Nelson Minar writes:

I refuse to give in to a cynical view of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto; that ethos was very real, a sincere and important guiding principle... But I think Google as an organization has moved on; they’re focussed now on market position, not making the world better. Which makes me sad.

Via John Gruber at Daring Fireball.

Think about how much of your daily life revolves around Google services. Just remember that you are the product that Google is selling.

A case study on why you shouldn't put BASIC code in your email:

From: Ray
To: All
Subject: in late tomorrow

All, 

10 GOTO Subject
20 PRINT "I am going to be " + Subject
30 END 

Thanks,

Ray

==================================================================================

From: John

Line 20- is never reached, optimized out.

Perhaps you mean gosub?

==================================================================================

From: Eric

I detect an infinite loop:

- read the subject
- read "All,"
- read line 10
- goto the subject
- read the subject
- ...

and as we all know: recursion is preferable to side-effect based looping.

(def read-email [email]
  (read-subject email)
  (read-email email))

==================================================================================

From: Ray

Re-factored with apologies: 

10 Subject == getConfig(Email[Subject])
20 PRINT "I am going to be " + Subject
30 IF getConfig(Email[TO]).RespondedToThisEmail
40     PRINT "You took this way too seriously - now the email will never end"
50     GOTO 40
60 ENDIF
70 END

Thanks,

Ray 

==================================================================================

From: Dave

Did this message go through an E & A?

==================================================================================

From: Eric

Why are we writing code without tests?

==================================================================================

From: John

At least it’s going through PQA.

==================================================================================

From: John

But will it have two ship its before tomorrow?

==================================================================================

From: Ray

I am so glad that you all are so interested in my project!  In order to move
forward more efficiently, I have created a wiki page to continue to track the
progress: 

http://devwiki.../Basic_In_Late_Email

Please feel free to add yourself and comments to the page going forward.


Thanks,

Ray 

==================================================================================

From: Dave

It's kind of scary how far outside the process this project has gotten in such a
short time. We really need to reign this in.

For example, I'm assigned to setting up an E & A, and I can't help but notice we
have no story cards for this project. We really need to get those cards written
(let's think in MMF's here, gang).

Oh, and Jackie, we'll need to get a Kanban board set up ASAP.

I think we're all agreed that we'll do a review of what Ray has already done
followed by a retro on Friday.

==================================================================================

From: Eric

Is this part of an Impact Area? Should we even be doing this without executive
oversight?

==================================================================================

From: Davin

Good point Eric.

This project is of core importance to this company, and we should give weighty
consideration to forming 2 oversight committees and a special impact area for
this. I'm also wondering if we can earmark any of this for an innovation grant
to help offset the cost to us. Marketing needs to weigh in...

That's really quite funny.

Joseph E. Stiglitz at Vanity Fair has written an excellent article on monetary policy, the great depression, and the current economic situation. Although the article focuses on the US, it's still a great read, and I think it applies to more than just what is happening to the US economy.

Via Marco Arment.

Dan Bahls:

Thanksgiving is a one of our better ideas. We, theoretically, reflect on how fortunate we are to have what we have. The day after Thanksgiving would be a great day to start thinking how we might start addressing wrongs perpetuated on anybody trampled in the process of putting together the comfort and security we are so thankful for. Instead, we’ve turned it into a symbolic date for acquiring shinier objects in anticipation of how we can best miss the point of our next major holiday. Perhaps worse, it infects Thanksgiving itself, turning the holiday into, effectively, a paean to culinary gluttony in preparation for commercial gluttony.

Sad, but true.

Via Marco Arment.

The National Geographic is currently holding it's 2011 Photo Contest. The Atlantic has a gallery up showing a sampling of some of the categories. Some of them are just really beautifull.

John Siracusa has managed to capture everything that's wrong with Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in his latest Hypercritical podcast.

Well, almost everything... As seems typical for John Siracusa (see his epic 8000+ word reviews of Mac OS X for example), he has a lot to say, and this podcast is only part 1 of 2, with part 2 coming out sometime this week.

Here are some of my comments on Steve Jobs and the biography.

I dare you to scroll through this page and tell me that the owner of this place isn't Batman. Seriously. Look at that place. Workshop? Check! Electronics laboratory? Check! Multiple entries and escape routes? Check!

