I think 43 Things users are missing out on its real, untapped potential: Crime. I see the list forming like this:
My 4 thingsIt’s a great way to assemble a posse: 12 other people want to Rob a Bank, 8 other people want to form a posse, 1 other person wants to Drive the Getaway car.
Stay Tuned—this could be big.
Reason has a terrific interview with Neal Stephenson. Interviews with Neal are always entertaining and this one is no exception.
As a testament to how enjoyable Stephenson’s writing is, I actually found myself missing his characters (Jack, Eliza, etc.) after finishing “The Confusion”. Of course, I need a little break before starting “System of the World”...
To want this shirt.
Howard once again explains why Tapestry is best for Getting Things Done.
Comment Spam is out of control!! I’ve updated my blacklist, but the spam is still coming in. Until I can fix this, I’ve turned off comments. Sorry.
Update: Comments are back on. I’m hoping Spam Karma will help.
Last night, I actually had a nightmare that I was forced to start working on this monstrous J2EE web site that I worked on 3 years ago. They wouldn’t let me re-write it, just tack-on new features. Shudder.
Ruby made it all better. Come along, won’t you?
The best review of Mac Mini I’ve read yet.
When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware
- none of which are available for the Mac platform -it doesn’t make sense for me to “switch” to a Mac at this time.
Reminds me of that 2.4.0 kernel release that was bug free.
Excellent.
Via Pitchfork
I was just looking back through some Apple Insider news when I noticed this article about one of the latest Tiger builds.
One such feature is reportedly called “Home Sync.” While little is known about the feature, a short description present from within the operating system says that Home Sync requires a ‘portable home’ folder. To create a ‘mobile account and portable home,’ Tiger then directs users to the system account preferences where an option to create and configure a mobile account should be present, but is not.
Oh, I’m intrigued! I know that Sync is going to be a big part of Tiger and that the API will be opened-up. Could this lead to some cross-platform, portable-home lovin’? That would be excellent. Oh, how I wish I was an ADC seed member and could get my hands on a Tiger build… I’ve got some Dashboard ideas and now this!
Also of note: the inclusion of a Dictionary/Thesaurus called “Dictionary”.
If you’ve been watching my del.icio.us, you have probably noticed that I have recently become enamored with Ruby. I won’t rehash what Ruby is - as that has been covered extensively elsewhere - but will say that, for me, it seems to strike at that sweet-spot right between Perl and Python.
I’m starting a new data migration project at work. Nothing too technically challenging, mostly translating and moving data around. This is, of course, a perfect task for Perl/Python/Ruby. I have used Perl and Python plenty in the past and saw this as a perfect opportunity to explore Ruby. The Ruby On Rails article at O’Reilly just seemed to confirm it!
My first task was to find and test the database drivers. Thankfully, Ruby (like Python) uses a Perl-style DBI interface. Though the Ruby Oracle modules don’t seem quite as mature as Python’s or Perl’s, they are certainly functional. By adhering to the DBI API, I’m not bound to either one of the Oracle versions, though Ruby/OCI8 is certainly more active than Ruby9i.
Later, I’ll post the side-by-side Ruby, Python, Perl DBI comparison I did before deciding on Ruby. But, in the meantime, I guess what I liked best about Ruby was being able to do stuff like this:<pre><code>
def save_record(column_one, column_two, column_three)
# ...
end
dbh.execute("select * from table").each do |row|
save_record(*row[0..2])
end
</code>
Plus, the Ruby community seems very Mac-friendly!
Good Ruby Resources: