would not only style a document with the correct curly brace layout but also go through and rename all member variables so they adhere to a particular style.

As Ben Poole points out in this post sometimes its better to clip code from another project than it is to build a dependency between projects. Invariably when you take code from another project you need to spend some cycles reworking it to look like part of your system. A refactoring tool like this would make that a lot easier.

I like to read and still push myself to read the classics. I have to admit though, I haven't read that many from the boards list of 100 best. Only 11 out of 100. I did better from the reader choice list, 26 out of 100.

Of all the books on the lists I was happy to see only two that I've not been able to finish. Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. I made it most of the way through Ulysses but haven't been able to push through to the end. I think Pynchon is just too verbose for my brain to handle. I didn't make it past the first few chapters on Gravity's Rainbow even though I've given it a couple of tries.

If you compare the lists I've already pointed out with this list from the UK you can see how wide different opinions can range. At least this one mentions Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude.

more on this topic...

Don't get me started on the recent trend in high-end gamer PCs having clear plastic windows, metallic car paints, and glowing lights inside. It's the ugliest, most ridiculous, trend I've ever seen. It's like the opposite of style. It's like Syd Mead threw up -- and that throw-up designed a PC. It reminds me of those guys who buy a Japanese car, modify the body until every last clean line is eradicated, paint it metallic pink and yellow, cover it with stickers, light the underside with neon and throw on an absurd spoiler. I'm absolutely convinced that those that do will look back at pictures of these cars in ten years and wonder what the hell they were thinking.

I wonder how he feels about tattoos.

Meanwhile I have a crushing and demoralising schedule at work which leaves me without any extra time or energy. I hate ClearCase as much as I can possibly hate any software. It is as crappy as everyone ever said it was. Anyone who thinks it is acceptable does not have experience with anything else that isn't as crappy. It's been a long time since a piece of software has made me wonder whether I would actually feel better if I drove my fist through the screen. This is not good.

In both Start Trek TOS and Master and Commander the heart of the stories are about the same thing. Both are about the relationships between the captain who is charismatic, crafty, duty filled and gregarious, the ship's surgeon who's dedicated to saving lives and who doesn't understand navel service and the ship's science officer who is the captains best friend and generally smarter than everyone else. In Master and Commander the doctor and the science officer are rolled into one character but the similarities remain. Other similarities are there too, both are about exploration of new worlds, sacrifice to service and the demands of command.

I've always considered Star Trek TOS to be far superior to any of the follow on series but could never put my finger on the reason why. All the series examined interesting cultural issues, offered philosophical and speculative stories and showed cool science fiction technology, so that wasn't it. I now believe I know the answer. Subsequent series lacked a hero as a focal point. By using an ensemble cast the stories have failed to elevate any character to a heroic level and so have failed to tap into mythic qualities of the hero.

There's no doubt in my mind that both Kirk and Aubry qualify as mythic style heroes. Both exemplify the same prototypical western male attributes of leadership, self sacrifice, resourcefulness and courage. Both triumph where other would have failed.

When I think about other movies that desensitized me to this level of violence and gore, the movies that pop into my head are:: Alien (1979) – The dinning hall scene, The Deer Hunter (1978) – The Russian roulette scene. Including Scarface, all of these movies were released in a 5 year period during the late 70s early 80s. I don’t think these movies are more violent than their modern counter parts, rather I think these were all some of the first ultra violent/gory movies I saw. I guess you can’t under estimate the impact something as simple as a movie can have on your psyche.

www.archetype-it.com,
CNN,
www.clickz.com,
www.deseretnews.com,
www.poeticgeek.net,
www.americanpolitic.com

There are many many more out there. To see for yourself do a google search on "to blog or not to blog".

Jiazzi enhances Java with support for large-scale software components. Jiazzi components are constructed as units . A unit is conceptually a container of compiled Java classes with support for “typed” connections. There are two types of units: atoms, which are built from Java classes,and compounds, which are built from atoms and other compounds.

Games of Empire are huge time sinks and very addictive. As you build larger and larger collections of units (armies, various ships and planes) and capture more territory you need more and more time to carry out grand invasion maneuvers and resupply operations - but the vision of how it will unfold keeps you glued to the keyboard. In my bachelor days I burned more than a few weekends over this game.

So its with quite a nostalgic grin that I discovered a small company KillerBeeSoftware had purchased the source code and released a new Windows XP compatible version of this classic. For 27 bucks I couldn't resist.

A Bright is an individual whose worldview is naturalistic. A Bright's worldview is free from supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a Bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.

(via Ole Eichorn's Critical Section blog)

After 6.00188e+14 pages in this session, a monkey typed: Poet. Goo]eQMSuJDX8&EY z I)4k&'wgWYm&,YD... the first 9 letters of which match "Timon of Athens" This occured after 3.80376e+10 monkey-years in this session, when there were 3.93515e+8 monkeys. Verification code = DFAF. Date: Wed Nov 05 07:51:59 EST 2003

If we just ignore the UI and look at the content however, there's lots of cool stuff. I really enjoyed the simple flash magazine I found linked to from this site. The magazine is called Head (its clean) and contains random art and photography. One pictorial in particular that I found interesting was of late 19th century fruit wrapper labels in issue #3. 'What's so interesting about 19th century fruit wappers' you ask? I can't answer that, I just liked them.

I didn't despise Bill for destroying Netscape, which wasn't very nice or legal, for that matter. Bill just calculated he could smash his competitors by breaking the law and get away it. Who knows? Maybe he can. But when Bill defended Microsoft's murderous behavior by saying, 'All I ask is the right to innovate,' that kind of pushed me over the edge. Netscape did the innovation, Bill—that's why you killed them! All you did was copy the innovation and destroy the innovator. To kill the innovator in the name of innovation was such an incredible lie, such a cynical piece of deception, such hyper hypocrisy, I just couldn't stand it. If Bill had said, 'We killed Netscape because they were in our way; they weren't tough enough to survive, so fuck 'em. Hey, Andreessen [Marc Andreessen founded Netscape when he was twenty-one], welcome to the software industry, punk. I've got a little present for you; it's a pine box and a bullet with your name on it. That'll teach little kids to stay the fuck out of my neighborhood. Mess with Microsoft, you die.' Okay, cool. That's still not very nice, but at least it's honest.

I found spending time with Bill intellectually interesting but emotionally exhausting; he has absolutely no sense of humor. I think he finds humor an utter waste of time an unnecessary distraction from the business at hand