Writing about and criticizing someone that has passed away is cheap and tactless, all for the more so when it's someone you didn't meet or know in real life.

So here goes.

Having finished the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, it seems to me that the underlying theme revolves around how incredibly talented a designer, visionary, and thinker Steve Jobs was. However, at the same time, it also seems to me that Steve Jobs wasn't a very nice person. Perhaps one might go so far as to say that it seems he wasn't a very good, well, human. He seemed very emotional, but often only when he felt things were not going his way. However, at the same time, it seems to me that he was was completely lacking all traces of empathy.

His family and friends might disagree, but the biography contains a number of stories that portray Steve Jobs as lacking empathy, being self-centered, and just not caring about the effect his actions had on those around him, including his family and close friends. Sometimes he seemed to actively find ways to hurt people.

Was it for a "greater good"? Maybe. It seems Steve Jobs often felt that it was.

As to whether or not his passing will lead to Apple slowly fading out, well, only time will tell. In the meantime, they seem to be in good hands, with great business and design leadership.

Now, with respect to the biography itself, it was disappointing. It felt rushed, and there were numerous technical errors within the book. In addition, some parts of the book appear to be simple summaries of earlier books on Apple and Steve Jobs, such as Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer, Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made, and stories from Folklore.org.

I have a suspicion that the next Mac Pro is going to be very interesting. Well, I suppose that the very question of whether or not there will be a new Mac Pro is also interesting. Let's assume that there will be.

All recent Mac computers have been moving towards incorporating Thunderbolt connectivity, both for peripherals (of which there are currently only a few) and external monitors. It would be easy to assume that the next Mac Pro would also include Thunderbolt connectivity.

However, stop and think about this for a minute. How exactly would this work? The Mac Pro computers are unique to the Mac line-up in that they allow for discrete video cards. If the Mac Pro is to offer Thunderbolt connectivity, how would the Thunderbolt port interact with the discrete video card, and where would the Thunderbolt port physically be located? Would the port be on the video card?

Placing the Thunderbolt port on the video card might be the simplest solution, but then it would mean that all Thunderbolt data is being routed through the video card. I am by no means an expert on hardware, but I suspect that this would be somewhat problematic. At the very least it would mean that Apple would be depending on third party hardware for their Thunderbolt connectivity, and I don't think Apple in general likes to rely on third parties for anything. On the technical side of things, it would mean additional bandwidth and load on what is already a hard working, hot running part inside your computer. In fact, video cards are usually the loudest part as well because of the fans required to cool them.

OK, so maybe the Thunderbolt port will be on the Mac Pro chassis itself. This would also seem to pose a problem for the discrete video cards, as they normally (based on my limited understanding of hardware) route their video signals out through the ports on the video card itself (i.e. some combination of DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, or VGA ports on the back of the video card). Having the Video Card route the video signal back to the Mac Pro motherboard and then out through the Thunderbolt port would strike me as being problematic. Once again, based on my very limited knowledge of hardware, it would seem like this would be problematic. First, it would be limited by the bus bandwidth, and second, it would require a custom video card, as this is not something that normal video cards do.

So where does this leave us? Perhaps the Mac Pro will not have a Thunderbolt port. I doubt that. Thunderbolt is perfect for external storage, and the typical use case of Mac Pros is for sound and video editing, where users needs tons of storage. Mac Pro users probably want Thunderbolt more than most typical users, who might not ever add external storage.

So that leaves Apple with either adding the Thunderbolt port to the video cards, or adding the Thunderbolt port to the chassis and running video signals back from the video card to the motherboard and out through the Thunderbolt port.

Or does it?

Perhaps there is some third option. What if the next Mac Pro chassis is radically different. What if it doesn't have an internal video card at all. What if instead of an internal video card, the motherboard has Thunderbolt ports that allow for external video cards. This wouldn't be unheard of. In fact there has already been a somewhat limited demo of this. Or, as Robert X. Cringely suggests, perhaps the video card will be in the monitor.

Interesting times ahead for sure.

This is so true.

Mark Cuban has two excellent suggestions on patent reform:

1. End all software patents. Don’t make them shorter, eliminate them.
2. End all process patents. They serve absolutely no purpose. None.

Obviously he elaborates some more on this, but really, it's this simple. Software patents do not make sense.

I've been using a pair of Sennheiser HD 25-1 ii headphones for just under two years now, and I thought it was time to mention them. I picked them up because I was looking for a pair of over-ear headphones for use at work. However, after looking at several reviews of over-ear headphones, I stumbled onto the Head-Fi website. After looking through the forums and video reviews, it quickly became apparent that the Sennheiser HD 25-1 ii headphones were much-loved by literally everyone that talked about them. Seriously, go out and try and find a bad review on them. They're just that good.

About that name

These headphones are named terribly. The name is so bad that it's actually difficult to find them for sale online or at retail, as there are several other Sennheiser models with similar names (Sennheiser HD 25, Sennheiser HD 25-SP, Sennheiser HD 25-SP ii, and Sennheiser HD 25-1 ii Originals headphones). In fact, you might notice that I am using the lower-case "ii" instead of the "II", as that actually made them easier to find online.

Sound

There's not much to sound other than the sound is simply fantastic. But don't take my word for it, go do a quick search and check out some of the very detailed, comprehensive reviews out there.

Build Quality

The first impression you receive when seeing or holding these headphones is that they look fragile. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. I've been carting these to and from work on the bus for over a year and they are just as solid as the first day I owned them.

Comfort

While some of the reviews do say that these headphones are not comfortable for extended use, I have to disagree. Although this is always going to be subjective, these are the most comfortable on-ear headphones that I've ever tried. I find most on-ear headphones irritate me or are downright painful after less than a few minutes of use, but I've used these headphones for entire days at work without any discomfort.

Conclusion

I really like these headphones. They are the best sounding and most comfortable on-ear headphones I've ever used, and based on my experiences thus far, they're going to last me for years to come.

Sometime last night a strange email appeared in my iPhone's unified inbox.

There are several things that are strange about this email message.

• It only appears in the iPhone's unified inbox. It does not appear in the inbox of any of my email accounts.
• It cannot be opened.
• It has no subject or sender.
• It has a received date which makes no sense, although it is probably a default value or the minimum possible value for dates.
• Finally, it cannot be deleted.
• Powering off and on the phone does nothing.

Very strange indeed.

According to a new report released by TEPCO, and reported on by CNN, there is the possibly that there are holes in the containment vessels of the Fukushima reactors.

In the report, Tokyo Electric says the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 may have developed a hole as big as 3 centimeters in diameter 18 hours after the quake.

Fifty hours after the quake, the hole may have widened to 7 centimeters, the report said.

In reactor No. 2, the containment vessel may have developed a hole as wide as 10 centimeters 21 hours after the quake.

Bad news in a bad situation.

Horace Dediu (via Daring Fireball) presents some very interesting charts on mobile phone profit and revenue. Overall, the iPhone accounts for 5% of all phones (not just smartphones) and yet it accounts for 20% of the revenues, and a staggering 55% of the profit.

What I wonder though, is what these charts would look like if Google was included. As best as I can tell, Google makes about $1 billion in mobile search and ad revenue each year. Although Horace Dediu doesn't provide numbers for all of his charts, I would estimate that Google is starting to approach the same level of profit as some of the handset manufacturers (note that I'm talking about profit and not profitability). That might not sound impressive, but when you consider that this is just from mobile services and ad revenue, I think that Google is in a strong position.

However, when you consider the Google Android platform, I think Google is in an even stronger position (with respect to mobile revenues), as it gives them access to user data, and control over which services end users have access to. The Android platform is doing really well in terms of adoption, and, for better or worse, it seems to have become the Windows of the mobile platform.

Whatever you say about Apple, Google, and other players in this market, mobile computing is the future, and I think we're getting closer to a time when mobile computing will overtake desktop computing.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, in a post about Mac malware is suggesting that we look to iOS for a possible hint at Apple's solution to the problem of trojan horses.

I could be wrong, but I think that what he's suggesting is a situation in which you could only install software on your Mac via the Mac App Store.

