Ken's Meme Deflector

Moving to Wordpress; Check your subscription

2006-09-04T06:55:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to switch this blog over to Wordpress for a while. Today I find myself with some time to do it.

So you may notice some disruptions if you visit the page today. They are temporary (I hope). Expect the site to be back up by the end of the day.

Now for the important stuff... if you subscribe to this blog's feed, check your subscription address. If it is http://www.kendyck.com/atom.xml, please update it to http://feeds.feedburner.com/kendyck. The old feed may not work after the transition.

Otherwise, I'll see you on the other side.

Whatever you do...

2006-07-03T18:58:00.000-04:00

Don't click on this link.

Administrivia: Claiming feed in Bloglines

2006-07-02T16:46:00.000-04:00

Nothing to see here. Just claiming my feed at Bloglines.

Review Canada's local businesses and events with Canocal

2006-06-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

I received an email from Jeff Thorne this afternoon that made my day for two reasons. First, he said he liked my other blog, Startup Fever, which is always nice to hear. Second, I learned from his signature, that Jeff is a founder with Canocal, a new web service that let's Canadians review businesses and events in their area; as they bill it, "Canada's Local Grapevine".

From what I've seen of the site so far, I'm impressed. Mind you, they only went live three weeks ago, so there isn't much content, yet. But the potential is there.

Michael Hiemstra and I have been talking on and off about starting up a website to cover events in the Waterloo area. It looks to me like Canocal could play an integral part in making that happen. Combined with Upcoming.org and Kitchener-Waterloo Craiglist, getting local is getting easier.

Technorati tags: canada, local, events, reviews

It's UNIX...

2006-06-21T19:31:00.000-04:00

for your hair:

Many hair professionals are surprised and praised at our high technology! You can be a professional with Unix. There is no more advanced hair dryer.

And you thought it was only an operating system.

Technorati tags: UNIX, hair, dryer

Sex offender spared prison because of height

2006-05-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

In an AP story, Scott Bauer writes of a sex offender spared prison because of his height:

A judge's decision to sentence a 5-foot-1 man to probation instead of prison for sexually assaulting a child has angered crime victim advocates who say the punishment sends the wrong message.

As if the sentence itself isn't disturbing enough, here's the really bizarre part:

But Joe Mangano, secretary of the National Organization of Short Statured Adults, agreed with the judge's assessment that Thompson would face dangers while in prison because of his height.

I'm assuming a short inmate would have a much more difficult time than a large inmate, said Mangano, who is five fee, four inches tall. It's good to see somebody looking out for someone who is a short person.

God forbid that prison should be difficult for anybody, especially men convicted of sexually assaulting 12-year-old girls.

Technorati tags: crime, justice, bizarre

Del.icio.us links in the feed

2006-05-25T20:44:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of del.icio.us. I use it to bookmark practically everything that I find interesting on the web.

Del.icio.us has what they call a "thingy" that supposedly can be used to post your latest bookmarks to your blog every day. Such a tool would save me some time posting, this being a blog that obstensibly links to interesting stuff around the web. Sadly, I haven't been able to get it to work with Blogger.

Today I noticed that Feedburner, who serves the feed for this site, has a service that will post a daily digest of one's latest del.icio.us bookmarks interleaved with the rest of one's feed. I signed up for it, immediately.

The digest won't appear on this website, only in the feed, so if you'd like to see what I've been reading (apparently I am that full of myself), you'll need to subscribe to the feed with an aggregator of some kind, like Bloglines.

We Test the Tips

2006-05-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

In an article for edmunds.com, Philip Reed and Mike Hudson ask What really saves gas? And how much?:

With gas prices so high, the media is awash with lists of gas-saving tips. Well how's this for a tip? If you listen to us, you can see hybrid-type savings without having to buy a new car.

By changing your driving habits you can improve fuel economy up to 37 percent right away (depending on how you drive). Combine several tips and perform routine maintenance and you will save real dollars, not just pennies.

It's nice to see their results coincide with my own.

Technorati tags: gasoline, consumption, economics, driving, experiment

Eclipse's find-a-scapegoat feature

2006-05-08T19:45:00.000-04:00

In the Eclipse Workbench User Guide is a section entitled, Finding out who to blame with Annotate command. It begins:

Let's say you have found a bug on line 65 of a file and you don't understand the code. Who do you ask, or blame, for the change?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

The scenario is just so absurd that it's hard not to chuckle. Can't you just see some weasely geek in a cubicle somewhere desperately searching for somebody, anybody on whom to pin the blame for the bugs in the software?

It's sad for very same reason.

Technorati tags: eclipse, blame, java, programming, corporate

Tories introduce new anti-crime bills

2006-05-04T19:36:00.000-04:00

With the two new "anti-crime" bills introduced today, one of which would impose mandatory minimum sentences on violent offenders, the Conservative government is sending a clear message: We don't trust our judges!

Apparently Canada's courts are so filled with incompetent and corrupt judges that the government can no longer trust their discretion when it comes to sentencing criminals.

Well, hurrah for the Conservatives! It's about time somebody taught those nasty judges a lesson. For too long have they been terrorizing our great country with their leniency. All those years that our judges have worked in criminal law has surely softened their hearts to the point where they can't possibly be expected to mete out the justice that violent crimes deserve.

With bills like these, we can take those bungling judges out of the loop once an for all. Important decisions like sentencing will be made up-front, as they should be, before the facts of a case are ever heard.

Kudos to Steven Harper, Justice Minister Vic Toews, and the new Conservative government for finally getting tough on the real crime problem: judges.

Technorati tags: crime, justice, canada, bill, court

Preparing to Ride to Work

2006-04-24T20:10:00.000-04:00

My bicycle has been hanging by it's wheels from a couple of hooks in the ceiling of our garage since we moved into our current house almost two years ago. Before that, it was parked in the garage of our former house. All told, it's been five years since I last rode it regularly.

That's about to change, I picked up my bike from King Street Cycles after work, today. I took it in on Saturday for a tune up. That's a week faster than the guys down the street could get it done, even if it was $10 more ($50 total). Nice work, too, as far as I can tell.

So it looks like I can start riding to work now. Down the new Westmount extension; should be a nice ride. It'll be a nice change from my PS2 DDR Extreme workouts.

Technorati tags: bicycle, waterloo

Britney Spears Guide to Semiconductor Physics

2006-04-24T19:42:00.000-04:00

Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics:

It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics. Not content with just singing and acting, in the following pages, she will guide you in the fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear her super music in a digital format.

Technorati tags: britney, spears, semiconductor, physics

Mark Melvin is in the office

2006-04-22T15:39:00.000-04:00

Colleague and friend, Mark Melvin, is annoyed that the first hit for his name on Google is an "out of office" email that was automatically sent to one of Eclipse's mailing lists while he was, well, out of the office.

He joked that his new mission in life is to get that "out of office" off the first page.

I suggested he start a blog. Until then, I hope this helps.

SCJP... Kathy Sierra... Blogs... Rah!

2006-04-22T14:17:00.000-04:00

I've never cared much for the Java programming language. Nonetheless, I do most of my programming in these days in it, and as long as we're basing our IDE on Eclipse, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. So I might as well broaden my understanding of it.

