May 11 2008
Saturday night science link (DNA Visualization)
Fantastic molecular visualization of how dna, rna and ribosomes work… where was this kind of stuff when I was going to school?
May 11 2008
Fantastic molecular visualization of how dna, rna and ribosomes work… where was this kind of stuff when I was going to school?
May 11 2008
I’m currently working on moving a web application from using some ad-hoc javascript and iframes to a full fledged ASP.NET Ajax implementation based around Telerik’s RadControls and a suite of our own controls. This is the third application we’ve given the ajax treatment to and each time we’ve taken a slightly different approach. Approach 1 … “Javas…
May 7 2008
In GEB Hofstadter mentions the complexity in building an isomorphism between two poems written in two languages. “In ordinary language, the task of translation is more straightforward, since to each word or phrase in the original language, there can usually be found a corresponding word or phrase in the new language. By contrast, in a poem of this…
May 5 2008
I just finished reading “The Dream Machine” and getting a very cool look at some early history of computing including the birth of Multics and it’s spin off and almost more interesting the birth of tools like email and ftp as a way to actually do something with the ARPANET that was being built. A great read for anyone interested in how we collectiv…
Apr 30 2008
My team is always looking for ways to improve on quality and one of the proposed ideas this year was to follow a model similar to large open source projects where basically every checkin is first proposed as a diff/patch and then vetted into the code base AFTER review. Our current setup is a single large subversion repository where our team (~14 d…
Apr 12 2008
So when I started this blog I wanted to make a point of not posting one angry rant after another. Essentially trying to follow the sage advice of bloggers like Scott Hansleman who says amongst other advice to: “stick to a topic”, “avoid politics”, “don’t blog bile” … Well I’ll break all those rules now by pointing out my extreme distaste for a seri…
Mar 30 2008
I have been grappling with the concept of a rewrite of a relatively successful software product that I’ve been involved with since start-up mode. In truth I was googling for compelling stories about why NOT to disappear for a year to do a complete re-engineering of your product (ala Netscape). Mostly because I’m concerned about the size of the eff…
Mar 30 2008
Depending on how I choose to count I am now dealing with my fifth or sixth post-secondary institution in my odyssey to finish my computer science degree. One thing that all of the schools I’ve dealt with have had in common is a slow and inflexible bureaucracy. Of course as a younger man I blamed a lot of my own failings on what I perceived then to …
Mar 29 2008
This is one of my favorite pictures of my daughter Maggie. She’s not usually this sweet ;-) but at least a few times a day we get a few moments when she’s active, smiley and interactive. I took this picture last weekend, so she’s about nine weeks old here. A lot of Maggie pictures tend to really distort her, and while often cute they don’t all equa…
Mar 28 2008
In the spirit of using the blog as a personal online searchable storage medium here is a playlist of some covers on youtube that I totally get a kick out of… most of these are songs I came across in the past year and am now just logging so I don’t forget them. Youtube is absolutely full of crap song covers by amateur artists in their basements. I t…