It's an interesting situation. It could potentially help eliminate the issue of malware and trojan horses. However, what about users that want to install software that isn't available in the Mac App Store, or, as in the case of some open source software, can't even be made available in the Mac App Store? I just don't see how that part of the equation would work. I could still see Apple pushing for this though, as, generally speaking, they case about the user experience over all else.

Piranha Plant USB Keychain. I love it! The "fireball" LED light is sweet.

There's more in Boardments Etsy Shop.

Here is a detailed graphical roadmap of Microsoft acquisitions and investments over the years. What a complicated web. How many of the acquisitions actually amounted to anything significant in terms of market share or revenue?

Yesterday evening I put together a standing desk in my office. It ended up being more work than I thought, as I have a relatively small 8x10 office, and had to switch around the layout to make it work.

I used an IKEA VIKA AMON table that I already owned, and switched out the (non-adjustable) legs that I had for adjustable VIKA BYSKE legs. I'm not too fond of the chrome look, but these were the only adjustable legs I could find that went high enough for me (43"). The legs were kind of expensive at $16 each, but at a total cost of just over $100 for the whole desk I can't complain. One note if you do decide to set this up yourself; the adjustable legs are slightly unstable when they are fully extended, and I would recommend using the included brackets to attach the desk to the wall. I haven't yet done this myself as I might still move the desk, and the stability is fine, but I do plan on using the brackets once I know for sure that I want to keep the desk where it is.

So far after about a day of using it I like it. My feet are sore but I'm sure they'll adjust after a few days. Standing is definitely making me more active at my desk, and I think I am focusing more than normal, although that might just be because it's a new experience and I'm paying more attention.

I'm going to give it a try for another week or so before I move my speakers, USB hub, and second monitor over. For now they're on my regular desk. In the meantime the rest of my office is a complete and utter disaster, with cables, books, and other stuff all over the place. I'm not even going to take a picture let alone post one, it's that bad.

Apparently Facebook hired a PR Agency to plant stories in the press that would discredit Google. In particular, according to various sources, Facebook was trying to make Google's stance on privacy look bad.

Interesting story for sure. I suppose this is a type of modern-day corporate espionage; rather than stealing information, ideas, or technology, Facebook is trying to reduce Google's market value.

At the same time, you have to think that one of the potential outcomes of any kind of privacy related PR is that the public is going to be more aware of privacy issues in general. This could really backfire on Facebook, as they already have someone of a tarnished history with respect to privacy (anyone remember Beacon?).

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was going to look into moving the source code for a small application I wrote to GitHub. After several days using Git, I found that although it is similar to Mercurial, I still feel more comfortable with Mercurial.

However, in the process of looking at Git, I discovered that Google Code hosting now supports Mercurial! In fact, their Mercurial support seems to be even better than BitBucket, which I was using previously for my Mercurial hosting. In particular, I had some issues with using BitBucket behind a firewall on a Virtual Machine that doesn't seem to be a problem with Google Code.

So anyway, I have now moved the MouseMover project to Google Code.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is reportedly purchasing Skype for between $7 and $8 billion. That price seems high, but then what do I know. Om Malik has some interesting comments on why he thinks this is a good idea for Microsoft.

Update 2011/05/10 08:22 AM: Looks like it's official, with Microsoft to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion! That's quite a lot more than the $2.6 billion that eBay purchased Skype for.

All I can say is that Microsoft better not rename Skype "Microsoft Windows Office Live Skype Communicator Professional Edition 2011" or some such thing. Seriously. They would do that.

If IKEA made Sci-Fi assembly manuals. Nicely done.

It's only the 9th of May and I'm already at my limit for the New York Times paywall. You'd think that NYT would want people to read their articles.

This whole situation kind of reminds me of The Right to Read article by Richard Stallman. If you haven't read this article you should go do so now. In fact, it should be required reading for all Computer Science students.

Stephen Harper is moving to eliminate a per-vote subsidization system in place for political parties. I can't claim to completely understand this system, but based on the description provided in the article linked about, it sounds like a decent system for helping smaller political parties. At the same time, my tendency is towards "smaller government" and I do think that eliminating this system will reduce government spending.

That said, I worry that Stephen Harper is doing this because it is most beneficial to his own political party. I certainly hope that this is not the case.