That's my official rationale for working toward the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) designation, anyway. What it really boils down to, though, is that as a "human resource" at a publicly-traded multinational corporation I am encouraged to be "developed" in measurable ways; a certificate being the classic corporate sign of personal development.

I, of course, have had the opportunity to pursue this designation for years, but I never bothered. The prospect of studying a programming language that I don't care for from some bland official study guide struck me as masochistic, if not suicidal.

But this year, as I purused the field of training programs and certificates, I discovered that the standard study guide, which I expected to be a mediocre compilation of dry, witless docuspeak from a committe of interns and Sun programmers who are no longer (or perhaps never were) trusted to write real code, is in fact co-authored by the lively and witful author of the Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra. This was a scale-tipping discovery for me. I may be studying something that I'm not especially passionate about, but at least I can expect the learning to be interesting.

What's the point? I would never have persued an SCJP certificate if I wasn't already familiar with Kathy Sierra's blog. Hugh MacLeod is absolutely right when he writes, blogs are good for making things happen indirectly.

Rah! Rah! Blogs! And all that.

How much do car brakes contribute to global warming?

2006-04-17T20:19:00.000-04:00

Unless you drive a hybrid with regenerative braking, almost all the kinetic energy that comes from burning gasoline is dissipated as heat when you apply the brakes to stop your car. It would be interesting to measure just how much heat is added to our atmosphere on a daily basis just from people stopping their cars.

I could come up with back-of-the-envelope number if I knew how many brake pads and shoes are sold worldwide each day, and on average how much braking energy each pad or shoe contained. Anybody have a ballpark number on either of those?

Update (2006-04-18): It occurred to me after I made this post that most of the energy that comes from burning gas to move a car eventually is dissipated as heat: through the engine block; through the exhaust; from the breakpads; from the stereo; etc. Focusing on just the braking part of it is rather pointless, so forget it.

Testing the Drive Slow Theory

2006-04-17T19:36:00.000-04:00

I went to visit my parents over the Easter weekend. They live in Leamington, about a three hour drive from Waterloo.

With that much driving ahead of me for the weekend, I decided I'd test the theory that driving slow saves gas with a little experiment.

The method:

Fill up at the FlyingJ in London.
Drive to Leamington, driving at or below the speed limit for the entire trip, drafting behind tractor-trailers when convenient.
Fill up again in Leamington, noting how much fuel is required.
Eat your fill of food: veal, pasta, salad, turkey, potatoes, farmer sausage, wine, ham, gooseberry pie, etc.
Drive back to the FlyingJ in London, driving 10km/h above the speed limit
Fill up, again noting how much fuel has been added

Observations and measurements:

Fill up in Leamington: 12.396L
Fill up at Flying J: 15.976L
Weight before the Easter weekend: 172lbs
Weight after: 175lbs

Calculations:

Difference in gas consumption: 15.976L - 12.396L = 3.58L
Percentage increase: 3.58L / 12.396L = 28.89%
Weight gained over weekend: 175lbs - 172lbs = 3lbs

Conclusions: I used 28.89% more gas driving 10km/h above the speed limit back to the Flying J than I did driving slowly to Leamington. I'm assuming that the difference was a result of driving slower; not from gaining weight for the faster portion of the trip.

Distraction of the day

2006-04-12T20:04:00.000-04:00

I meant to make some posts yesterday; that is, before I became totally engrossed in
flOw.

Simply addictive.

Technorati tags: games, flash, wonderful, addictive, engrossing

Save on Gas. Drive the Speed Limit

2006-04-10T19:22:00.000-04:00

I stopped at the gas station on the way home from work today. With gas prices at $1.034/L, the $40 worth that I purchased barely filled 3/4 of my tank. Being the cheap bastard that I am, I was immediately reminded of an article I recently came across on Treehugger that recommends conserving gas by driving the speed limit. It's good advice but, as an engineer, I found their expanation somewhat lacking. So here is my best attempt at explaining, in the language of high-school physics, why driving slower uses less gas.

There are two parts of driving that are worth considering. First, how much energy is spent getting a vehicle up to speed, and second, how much is used to sustain that speed.

Let's consider the first: accelerating to full speed. If you remember from your high school physics classes, the kinetic energy of a moving object is proportional to the square of its velocity, or e=mv²/2. What this means is that to go twice as fast requires four times as much energy. For example, to accelerate from 0-100km/h requires in your car requires four times as much energy, and therefore four times as much gasoline, as accelerating from 0-50km/h.

And that's just the energy to get up to speed. In a frictionless and air-resistanceless world, you wouldn't need any more energy, the car would just coast forever. But we don't live in such a world, which brings us to the second point, sustaining the velocity.

Air resistance and internal friction increase propotionally with the speed that you drive. If you drive twice as fast, the air pushes twice as hard against you. This shouldn't come as a shock to anybody who has held their hand out the window of a moving vehicle. So how does that translate into fuel consumption?

If you followed the link to the Treehugger article, you'd already know that fuel consumption is proportional to the speed you drive. But how? Think back again to your high school physics class: work is equal to force times distance, or w=fd. You'll also remember that work and energy are the same thing. So if you drive faster, you'll have to apply a force against a higher air resistance. Over the same distance, driving faster will require more work, which is energy, which is gasoline, which is dollars at the gas station. Driving twice as fast requires twice as much gasoline over the same distance.

So there you have the basic physics of how it's cheaper to drive the speed limit (or less) from a cheap bastard of an engineer.

Spray paint your chips

2006-04-10T19:18:00.000-04:00

Ars Technica is reporting on a new technique that researchers at Epson have developed to manufacture semiconductors. They liken it to spray painting chips:

Their approach is to use either a "spray painting" technique or ink jet deposition to grow features. They have designed an organo-silicon molecule, which readily dissolves in common solvents. This molecule is then deposited by either a spraying or ink jet technique on a silicon substrate to form the semiconductor features. The whole wafer is then heated causing the organic molecules to decompose and form amorphous silicon. The amorphous silicon can then be converted to crystalline silicon by irradiation with standard UV lasers. So far, researchers have managed to demonstrate a proof-of-concept by growing thin film transistors used for controlling the pixels on LCD displays.

They are currently able to produce chips at feature size of 250nm. Not bad for a first shot. And that number is bound to come down with more research. It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

Technorati tags: silicon, semiconductor, process, manufacturing

I Suck at Texas Hold'em

2006-04-09T13:14:00.000-04:00

On Friday night, Mandy's office held a small poker tournament. Considering what life lessons Steve Pavlina learned from playing poker and blackjack, I figured I'd give it a try.

I didn't expect to do very well, despite skipping my Friday workout to practice at home on our PS2 with World Championship Poker, but I was shocked a just how hard I sucked at it. I finished 20th or 21st out of 24.

So being the kind of person who just can't stand to suck at something that rests so firmly on one's mathematical and analytical abilities, and knowing that assessing risks and capitalizing on opportunities is something that I'll need to learn if I'm ever going to start a company, I've downloaded the PokerStars.net client to get some more practice.

We'll see if it helps any at the next tournament.

Aside: Something tells me that gambling is one of the two things Dave Pollard chose to leave off his list things to do when you're blue.

Technorati tags: poker, texas, holdem, risk, opportunity

Why is home ownership so popular?

2006-04-08T14:48:00.000-04:00

I was out dethatching the front yard this morning, taking advantage of the unusually sunny weather that has come our way, and, as is often the case when I'm left alone with my thoughts and a witless task, my mind wandered to the obvious place, wondering why on earth I ever agreed to buy this house that consumes so much of my time and energy.

When you consider all the costs of owning a house (taxes, interest on a mortgage, gas, electricity, renovations, maintenance, time, etc), there's no way that it could possibly be a better investment than renting an apartment and investing the difference in mutual funds. It's like having a second job, except instead of being paid to work, you pay to do it. So why do so many people own houses?

The answer is obvious to anybody whose ever given a few moments of consideration: control.

In his talk at EclipseCon, Joel Spolsky touched on Martin E. P. Seligman's theory of learned helplessness, which as I undertstand it states that depression is a result of a lack of control over one's environment. When you feel that you can't influence the world around you, you tend to feel depressed.

In today's society, what better way of exerting control over your environment is there than owning a house? Unlike a rented apartment, you can paint the walls whatever colour you like; plant a garden if you have the thumb for it, or as in my case, rip one out because you haven't; change the floors; fill it with furniture; etc. Apparently, for most people that sense of control is worth all the afternoons mowing lawns; raking leaves; shoveling driveways; wiring basements; etc.

Thoreau, when he left Concord for a simple life in a hand-built shed on Walden pond, noted that "Men do not own their homes, but rather the homes own the men." Maybe so, but it seems to be a type of slavery most are willing settle for.

Eating my words on William Gibson's Pattern Recognition

2006-04-08T14:46:00.000-04:00

Last week, I beat up William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, calling it "terribly contrived" story, and suggested that it was a mediocre novel.

I've since finished reading it and I have to say I've had a change of heart. In all fairness, it finishes better than I expected. By the time I reached the end, I'd even say that I was, gasp, enjoying it.

I still wouldn't consider it to be a great novel, but it was certainly better than mediocre, and not at all deserving of my initial comments.

Technorati tags: william, gibson, pattern, recognition, books

Upcoming.org: Kitchener-Waterloo

2006-04-06T19:33:00.000-04:00

Upcoming.org is:

a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you're attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog.

They even have a listing for Kitchener-Waterloo.

Technorati tags: upcoming, kitchener, waterloo, events

Power hikes could hit 16 per cent: analyst

2006-04-03T19:47:00.000-04:00

CBC Toronto is reporting that power hikes could hit 16%:

An energy expert is predicting an electricity rate increase of up to 16 per cent per cent May 1, though the bump in price will vary across the province.

Tom Adams from Energy Probe said rates will increase by at least five per cent to allow the province to recover money it lost because last year because [sic] the wholesale or commodity price of electricity was higher than expected.

No need to worry, though. Just inform your boss that your hourly rates will increase at least five percent to allow you to recover money you lost because last year the wholesale price of beer was higher than expected.

Technorati tags: electricity, toronto, energy

Ottawa stops funding One Tonne Challenge

2006-04-03T19:36:00.000-04:00

Martin Mittelstaedt reports for the Globe and Mail that Ottawa has stopped funding the One Tonne Challenge:

The new Conservative government in Ottawa has abruptly stopped funding groups across the country that have been promoting the One Tonne Challenge, the quirky program to persuade Canadians to do their bit to help the environment by cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

Reportedly, the Conservatives have proposed a new program known as POETWIMP (Piss On Everything; The World Is My Pooper).

Tip of the hat to Treehugger.

Technorati tags: environment, canada, greenhouse, global, warming

Geek links of the day: foldl and foldr

2006-04-03T19:25:00.000-04:00

As seen on Lambda the Ultimate: foldl and foldr.

Technorati tags: programming, fold, applicative, functional

Soil health crisis threatens Africa's food supply

2006-03-31T19:15:00.000-05:00

Roxanne Khamsi reports for New Scientist of Africa's soil health crisis:

Population pressures combined with limited access to fertilisers threaten the future of farming in Africa, a new study warns. The report highlights the continent’s soil health crisis, revealing that three-quarters of its farmlands are severely degraded.

Technorati tags: africa, soil, agriculture, sustainability

Worldmapper

2006-03-30T19:14:00.000-05:00

Worldmapper:

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

Shown above is the map of total elderly. Check out the size of USA to, say, sub-Saharan Africa. Illuminating.

Tip of the hat to Stephen J. Dubner of the Freakonomics blog.

Free Hands Drywall Cleats

2006-03-29T19:56:00.000-05:00

Malcolm MacDonald submitted some Free Hands drywall cleats to Cool Tools:

After renting a 100 lb drywall lift for a weekend for $60 to get the largest ceiling panels positioned, I found Free Hands on the internet. They are simple plastic cleats which you screw into the studs or joists to provide a ledge to support an edge of the drywall while you position and screw it in place.

Being at about the same point in our basement renovation, I think I might just have to pick up some of these.

Technorati tags: drywall, construction, basement, cleats, renovation

Riverworks Books makes mediocre books better

2006-03-28T19:54:00.000-05:00

I'm about halfway through reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and I'm having a tough time getting into it. The story so far seems terribly contrived: a woman tries to track down the anonymous creator of a series of video segments that appear from nowhere on the internet. What makes it even more difficult is Gibson's writing style. It seems as though he's trying too hard to impress his readers with his writing ability, rather than just telling the story. I really hope it gets better, but I'm not expecting much.

Anyways, that the book is a dud doesn't annoy me as much as it might if I'd paid the regular price for it at Amazon or Chapters. As it is, I purchased it at the Riverworks Book Market in St. Jacobs for $5.

Almost all their books are $5. It's great!

They aren't always the latest books. And they haven't got as large a selection as the big chains. But for $5 a book -- and those are new books -- I can afford to pick up a few duds.

Riverworks has quickly become one of my favourite local shops. If you are in the area, I definitely recommend it.

Andrew Tanenbaum talks about MINIX 3 at UW

2006-03-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

Michael Hiemstra tipped me off about the latest in the distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Waterloo: a talk by Andrew Tanenbaum on MINIX 3. Michael was unfortunately not able to make it, so I thought I'd write him a brief summary.

He didn't veer much from what you can find on MINIX 3 website.

He began by saying that the current crop of popular operating systems (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc) is miserably unreliable. And it's no wonder. Their kernels contain millions of lines of source code, which, if we are to believe most studies, contain bugs at a rate of about 6-16 per thousand lines of code. What's more, the buggiest part of these operating systems, the hardware drivers, operate at the kernel level, leading any bug in any driver to crash the entire system. He likened this design to an aircraft carrier where every time a toilet backs up, it launches some missiles.

MINIX aims to be a reliable operating system. It accomplishes this by having a very small kernel (~4000 lines of code) whose primary responsibility is interprocess communication. Drivers run as user processes so that when they crash, they don't bring down the entire system. In fact, another service (called the reincarnation service) monitors all the drivers and restarts any that have crashed or no longer respond to pings.

It is a layered operating system. Applications utilize services that utilize drivers that utilize the kernel. Communication between the various layers is conducted via fixed-length messages. Because the messages are fixed length and because data and instructions are kept separate in the runtime image, the potential for buffer overflow vulnerabilities is greatly reduced.

He put up some performance benchmarks that show that by running the drivers in user space, the system is slightly slower than the traditional monolithic kernel approach, but not enough to keep any reasonable person from using it (~12% on average), especially given the higher reliability.

It was an entertaining talk, and well worth the trip. They even handed out bootable CDs with MINIX on it. It's a shame Michael couldn't make it. I think he would have enjoyed it.

Ontario first to subsidize solar electric power

2006-03-27T20:18:00.000-05:00

Last week's news... Ontario first to subsidize solar electric power:

Ontario has become Canada's first province to offer cash incentives for homeowners or businesses that install solar electric power generators.

Technorati tags: energy, ontario, solar, wind, electricity

Back from EclipseCon

2006-03-27T19:31:00.000-05:00

I returned from my trip to Santa Clara on Friday night.

If you are at all curious, our long talk at EclipseCon went fairly well. It was scheduled in the second last slot of the last day of the convention, at which point nobody is especially energetic, so it was hard to tell from the smattering of applause at the end whether anybody actually got anything out of it. In any event, they weren't energetic enough to throw any rotten produce, so I assume it went well.

We even made the photos page (here and here). That's me on the right.

EclipseCon: Scripting Eclipse Panel

2006-03-22T10:30:00.000-05:00

Ed Burnette has nice transcript of the panel that I moderated yesterday.

It was a fun panel... mostly because I hardly had to do anything. Aside from a couple of primer questions, I got to sit back and watch a very enthusiastic audience take the discussion where it wanted to go.

That's probably a good thing as I've started to realize that my speaking skills suck pretty hard.

Note to self: join a Toastmasters club when you get back home.

Things That Make Us Smart

2006-03-16T19:07:00.000-05:00

Don Norman:

The power of the unaided mind is greatly exaggerated. It is "things" that make us smart, the cognitive artifacts that allow human beings to overcome the limitations of human memory and conscious reasoning.

And of all the artifacts that have aided cognition, the most important is the development of writing, or more properly, of notational systems: number systems, writing, calendars, notational systems for mathematics, engineering, music and dance. So when I was asked by Forbes to help them "rank the 20 tools which have had the biggest impact on human civilization," I was ready.

"Writing," I proclaimed.

I would have to think that language has to be up there, too, although it's obviously not an artifact.

Technorati tags: writing, artifacts, cognition

Survey: 3 Out of 4 Americans Fault Federal Leadership on Global Warming & Alternative Energy

2006-03-16T19:01:00.000-05:00

The Civil Society Institute and 40mpg.org are reporting the results of their survey:

With concerns up sharply about global warming, Americans of all political beliefs are disgruntled about weak federal leadership on global warming and energy issues, while lining up solidly behind the growing number of state and local efforts to rein in climate change problems and to tap alternative fuel sources, according to a major new Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) national survey released today by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI) and 40mpg.org, which is a project of the CSI think tank.

Tip of the hat to Alternative Source.

Technorati tags: alternative, energy, global, warming, dubbya

Amazon S3: Storage on the Web

2006-03-15T19:26:00.000-05:00

This looks useful, Amazon S3:

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Tip of the hat to TechCrunch

Technorati tags: amazon, storage, web

Philips develops a woodstove that saves lives and preserves energy resources

2006-03-15T19:19:00.000-05:00

Philips develops a woodstove that saves lives and preserves energy resources:

Philips Research today announced the end of successful trials of a woodstove for cooking in communities currently relying on less efficient means. The stove cuts the smoke and toxic emissions which are claimed to cause 1.6 million deaths a year. It also burns more efficiently to reduce the load on the existing energy supply chain, without involving dependence on non-renewable energy sources. The stove could benefit up to 300 million families in the world’s poorest regions.

Technorati tags: wood, stove, philips, energy, conservation

Yes, it's been the warmest Canadian winter on record

2006-03-14T19:15:00.000-05:00

It may surprise readers from outside of Canada that plenty of Canadians complain about the cold winters. It annoys me, especially this winter, which, according to CBC News, has been the warmest Canadian winter on record:

It isn't final proof that the world is heating up, but federal climatologists say this has been the warmest Canadian winter since nationwide record-keeping began in 1948.

Technorati tags: climate, weather, winter, warming, canada

U.S. Senator puts forward motion to censure Bush

2006-03-14T19:10:00.000-05:00

CBC News is reporting that Senator Russell Feingold has put forward a resolution to censure Bush:

The move is considered largely symbolic since the Senate is controlled by the Republicans and the motion has no chance of passing.

It's nice to see those Republicans covering for each other. Doesn't it just give you a warm fuzzy?

Technorati tags: usa, politics, dubbya, censure

Dennett and Swinburne Debate

2006-03-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

Daniel Dennett and Richard Swinburne debate the existence of God.

Technorati tags: religion, philosophy, science, god, theism, atheism

Tour de Babel

2006-03-13T19:39:00.000-05:00

Steve Yegge takes us on a Tour de Babel:

My whirlwind tour will cover C, C , Lisp, Java, Perl, (all languages we use at Amazon), Ruby (which I just plain like), and Python, which is in there because — well, no sense getting ahead of ourselves, now.

Technorati tags: programming, c, c , lisp, java, perl, ruby, python

Iran rejects Moscow's nuclear proposal

2006-03-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

The CBC is reporting that Iran has rejected Moscow's nuclear proposal:

Iran has ruled out a proposal to move its uranium enrichment program to Russia, spurring complaints that it was wrecking any chance of a compromise to end the standoff over its nuclear program.

There's got to be more to the story than the CBC has been able to dig up. I wonder what it is.

Technorati tags: nuclear, energy, iran, russia, war

One Step Closer to Cheap Hydrogen Fuel

2006-03-12T10:23:00.000-05:00

Dave Talbot, for MIT Technology Review, reports that GE is one step closer to cheap hydrogen fuel:

Now researchers at GE say they've come up with a prototype version of an easy-to-manufacture apparatus that they believe could lead to a commercial machine able to produce hydrogen via electrolysis for about $3 per kilogram -- a quantity roughly comparable to a gallon of gasoline -- down from today's $8 per kilogram. That could make it economically practical for future fuel-cell vehicles that run on hydrogen.

Tip of the hat to John Laumer at Treehugger.

Technorati tags: energy, hydrogen, fuel, cell, ge

Cheryl Rofer on Peak Oil

2006-03-10T19:54:00.000-05:00

Cheryl Rofer on peak oil: I'd like to give an overview here of why I think peak oil is overhyped.

Technorati tags: peak, oil, hype

High illness rate near oilsands worrisome, says Alberta health official

2006-03-10T19:44:00.000-05:00

The CBC reports on some troubling news out of Alberta troubling news out of Alberta:

A medical examiner in Alberta wants to know why there are reports of serious illnesses, including a rare cancer, in a small First Nations community near the province's oilsands.

Technorati tags: canada, alberta, oil, sands, cancer

Opposition questions Harper's ethics

2006-03-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

From the how-the-tables-have-turned files, the CBC is reporting that the opposition questions Harper's ethics:

Opposition MPs blasted Stephen Harper on Thursday for his refusal to co-operate with the federal ethics commissioner, with one MP threatening to hold the prime minister in contempt.

Jack Layton sums up the situation nicely:

On an election that was supposed to be about ethical behaviour, the first thing we have is an effort to try and fire somebody who is looking into the ethical behaviour of the prime minister

I'm always amazed that voters are so eager to fall for promises of accountability from politicians on the campaign trail. It's a promise that they just can't keep; not because politicians are in any way more evil than the rest of us, but merely because they are under far more scrutiny than most of us.

Of course, Harper should be smarter than to get into the hole that he's now dug himself into. Not co-operating with an ethics commisioners investigation is just plain stupid.

Technorati tags: canada, politics, harper

Consensus Web Filters

2006-03-10T19:17:00.000-05:00

Kevin Kelly has a nice round up of consensus web filters:

Like a lot of people, I find that the web is becoming my main source of news. Some of the sites I read are published by individuals, but I find the most informative sites are those published by groups of writers/editors/correspondents, including those put out by Main Steam Media (MSM). However for the past three months my main source of "what's new" has been a new breed of website that collaboratively votes on the best links.

Technorati tags: concensus, web, filters

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival?

2006-03-09T19:42:00.000-05:00

According to an article by Bob Holmes for New Scientist, a new study by Terry Hunt finds that humans decimated Easter Island on arrival:

Archaeologists had thought that humans first arrived at the island around 800 AD, based on radiocarbon dating of kitchen scraps and cooking fires. Since the first signs of severe deforestation do not appear until the 13th century, this suggests the Easter Islanders lived several centuries without serious impact on their environment.

Not so, says Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hunt and Carl Lipo of California State University at Long Beach, US, radiocarbon-dated charcoal from the earliest human traces in a new excavation on the island. The site, Anakena, is Easter Island's only sandy beach and has long been regarded as the likeliest spot for first colonists to settle. To their surprise, the wood dated no earlier than 1200 AD – several hundred years more recent than they had expected.

Technorati tags: civilization, ecology, easter, island, sustainability

No future for fusion power, says top scientist

2006-03-09T19:35:00.000-05:00

David L Chandler reports for New Scientist that there is no future for fusion power:

Nuclear fusion will never be a practical source of electrical power, argues a prominent scientist in the journal Science.

Even nuclear fusion’s staunchest advocates admit a power-producing fusion plant is still decades away at best, despite forty years of hard work and well over $20 billion spent on the research. But the new paper, personally backed by the journal’s editor, issues a strong challenge to the entire fusion programme, arguing that the whole massive endeavour is never likely to lead to anything practical or useful.

Now that that's settled, we can get all those nuclear physicists working on some of the really important problems, like creating a variety of broccoli that tastes like chocolate.

Technorati tags: nuclear, energy, fusion

Why I Hate Frameworks

2006-03-09T19:09:00.000-05:00

Benji Smith explains why he hate frameworks in a wonderfully entertaining rant:

I'm currently in the planning stages of building a hosted Java web application (yes, it has to be Java, for a variety of reasons that I don't feel like going into right now). In the process, I'm evaluating a bunch of J2EE portlet-enabled JSR-compliant MVC role-based CMS web service application container frameworks.

And after spending dozens of hours reading through feature lists and documentation, I'm ready to gouge out my eyes.

Technorati tags: programming, frameworks, software

The Near Future for Nuclear Power

2006-02-28T20:13:00.000-05:00

Physics Today reports that nuclear energy is making a comeback:

Some two dozen power plants are scheduled to be built or refurbished during the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. In the US and the UK, governmental preparations are under way that may lead to 15 new reactor orders by 2007.

Technorati tags: nuclear, energy, electricity, future

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

2006-02-28T20:08:00.000-05:00

Megan Quinn writes of how Cuba survived peak oil:

At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers' collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant. Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba's oil supply was cut in half, but contrary to the predictions of many peak oil theorists, Cubans have been able to cope.

It hasn't been easy for them — the average Cuban, for example, has lost 30 pounds since the sudden decline in their oil supply — but it has been survivable, with all the nation's social and political structures remaining intact.

Technorati tags: peak, oil, cuba, permaculture

Check out PBwiki

2006-02-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

I've been using PBwiki since shortly after they first made it available. It's one of the few Web2.0 applications that I've found valuable enough to use regularly.

They offer a free, personal, password-protected wiki. A wiki is about the easiest way to create and edit a collection of web pages. Anybody who has used a wiki before has some idea of how versatile they can be. I use mine to collect my thoughts and store valuable information, like gift ideas for my wife and family, my favourite quotes from the books that I read, and maintenance logs on our lawn mower.

Anyways, I think it's wonderful service and well worth looking at if you are at all interested in capturing your thoughts for later.

Disclosure: PBwiki is running a promotion where they will double the amount of storage space allotted to any of their users who post a link to their service. That I find the offer appealing should, I hope, indicate what I think of their service.

Has peak oil come and gone?

2006-02-13T19:54:00.000-05:00

Kenneth S. Deffeyes claims that we've hit peak oil production:

In the January 2004 Current Events on this web site, I predicted that world oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005. In hindsight, that prediction was in error by three weeks. An update using the 2005 data shows that we passed the peak on December 16, 2005.

Among his other claims:

Since we have passed the peak without initiating major corrective measures, we now have to rely primarily on methods that we have already engineered. Long-term research and development projects, no matter how noble their objectives, have to take a back seat while we deal with the short-term problems. Long-term examples in the proposed 2007 US budget (Feb. 9, 2006 New York Times page A-18) include a 65 percent increase in the programs to produce ethanol from corn, a 25.8 percent increase for developing hydrogen fuel cell cars, and a 78.5 percent increase in spending on solar energy research. The Times reports that solar energy today supplies one percent of US electricity; the hope is to double that to 2 percent by the year 2025. By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age.

Tastes best with a grain of salt. I'm still hopeful for soft landing.

Technorati tags: peak, oil, energy

This site is 44% evil

2006-02-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

According to the Gematriculator this site is 44% evil.

I'm not sure where I picked up all this evil. It isn't from Johnnie Moore, or Larry Borsato, or even the new Conservative government. Maybe I picked it up from Work.

Early Retirement

2006-02-09T19:53:00.000-05:00

Philip Greenspun writes about early retirement. Although I'm not in any position to be considering it, I found it an entertaining read:

Suppose that you are retired. At this point, your one job is the pursuit of happiness. If you are not happy, therefore you are a failure at your job and in your life. But how can you be happy 24/7? Perhaps if you moved into a hotel in Orlando and went to Disneyworld every day you would be pretty happy. But if you retain the responsibilities of home- and car-ownership, much of your life will continue to be mundane, boring, or unpleasant. Will you wear a big smile on your face as you change the lightbulbs in the hall? Will you be delighted paying bills or begging the plumber to come over and fix the shower? Will you be ecstatic when it comes time to get your car inspected?

Technorati tags: retirement, early

Only eight years of natural gas left in Canada?

2006-02-08T19:46:00.000-05:00

Dan Crawford reports for the Republic, "Vancouver's opinionated newspaper," from a talk by Dave Hughes of Natural Resources Canada that there is only eight years of natural gas left in Canada:

Consumption trends and patterns were also explored. In every case, the phenomenal growth rates in our economy show a complete disconnect with the reality of the resources currently supporting them. Canada, for example, has 8.1 years left in natural gas reserves.

This isn't entirely correct.

