2006
Clairvoyant Software Engineering
While ripping out old code and refactoring late last night, I muttered out something that I just had to write down: one of the most profound skills of a software engineer is the ability to foresee the moment when the…
Attention Google: License ActiveSync!
If any of the Googlers-in-charge are listening, here’s my pure-gold tip of the day:
Fighting Email Spam, Part N+1
As a follow up to my GMail laments, I wanted to share a very simple spam-fighting trick with the world. See, I have two email addresses. Whooptee-do, you say — you’ve got a gadzillon of them. Well, the trick is…
BarCampBirmingham Sessions in a Podcast
If you missed BarCampBirmingham, here’s your chance to catch up on the topics discussed: most of the sessions are now available on Odeo.com. Session topics include:
GMail Overrun by Spam
It seems that the GMail is no longer doing an excellent job of filtering spam. Or is it just me getting particularly nasty spam?
Micforormats: Yay or Nay?
This is a repost of my response to a question on UWebD list, but since the list doesn’t have publicly available archives, I thought it would be valuable to post this here.
BarCamp Birmingham: Unconferencing the Magic City
Today we had our first meeting, dedicated to planning a Barcamp in Birmingham. What’a Barcamp? Noo, it’s not camping out in a bar, although that seems like an intriguing idea in itself. Barcamp is a conference, powered by participants, rather…
Microformats in Alabama
Did a talk at IPSA today on Microformats (slides are online for those interested). I think it went well. It was a bit odd that people didn’t ask many questions, but maybe this was due to the fact that I…
Off To Netsquared
Early Monday morning, I’ll be flying to San Jose, to join the Netsquared Conference, the coolest conference at which I ever had an honor to speak. Together with my co-host at Fuzzycontent.com, Bob Robertson-Boyd, as well as Youthnoise‘s Ginger Thomson,…
GWT And Now Script#: The Agony of a Thousand Puppies
Uh oh. Another reactive rant. Am I turning into a grumpy old man? This time it’s about layers of abstraction. And Javascript. And the meaning of life. No? Maybe not the meaning of life.
Want to Be in a Movie?
poster for high expectations movie Have you ever dreamed to be in a real movie? You know, pointing out the tiny speck that is your head in a great sea of other hapless extras during a classic flick to your…
One-liners: How To Explain Tags to a SQL Guy
Tags are foregin keys with no corresponding primary key structure. Using a foreign key implies creation of a primary key, if it didn’t exist before. The resulting nebulous collection of keys is often visualized as a tag cloud.
My Notebook
picture of the notebook Those who worked with me have seen it — my trusty ol’ notebook. Now you, the reader, can also peek in on the latest ideas brewing. Experience tells me that about 60% of these will be…
REST Unrest
Gee, we will never run out of clever name permutations with this one, will we? Anyways…
Mapendar Me!
Chris has the right idea with the Mapendar. Relevant content is always location- and time- based. Organizing event-driven information into a continuous time stream and supplanting it with illustrated geography is a pretty intuitive way to put it together. Me…
Latent Patent Disasters
Over at fuzzy, Bob dug up some more ridiculous patent claims. The more you browse the patent database, the more you realize the impossibility of enforcing and navigating (or should I say litigating?) through this tangled mess.
CNN.com Redesigns
Just a quick heads-up: it looks like the CNN.com came out with fresh, new look for their front page. I think I like it. But please don’t pull up the covers: the markup is still a mess, and inner pages…
Lo-REST: This is your REST on Crack
Okay, this one is probably going to sting a bit. But here it goes. Don Box, my hero of adventures long gone, has coined (or as much as that) a new term: Lo-rest. He provides a list of bullet points…
Microformats Abuzz
As you may have heard, Bill Gates ushered in a new era by saying: “We need microformats” from stage at Mix’06. It was a long time coming. Slowly but surely the purists in us are realizing that this might be…
Back? By Popular? Demand?
Yes, ’tis a post of many questions. “What happened, dude?” Lots and lots of stuff. Here’s a brief summary: worked like crazy, lost lots of sleep trying to get the little one to sleep, started back on drinking coffee, replaced…