The next time you're using a Google product, remember this:

“We don’t monetize the thing we create,” Andy Rubin says. “We monetize the people that use it." (Levy, Steven (2011). In The Plex (p. 229). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition).

Of course, this isn't just limited to Google. Any time you are using a product and not paying for it, you aren't the customer, you are the product. This is one reason that, in many ways, I prefer paid web services over free ones.

Dave Winer presents an interesting take on Osama Bin Laden's death with some follow-up here. Without going into ethics and morality, Dave raises some interesting questions. The simple fact is that the "real story" of what happened might not be revealed in our lifetime.

Amazingly detailed miniature Atari 810 disk drive. It works as a MicroSD drive. Amazing.

Google Business Photos, as described by ReadWriteWeb sounds very interesting. However, it would be even more interesting if it was combined with a service like Yelp to provide contextual reviews.

Do you use Last Pass? If so, then the Last Pass Security Notice should probably concern you. On the one hand, it's good that Last Pass is being open about this, but at the same time, I think they should be expected to be open about this given the nature of the service they provide.

Last Pass provides a great service, so much so that I pay for a subscription, even though I only really need the functionality that the free account provides. I want the service to succeed, to get better, and to stick around forever, so paying for a subscription account is, to me, a good value.

Please Edmonton Journal, fix your website. This happens on nearly every article with a picture in the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome. It's frustrating to have to switch to Internet Explorer just to read your articles.

(Click for a larger version)

As I noted several weeks ago the software that I wrote to run this website works by generating (mostly) static content pages. When I wrote that article, the articles were static HTML pages, while the index page was a dynamically generated ASP.NET MasterPage-based page.

Well, as of two weeks ago, I finished coding the index page generation, and the system now entirely generates static pages. I did some internal testing to try and weed out bugs, and, not finding any, I deployed the code to my live site, and hit the "Generate Content" button. Since then I've been watching the logs carefully. Everything seems to be working great, and I couldn't be happier.

The resulting system is quite simple. I have a set of admin pages that use JavaScript and Web Services to save a series of text based documents. When a new article is written, an existing article is edited, or a category is updates, the system automatically generates the article page, the index pages, and the associated category index pages. For example, publishing this article will cause the following pages to be generated:

• /index.html
• /page/1/index.html
• /page/2/index.html
• /page/.../index.html
• /articles/index.html
• /articles/page/1/index.html
• /articles/page/2/index.html
• /articles/page/.../index.html
• /articles/baking-static-websites-2/index.html

I also added the ability to generate pages without categories. So, for example, the "About" page is simply a standard article with no category, which causes the page to be published to /about/index.html and prevents the article from being included on the main index page.

There's still a lot of cleanup work to be done. Some of the code is really messy and there are a few things that are hard-coded that I want to fix. Overall though I'm very happy with what I have here. I ran some basic performance and load tests and was not able to bring the site down; I hit the network bandwidth saturation point far before the server was under any significant load.

Here is a simple application I wrote years ago for situations where you want to prevent your screen saver from activating. This is handy for when you don't have control over screen saver functionality.

I'm thinking that when I get some time I'm going to work on getting the source up to GitHub. Although I've never used Git before, it seems similar to Mercurial (which I have used and like a lot) so it shouldn't be too hard, and it would be a good learning experience.

Download

My son and I built a mini version of WALL-E out of Lego tonight. Well, it's sort of close anyway. Apparently I don't have many yellow bricks. Also, the title of this post manages to use two trademarks in as many words!

1|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state1201104140901.txt| 2|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state2201104140901.txt| 3|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state3201104140901.txt| 4|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state4201104140901.txt| 5|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state5201104140901.txt| 6|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state6201104140901.txt| 7|4/14/2011 9:01:00 AM|us-financial-state720110414_0901.txt|

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While attempting to count the number of Android tablet apps that are available, Justin Williams of http://carpeaqua.com wrote the following about Android apps:

"My criteria for considering an app for this list is that it either requires Android 3.0 or have its user interface be specifically designed for a tablet experience. I didn’t count games or existing Android apps that are just upconverted to take advantage of the existing screen real estate. While it is a marginally better experience than trying to run an iPhone app on an iPad, I’m not counting it given that Apple doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands of iPhone exclusive apps in its 65,000 iPad app count."