According to the latest annual review (pdf), as of January, 2004, there were 68 Trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves, 171 Tcf of discovered resources, and 366 Tcf of undiscovered resources (check out the 2000 review for detailed definitions of these terms). In 2004, 5.9 Tcf were extracted.

The prediction of 8.1 years is quite obviously based on proven reserves.

If you include discovered reserves — the ones that are drilled and known with certaintly, but are too far from existing pipelines to economically extract currently — that number more than triples. Once you add to that the undiscovered reserves — known to contain gas, but not yet drilled — the number grows much larger.

So we have more than 8 years before we're forced to replace our furnaces and water heaters with something else, although it's easy to point out compelling reasons to switch sooner.

Technorati tags: natural gas, energy, resources, canada

When the oil runs out

2006-02-08T19:04:00.000-05:00

When I opened the latest Maclean's magazine yesterday, I was surprised to see this article by Jonathon Gatehouse, entitled When the oil runs out:

The Four Horsemen have upgraded to SUVs. Not the hybrid ones either, but those gas-guzzling, bunny-crushing behemoths that Arnold Schwarzenegger favours. In oil-rich Babylon, whores are so thick on the ground that it's a little hard to pick just one. Although everyone can agree on what the Antichrist is up to -- running a multinational petroleum company. Yes, the End is nigh, if you believe the consensus that has been brewing in the halls of academe and the non-fiction aisle at the local bookstore. Starting in 2010, no later than 2020 or 2030, according to the latest vision of secular apocalypse, global oil supplies will peak, and the world will begin to unravel at the seams.

It seems that the idea of peak oil is making it into the mainstream, and that's a good thing. The more awareness there is of the issue, the greater the chance that we will prepare for a world with expensive oil, then for a world without it. I believe that a soft landing is possible, but only if we face it, and plan for it.

Technorati tags: oil, peak, canada

The New Reality of Oil Prices

2006-02-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

Stanley Reed reports for BusinessWeek on the new reality of oil prices:

Everyone knows it: oil prices have gone through the roof. The price of benchmark crude rose 11% this year alone, to about $67 per barrel, before pulling back a little. But many in the industry have always figured that prices would sooner or later simmer down. One indication: Even when short-term prices soared to alarming levels, the futures market had until recently valued oil much more modestly. As new supplies came onstream, traders figured, prices would drift back down to their long-term average, which for years was about $20 per barrel. This thinking still influences the big oil companies, who have held back from investing massively in new projects.

But the futures market is now sending a radically different, and disturbing, message.

Technorati tags: oil, prices, futures, energy

The Undecided

2006-02-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

The Undecided: I wish I'd known about this site before the election. It's a flash application that works like a taste test. They give you a choice of selecting from any of the parties' positions on a particular issue without showing which party holds it. Then you can rank the issues to find out which one(s) you most agree with.

It wouldn't have had any effect on how I voted in the election. It mostly told me what I already know: I don't agree strongly with any of the national political parties of Canada.

Technorati tags: canada, politics, election

Super Bowl XL Commercials

2006-02-06T19:54:00.000-05:00

If you live in Canada, like me, you probably missed the best part of the Super Bowl: the ads.

Technorati tags: superbowl, ads, commercials, tv

Hoping for a soft landing

2006-02-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

Reading The Long Emergency left me completely freaked out about the world's energy situation. Kunstler predicts a catastrophic collapse of all the world's social, economic, and political systems as the it moves past the current peak oil production into a period of continuing decline and uncontrollably rising costs.

While I agree with Kunstler's fundamental premise — we're all going to have to learn to live with less in the very near future as oil prices begin rising — today's Treehuger post on switchgrass gives me some hope that it might be a softer landing than Kunstler predicts:

Here are the highlights: it grows eight or nine feet tall, native to the US. Generally, it's very hearty and will grow in nearly any climatic variation, from the Gulf Coast into Canada. As a crop, it has a very high yield per acre (five to tens tons) with little use of pesticides, and a low production cost, which are two keys for economical production of alternative fuels. Switch grass can net up to 100 gallons of ethanol per ton, which is more efficient than corn, it's better-known counterpart, and switch grass also uses the whole plant for making fuel, whereas corn uses just the grain. Sounds almost too good to be true, but we like what we're hearing so far.

In the comments for the Treehugger post, Odograph points to the Dell-Point pellet stove, which can cleanly burn wood pellets, corn or wheat to heat a home for less than half the price of natural gas. Combined with the Alberta oil sands and a possible 9000 megawatt build-out of Ontario's nuclear power capabilities, the future doesn't seem nearly as dismal as I was dreading.

Technorati tags: switchgrass, ethanol, energy

10 Tough Decisions: #1 CDT vs. DIY

2006-01-30T19:50:00.000-05:00

Support for C and C++ is officially supported in Eclipse by the C/C++ Development Tools (CDT) project. It offers a plethora of features for the language, including a C/C++ editor, a debugging environment, content assist, makefile generator, and parser. If you are building an Eclipse-based IDE for an embedded processor, is it the right choice? Or are you better off starting from scratch with the base platform? That's the question that I'll be examining in this post.

With all the features that the CDT offers, already designed, implemented and tested, you might wonder why anybody would choose not to base an IDE for their embedded processor on it. It's a no-brainer, right? Especially when you consider how much effort you'd have to spend to replicate even the most basic features it provides out of the box.

This is a deceptively tough decision, though, and a lot of it depends on what you want out of the IDE.

Do you want your IDE to be different?

The CDT offers a full-featured standard platform on which to build a C/C++ development environment. The key idea here is standard. When you choose to use the CDT, you are accepting all of the design choices that went into it, and limiting the range of possibilities for customization.

To be sure, there are ways that you can customize a CDT-based C/C++ environment. But the possibilities are much narrower when you base your environment on the CDT rather than the base platform.

When do you need it?

While choosing the CDT reduces the range of design choices, it also reduces the length of the todo list.

If you need to get a C/C++ development environment out the door quickly, the CDT can get you there. Most of the hard work has already been done by the CDT developers.

The time-to-market benefit is especially noticable if the processor you are targeting is already supported by the GNU tools, in which case there is very little work to do. I've heard of IDEs built in a couple weeks this this way.

Market Fit

The CDT is a huge piece of software. It solves problems that I never even knew existed. Out-of-the box, it sports its own disassembly view, code completion, and an extensive build system, among other things. However, in the course of building all these features, the CDT developers committed to a host of decisions about how it would work.

These decisions, though, might not coincide with what your end user expects or wants. It could be as superficial as their being more familiar with the look and behaviour of another development environment or as fundamental as the CDT not supporting some essential debugging feature.

At AMI Semiconductor, our digital signal processors are so resource-constrained that it only makes sense to program them in assembly (we don't even offer a C compiler). A highly-tuned assembly programming environment, then, was essential for our customers, and something we found lacking in the CDT when we first considered it.

Opportunity Costs

The do-it-yourself option is an expensive one. And in more ways than one. When you choose against the CDT, you end up devoting considerable resources to recreating features that already exist in the CDT, and in many cases falling short of their mark. What's more, all that effort spend on re-inventing the wheel could have been spent tayloring the CDT to your processor.

Technorati: eclipse cdt diy ide oss software embedded

10 Tough Decisions You Must Make When Developing An Eclipse-based IDE

2006-01-30T19:19:00.000-05:00

If you are planning to build an Eclipse-based IDE for an embedded processor, you have some important decisions to make; decisions that will set the stage for all of your future development.

In this series of posts I'll discuss 10 of these decisions. I'll identify some of the factors you should consider in making them, and tell you how we, at AMI Semiconductor, decided for our IDE.

These are the decisions I'll address:

CDT vs. DIY
GNU tools vs. DIY
ant vs. make
stable vs. latest
coordinated vs. independent release schedules
branch and fix vs. wait for Eclipse developers
replace views vs. live with it
stand-alone product vs. set of plug-ins
open source vs. proprietary
join Eclipse Foundation vs. work independently

[Disclosure: Mark Melvin and I are slated to give a talk at EclipseCon on this topic in March. Any comments or feedback you can send our way before the February 17th content deadline would be greatly appreciated.]

Technorati: eclipse eclipsecon embedded ide oss

Why the republicans want a huge national debt

2006-01-26T19:59:00.000-05:00

Dave Pollard explains why republicans want a huge national debt:

So now you know why Bush is not only unworried but actually pleased with skyrocketing deficits. They give him the excuse to cut government services and programs (if you read the harsh rhetoric of his annual budget he makes no bones about the fact he sees only defense and 'homeland security' expenses as essential), and to sell off 'priceless' parks, national forests and other public lands inexpensively to Republican campaign donors.

Technorati tags: debt, deficit, politics, dubbya, economics

How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site

2006-01-26T19:23:00.000-05:00

Steve Pavlina has some tips for building a high-traffic website:

My traffic-building strategy isn’t based on tricks or techniques that will go out of style. It’s mainly about providing genuine value and letting word of mouth do the rest. Sadly, this makes me something of a contrarian today, since I happen to disagree with much of what I’ve seen written about traffic-building elsewhere. I do virtually no marketing for this site at all. My visitors do it for me, not because I trick them into doing it but simply because they want to.

Here are 10 of my best suggestions for building a high traffic web site...

Technorati tags: web, traffic, content, writing, value

Lessons in Hindsight

2006-01-26T06:36:00.000-05:00

Guy Kawasaki shares some of the lessons he's learned in hindsight. One in particular caught my attention:

4. People act like their last names sound. People may start to look like their dogs, but I think that they act like their last names sound. For example, I have a buddy named Will Mayall. He helps me with anything technical; for example, when I ask him if he can make my web site or blog do something, his initial response is, “I may be able to” and then two hours later he's done it “all.” Hence, “may all.” Similarly, there's Jean-Louis Gassée. He's a funny guy--always armed with a great (usually sexual) metaphor to explain anything. He is a “gas” for the things that he “says”--hence, “gas say”. Then there's Kawasaki--my high school football teammates told me that I was a “cow's ass sagging.”

As you might guess, this didn't find this observation encouraging.

And for those of you who might be wondering, I pronounce my last name so that it rhymes with sick, not psyche. Not that either pronunciation is all that flattering.

Technorati tags: lessons, learning, hindsight, names

Analog Hole bill

2006-01-24T20:13:00.000-05:00

Cory Doctorow writes of a proposed bill that would regulate analog-to-digital converters:

The entertainment industry, always a bastion of media savvy, has proposed its "A-Hole" bill as a legal means of limiting the conversion of analog music and video to digital files. Under the bill, every maker of a device that can convert analog signals to digital ones (like iPods, camcorders, and PCs) would be required by law to be built with a detector for a proprietary watermarking technology called VEIL (the use of free/open source in these technologies would be outlawed to prevent the removal of VEIL detectors).

I wonder if the law would apply to digital hearing aids. Besides lowering the capabilities of hearing aids — today's hearing aid processors are already squeezed to the last cycle in an effort to provide better audio so any additional processing to detect watermarks will come at the direct expense of reduced audio quality — such a law would also have the consequence of prohibiting the hard-of-hearing from listening to recorded music.

It's surprising that such a bill would even be considered as it is relatively simple for anybody to build an analog-to-digital converter from components that can be found Radio Shack. Schematics can be found in most introductory electronics texts. Anybody intent on ripping audio from CDs could set themselves up with a few days of hacking.

I also wonder what effect such a law would have on the makers of anti-lock braking systems, which also use analog-to-digital converters; not to mention medical equipment, industrial controllers, and avionics.

Technorati tags: analog, digital, audio, hearing, aid

Why oil prices are jumping again

2006-01-24T19:26:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of The Long Emergency, one of the most frightening books I've ever read, Dave Pollard explains why oil prices are jumping again.

Technorati tags: oil, prices, energy, long, emergency

How to Kick Butt On a Panel

2006-01-23T19:46:00.000-05:00

Guy offers some advice on how to kick butt on a panel:

Today I moderated a very good panel at a conference, and while this experience is fresh in my mind, I want to explain how to kick butt on a panel. At any given conference, there are about three keynote speakers and twenty five panelists, so the odds are much higher that you'll be a panelist than a keynote speaker. Thus, I hope this entry appeals to a broader audience.

Note to self: Reread this before EclipseCon.

Technorati tags: presentation, panel

Larry releases Bleezer blogging software

2006-01-16T20:00:00.000-05:00

Larry Borsato announced today that Bleezer is shipping:

If you are a blogger, Bleezer will give you the ability to post to all of your blogs, regardless of what service you use, on any platform you want. The Bleezer website also has a blog so that you can keep up with new features and versions.

Larry has been cranking away on Bleezer over the past couple months. When Larry first told me about Bleezer in late November, I really wasn't expecting very much. He'd been working on it for only a few weeks at that point, and it showed. I couldn't even post an article to my blog with the first version I offered to beta test. But as we came through December, Larry got on a roll, fixing bugs and adding features faster than I could keep up. Before I knew it he'd tranformed Bleezer into a surprisingly capable blogging client.

Don't get me wrong, Bleezer is still fairly bare-bones, but Larry has some big ideas for it, and at the rate he's been going at it lately, I'm guessing they aren't that far off.

If you like to give it a spin, you can download it for yourself from the Bleezer website.

Congratulations, Larry, on getting it out. And thanks for fun tool.

Technorati tags: bleezer, blogging, client, software

The Next Pandemic Blog

2006-01-12T20:13:00.000-05:00

The CBC has written a pseudoblog to accompany a docudrama that aired last night. They call it the next pandemic blog:

The Next Pandemic Blog is a fictional portrayal of a hypothetical pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza – from initial outbreak through mass transmission to global spread.

Although a blog in only the loosest sense of the word — the content is static and pre-written out into June 2006 by a fictitious character — it's an interesting read.

Obviously this shouldn't be confused with some of the CBC's more serious ventures into the blogosphere.

Technorati tags: pandemic, epidemic, h5n1, flu, fiction, blog

Blognip

2006-01-10T20:20:00.000-05:00

Paul Kedrosky calls it catnip for bloggers. Introducing egoSurf.

My current standings:

google.com: 8386
yahoo.com: 7987
msn.com: 4354
del.icio.us: 0
technorati.com: 7806

Fun stuff.

Technorati tags: ego, blogging, tool, search

Conservative Cabinet of Rick Mercer's Dreams

2006-01-10T19:58:00.000-05:00

Rick Mercer has put together a rather humourous fantasy cabinet for the Conservative Party:

I have it on very good authority however that Stephen Harper is spending a lot of time playing the game these days. Word is the back room on the Harper bus resembles the woodshed from A Beautiful Mind; the walls are littered with the names of potential conservative cabinet ministers. Luckily my secret mole in the Tory Campaign (Tom Flannagan) has been taking photos of the notes with his hand held palm device and forwarding me the information on a daily basis. This is what the Tory Cabinet looks like so far.

Technorati tags: canada, politics, election

What’s Your Autism Quotient?

2006-01-10T19:53:00.000-05:00

Out of curiosity, I took the autism spectrum quotient test that Steve Pavlina mentioned in today's post. The result of the test is a score that indicates your level of autism:

0-10: low
11-22: average (most women score about 15, and most men score around 17)
22-31: above average
32-50: very high (most people with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism score about 35
50: maximum

I managed to score a 29, just three points away from the 'very high' category. Now I've always known that I'm an introvert, but that result came as a bit of a shock.

I guess I'd better find a Toastmasters' club. And fast.

Technorati tags: autism, introvert, toastmasters, social, skills, test

Drug buyers driving gun crime

2006-01-09T19:56:00.000-05:00

CBC News:

Anyone who buys illegal drugs is contributing to the gun violence that is plaguing Toronto, the city's police chief says.

Later in the story, police chief Bill Blair is quoted as saying,

"I think everybody who uses illegal drugs and gives money into these things bears some responsibility for the violence that's taking place."

I guess it's safer for him to blame drug users than to blame the politicians who have created the black market with their outright ban on drugs.

The story goes on to say

As a result, Blair says part the police strategy to curb gun violence will be measures to cut off the demand for illegal drugs.

Cut off demand? Good luck with that.

Technorati tags: drugs, guns, canada, toronto, law

Mulroney's Revenge: The Breakup of Canada

2006-01-09T19:27:00.000-05:00

The leaders of the major political parties in Canada are having a televised debate tonight.

Dave Pollard gives us some food for thought by arguing that a vote for the Conservatives is a vote for disintegration of Canada:

So why am I talking about the breakup of the country? When Mulroney was Conservative leader, his Québec wing was substantially separatist. Separatists saw the Conservatives as their allies. Western alienation is not all that different from Québec nationalism, except that until Harper came along it was less virulent. Now, 14 years after they last governed, the Conservatives and the Bloq separatists are again poised to take power. As I mentioned, the Bloq is strongly left-of-centre, while the Harper Conservatives are strongly right-of-centre. The only thing they have in common is the same desire to shift power from the federal government to the regional (provincial) governments that Mulroney tried to impose on Canadians with the Charlottetown Accord. The only difference is that this time there will be no referendum -- the Conservatives and Bloq will try to use their 44% 'majority' to do the only thing they can agree on, the very thing that Pierre Trudeau warned against: weaken the federal government to the point of gradual disintegration, leading to the eventual, substantive breakup of the country. Once federal powers have been given away to the provinces they can never be taken back.

Technorati tags: politics, canada, disintegration, election

It's official ... Google acquires Waterloo's Reqwireless

2006-01-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

Gary Will confirms the rumour. Google acquired Reqwireless:

It's true ... Google is in Waterloo. It acquired Waterloo's Reqwireless last summer. Confirmation was made today by Google following months of speculation — both about Google coming to Waterloo and about who acquired Reqwireless.

Technorati tags: google, reqwireless, waterloo

New Year's Eve Linkfest

2005-12-30T20:42:00.000-05:00

I'd like to thank all of the bloggers that have enriched my life over the past year with the only gift that has any value on the web: a link. You are all doing wonderful work that I appreciate deeply. Thank you all.

Bloggers

blowing balloons, How to Save the World, larry borsato, Mandy's Minutes, michael's blog, Mike And Julie Willikes, Philip Greenspun Weblog, Rondam Ramblings, Armed and Dangerous, Crossroads Dispatches, pc4media, Thoughtless

Blogging

Blog Tips at ProBlogger, The Intuitive Life Business Blog, Search Engine Guide Blog, Blogger Buzz, Freshblog, The Jason Calacanis Weblog, JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising, Naked Conversations

Business

bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog | XPLANE, David V. Lorenzo - The Power of Perception, Be Excellentâ„¢, BusinessPundit, Cardboard Spaceship, Career Intensity Blog - David V. Lorenzo, NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Eradicating P, Presentation Zen

Design

Alertbox: Jakob Nielsen's Column on Web Usability, Creating Passionate Users, jnd.org

Eclipse

Eclipse News, Planet Eclipse

Getting Organized

43 Folders, To-Done

Humour

CBC Television - Rick Mercer Report, The Dilbert Blog, Rick Mercer's Blog, Strange New Products

Law

Michael Geist Law RSS Feed, Online Rights Canada, Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC)

Life

37days, Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog, lifehack.org

Marketing

gapingvoid, Johnnie Moore's Weblog, Marketing Begins At Home, Micro Persuasion, Seth's Blog, Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing, Duct Tape Marketing, WOMMA's Word of Mouth vs. Advertising

Music

createdigitalmusic.com

News

CBC | Canadian News, CBC | Top Stories News, CBC | Toronto News, CBC | World News, The Record Blogs, TI Semiconductor Press Releases

Programming

Don Box's Spoutlet, Joel on Software, Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog, Planet Lisp, sicpexercises at Yahoo! Groups, Updates from code.google.com, 3pBlog - Mickaël Rémond - Performance, Process, Parallelism .., Larry Osterman's WebLog, The Old New Thing, Particletree RSS Digest, Planet Erlang, Randy Holloway Unfiltered 2.0, Scripting News, Sutter's (Online) Mill, Xooglers

Science

New Scientist - Latest Headlines, Cognitive Daily

Social Networking

Never Eat Alone Blog

Startup

About Entrepreneurs, Business Opportunities Weblog, David V. Lorenzo | SoHoSavvy.com, Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing, The Entrepreneurial Mind, Gary Will, Greg Yardley's Internet Blog, Home Office Voice - Home Business on the Web, microISV, Way to Grow, a crash course in entrepreneurship, alarm:clock, BarryBlog, BizzBangBuzz - technology & startup blog from strategic business, Bootstrappers' Blog!, Business Model Design Blog, Comments for Ashish Kulkarni's Journal, Entreprenerd, Escape Velocity, eVenturing Entrepreneurs' Viewpoint, Hitchhiker's Guide to 650, Innovation to Products to Ventures, Kauffman eVenturing, Kauffman eVenturing Highlights, Lifestylepreneur -- the art of self-employment, Noam Wasserman's "Founder Frustrations" blog, Paul Dix Explains Nothing, Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled, Sacred Cow Dung, Simplicity, Small Biz Advisor - News and Views, Small Business Cookbook, Small Business Trends, Solo Tees Blog, Springwise. The global new business ideas newsletter. Issue 26, , The Startup Biz, Startup Blog, StartupJournal.com, StartupNation blogs, Story of a startup: bootstrapping, business, productivity, WebKEW, WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs

Startup: Entrepreneurs

The Entreprexplorer's Journal, Eric.Weblog(), Fractals of Change, Hot Points, The Lazy Way to Success, Signal vs. