Google looks oddly unlike itself this morning. For an eighth of a second, I thought some evil software had highjacked the search bar in my browser.
This is very unusual for Google to roll out many visual changes at the same time.
Beth points to a great website that allows you to see who in your neighborhood donated to which presidential candidate.
Looking at my area I see 27 for Bush, 4 for Kerry, and a wide spread for the other democratic candidates.
Giving great interviews: Concrete things to do when speaking to an editor. (No, it's not about job interviews, though on thinking about it, most of the article applies to job interviews as well)
I'm looking at Prevayler ( a non relational Java persistence framework ). Along the way I've also run across the cute Skaringa XML serialization for Java, and the Preclipse Prevayler utilities for Eclipse.
I'm excited about the upcoming Rails framework for Ruby from David Hansson.
Browsing through the collection of fonts by Dieter Steffmann, I can't help but imagine websites or entire companies to go with each gorgeous typeface.
(found via ParaPundit)
Magpie - Good way to fetch RSS feeds to be used in PHP scripts.
PHP powered website on a CD - I've had no idea something like this existed, though I knew it would not be too hard to do.
In an attempt to keep the development project I'm working on from getting bogged down, I've setup milestones that are between four weeks and one week long. (This organization, like most others, does not have a history of finishing software on time. Feature creep is a big problem. In my young, naive thinking, I'm trying to give us deadlines often enough that we can are forced to just do the most valuable parts of things, and not begin endlessly wandering around adding features, and rediscussing already discussed things.)
We nailed the first milestone. We did exactly what we needed to, no extra fluff, exactly on time. But I'm a little behind on the second milestone. Today I realized the difference between the two. Last time I semi-accidently made daily milestones to reach our big milestone. This I did not.
With the micro-milestones(AKA Inch pebbles ), I could instantly see if we were getting behind schedule, and more importantly be working on important things and not go wandering into the bushes.
Monday morning, we are having inch pebbles again. Lesson One: Learned.
Note to self. If ever forced to do a project in java, look into Mavin and Clover.
Fat Cow is a fit-like way of testing web applications. I love it!
My little brother was laughing this morning at breakfast about a new virus he had received - the virus claimed to be from his email server administrators (which would be me). Mutated Monkeys also is also enjoying the fun.
Looks like bagle.j is at work. Hope my grandmother does not get receive it.
Confluence is a powerful commercial wiki engine. I love the textile-style text formating.
Gus Mueller mentions Jira, a snazzy commercial bug tracking system, which is available for use by open source projects without charge.
SharpReader - I wanted to let a windows using co-worker follow RSS feeds. After some bashing with Firefox extensions, we finaly tried SharpReader. So far, it's working well.
The weirder you are going to behave, the more normal you should look. . . When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
That one got a laugh. Back when we played paintball heavily, the more gothed-out, colored hair, or spikes a person had, the lower we pegged our initial estimate of their skill. Large, boring, middle age guys were regarded as the most likely to turn out dangerous.
Joel discusses running beta tests.
8. We have a policy of giving a free copy of the software to anyone who sends any feedback, positive, negative, whatever.
A while back I donated to the developer of an excellent donationware Mac app. Later the developer announced that the program was going to go to the next level, and become normal commercial software. I got into the closed beta of the new software, used the software often, gave feedback, and spotted several bugs. When the full version came out I got an email saying I could get a measly $4.50 off the purchase price. That was not what I was expecting. I still have not purchased the new version. (Go figure human nature, I get a discount coupon and get mad. )