This seems like a fallacy. Just because something is true on one platform doesn't automatically make it true on another platform.

Now, I'm not saying he's wrong, he very well could be right that the experience of running an Android phone app on an Android tablet is only "a marginally better experience than trying to run an iPhone app on an iPad". However, from what I understand, Android apps are written to scale on nearly any screen size. Just from reading through the API documentation, it seems to me that the experience should be better compared to an iPad running an iPhone app, which just scales everything up to be 4x the size.

Now, to be fair, I say all of this without actually owning an Android Tablet, so again, what Justin Williams is saying here could very well be correct.

There is a bit of discussion going around about "baked blogs", or, as they are more commonly known, static websites.

This isn't a new concept of course. As Brent Simmons notes, Aaron Swartz talked about this in 2002. And, let's not forget John Gruber's Daring Fireball site, or Joel Spolsky's CityDesk web publishing software, which was the first product released by Fog Creek Software back in 2001.

When I set out to write the software for this website several months ago, one of my goals was to produce mostly static output. This site does not use a database; the web-based site administration functionality outputs files as simple static HTML files using the Markdown text-to-html system.

So far I'm very satisfied with what I've done for my own site. Of course, there's always room for improvement.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the iPhone is that you can only sync with a single computer. Yes, I know there are guides out there to allow you to sync with multiple computers, but it doesn't work quite as well as it could. You still need to set up you music library and subscriptions twice.

The iPhone does have "over the air" syncing for Podcasts and new music that you purchase, but it doesn't work very well. For example, when you "get new podcasts" you end up with two entries for the same podcast; one with the existing podcasts you've already downloaded and synced, and one for the new podcasts that you downloaded over the air. I've also found that the over the air downloading will sometimes download recent podcasts that are no longer on my iPhone because I've already listened to them and the iTunes sync has removed them.

Why doesn't Apple make this easier? You already have to sign into iTunes with your iTunes ID, so why don't they provide a means to sync based on your account?

If Apple can't figure out how to get the wireless syncing to work, the next best solution that I can see is that iTunes would sync your Podcasts, purchased content, and playlists up to the iTunes servers. This would enable you to sync from any computer, provided you login with your iTunes account first. You wouldn't be able to sync or download non-purchased content (such as content you rip from your CDs) but using this new syncing system, iTunes would simply no longer prompt to "replace your existing content" when syncing on another computer.

Obviously, this is a massive oversimplification of how it would work, and there are likely DRM or other copyright issues, but I wonder how many other people find themselves in a similar situation.

I have completed an overhaul of the CSS for my site, which includes adding support for mobile web browsers. The site is totally broken on Internet Explore right now (big surprise) but it's working on all other major browsers.

Since I don't currently have an Android, Blackberry, or other non-iPhone mobile device to test with, I'd love to hear what's broken or not working. Things are still a little broken on the iPhone, but it's getting there.

Want IntelliSense for an external JavaScript library inside of one of you Javascript files?

No problem, just add a reference path to the top of your file. For example, if you want IntelliSense for jQuery 1.4 (yes, I'm not using 1.5 yet), just add the following to the top of your JavaScript file:

/// <reference path="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.min.js" />

A complete list of CDNs can be found on the jQuery site. I typically use the Google one, but I choose to use the jQuery one above as it is more compact.

Xcode 4 has been released. The new integrated UI looks nice. I've never been a huge fan of the old floating window style UI, although it did work well for Metrowerks CodeWarrior.

Interestingly, Xcode 4 is now available from the Mac App Store for $4.99, although it's still free if you download it from the Apple Developer site. I suspect the only reason it's not free is to prevent a slew of people who shouldn't be downloading it from doing so and costing Apple a huge chunk of bandwidth. Fair enough I guess.

I really wish Microsoft would release the full version of their developer tools for free. Their "Express" versions are decent, but they are missing enough key features that it just doesn't work for me.

CodeBetter.com has posted a great article on combining agile development processes with test driven development. The post was primarily a rebuttal to a Hacker News thread, but overall it stands on it's own as a great read, and I really think they nailed the missconceptions about TDD.

http://codebetter.com/iancooper/2011/03/08/tddbdd-and-the-lean-startup/

Stackable USB plugs. This is genius. Every USB plug should work this way.

What do you call a Mac computer that's been re-purposed to run Windows only?

An abomination!

Ha, well at any rate, lately I've found myself using my Mac less and less. The work I've been doing for my master's degree has been mostly on Windows (the numerical analysis package I've been using is Windows-only), this website was written using Microsoft ASP.NET, and my job involves software design and development also using the Microsoft .NET platform. So while I still very much enjoy working on the Mac, and I'm excited for many of the new features coming in Mac OS X Lion, I just don't use it very much.

Hardware

My current Windows PC is a six year old ThinkPad. While it runs Windows 7 quite well (I've upgraded to 4GB of RAM and an Intel 120GB SSD) I'm really pushing it to it's limits. Meanwhile, I have a nearly unused but quite powerful Intel Xeon powered Mac Pro sitting under my desk. Sounds like the recipe for a project...

The Plan

However, rather than using Apple's Bootcamp software I decided I wanted to try and completely remove Mac OS and replace it with Windows. The main reason for doing this was to use the SSD in the Mac Pro as the Windows boot drive rather than as the Mac OS boot drive. To keep my Mac OS X installation around, I simply cloned the SSD in the Mac Pro to a regular SATA drive using Carbon Copy Cloner.

The lesson here being that once you go SSD, it's hard to go back. Really hard.

After doing some basic searching around the internet I found several promising guides, including this one.

The Results

It worked nearly perfectly. The only issue I had was that when I had to put the Mac OS X Snow Leopard disc in during the Windows installation process, there wasn't a way to eject the DVD drive, as the Mac Pro has a "hidden" disc drive. I ended up having to poke around inside the drive door with a pen until I found the button.

I've been slowly working on exporting and gathering old blog content for importing into my new publishing system. Unfortunately several years ago I lost a bunch of content from Blogger but I have managed to recover some older posts.

Anyway, it should start showing up soon.

In John Gruber's latest article, Dirty Percent, he says "The existing in-app purchasing system in iOS has a technical limit of 3,500 catalog items."

Is this really true, or is this some artificial limit that Apple imposes on third party apps? According the Apple, the iBooks app has "over 150,000 books". I haven't browsed enough through the iBooks app to confirm whether or not all 150,000+ of these books are available for purchase through the iBooks app, but I also don't see a way to purchase books outside of the app itself, so I assume they must all be available through the app.

If this is the case, then clearly there is a way to get around the 3,500 limit for in-app purchases.

Tiny Wings is a super fun little iPhone game. It's perfect for a long bus ride :) or if you have a few minutes standing in line. Download it on the App Store.

Welcome to the new site. This is a complete redesign of my site, with a new publishing system, a new look, and new content. You can find more information here.

I will be importing old content as I have time. You can also find some of it on the archive pages.

http://www.blog.whiletrue.com/vs-achieve.html

Hilarious, and true!

Word Lens by http://questvisual.com/

An amazing app for iPhone that translates signs and pictures in real-time using the camera.

NuPack Package Management System for .NET

It looks kind of like RPM for .NET development. Looks interesting.

Here are some updated instructions for getting your HP email account working on the iPhone.

1. Signup for MMS Personal Pay (check the HP intranet)
2. Get your manager to approve.
3. Purchase or borrow a Windows Mobile phone (no, really, you need to do this, I’m not joking).
4. If you’re borrowing a phone, you will need to do a factory reset (no, really, and good luck convincing the owner of the phone, I got really lucky with this).
5. Put your iPhone SIM card in the Windows Mobile phone.
6. Open the web browser on the Windows Mobile phone.
7. Navigate to http://remoteaccess.hp.com/ on the Windows Mobile phone.
8. Accept the SSL Certificate twice.
9. Login using your HP credentials.
10. At this point you should be redirected to the "MMS Installation" page.
11. Click "STEP 1 -- Install Root Cert"
12. Check the "Open file after download" checkbox.
13. Click "Yes"
14. You should see "Installing VSRoot.cab" and then "VSRoot.cab was successfully installed on your device".
15. Click "OK" in the top right of the screen.
16. You should be back in Internet Explorer now.
17. Click "STEP 2 -- Install ActiveSync Configuration file"
18. Check the "Open file after download" checkbox.
19. Click "Yes".
20. You should see "Installing Activesync######.cab"
21. When prompted, click "Yes".
22. You should see Activesync######.cab was successfully installed on your device".
23. You should then be prompted to login using your HP domain credentials.
24. Click "Finish" in Internet Explorer.
25. Launch ActiveSync (it might already be launched) and follow the prompts to enter your information.
26. Once this is complete, click "Sync". If all goes well, the Windows Mobile phone should now be working.
27. You should now get a confirmation email from Exchange indicating that the MMS service is configured for your email account.
28. If you've managed to get the Windows Mobile phone working with your account, you can now move your SIM card back to the iPhone, and setup your HP account on the iPhone.

Note that if you run into any security or permissions errors (as I did), you will need to contact the HP IT support help desk, send them your MMS account confirmation email, and then complete a manual setup process.

Reposted from the archive.

The future of computing as I see it centers around mobility. The computing device that I am waiting for is a phone-sized device with the power of a current desktop computer that I am able to carry with me everywhere I go. When I am mobile this device would function as my phone, web, and email client, utilizing a touch-screen interface, much like the interface provided by the iPhone. When I am at work or in my home office, this device would connect to a dock (or via wireless) and the user interaction would take place via more traditional keyboard, mouse, and monitor input and output. The device would need enough battery power to last an entire day, and enough storage space to contain every digital file I could ever need for situations when the device could not be online.

What makes this a desirable device for me is both the ubiquity and convenience it offers. Being able to take all of my documents, pictures, videos, and other parts of my digital life with me everywhere I go would be very convenient. Even more convenient would be the ability to connect to and utilize other hardware, such as keyboards, mice, larger displays, and so forth. Although we are nearly there today, the user experience just isn't quite there yet, and I find that their are still too many small inconveniences.

Although I think the device that I am describing is still a few years off, I suspect that I am not alone in this vision, and that it might actually be closer than I think.

While looking for a solution to a .NET Remoting issue I am working on, I found this article. It contains some interesting commentary related to the use of .NET Remoting.

Reposted from the archive.

We've recently begun looking seriously at the Microsoft .NET platform and, specifically ASP.NET technology. The vast majority of our clients use the Windows Platform, and getting PHP and MySQL running in their server environments is a pain, to say the least.

Licensing Costs

Microsoft currently offers a licensing program for "startup" businesses. Essentially, you are given a very cheap set of Microsoft licenses (I think it cost around $600 CDN) that covers MSDN, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft SQL Server Standard Edition. The license covers 3 years of development and production use, which should be more than sufficient for us to build up enough revenue to migrate to full Microsoft licenses.

Open vs. Closed

Up to now, our entire business has been strongly reliant on and associated with open source software. We've relied on various Linux distributions, Apache as a web service, the PHP language and tools as our development framework, and MySQL as our database management system.

In some ways, switching to the Microsoft technology stack represents a significant change for us. At the same time, our thinking has always been that we should use the best tool for the job. In our current situation, it's looking more and more like Microsoft .NET is the way to go.

Risk

Obviously there is some risk in this. Rather than focusing on new features and functionality, switching from PHP to ASP.NET will require a significant investment of time on our part. However, after significant deliberation, at this point we feel the level of risk justifies the potential rewards.

Impressions

The biggest challenge for us thus far has been acclimating to the ASP.NET style of development. Everything in .NET is event-driven, and the entire platform is very state-heavy. We're not yet sure what the pros and cons of this are, but it certainly requires changing how we do things.

In terms of issues, the only thing we're seeing so far is that there is a proliferation of frameworks, addons, and tools for the Microsoft .NET platform. This isn't really an issue in and of itself, but it does make it hard to determine what works, what doesn't, and where do you even start.

Dr. Tong-Chun Xu invited me to give a presentation this morning as a guest lecturer for his CMPT 320 Software Engineering class at the Kings University College.

The presentation focused on "aspects of software liability related to the software design process". I thought the lecture went well, and there were a lot of great questions.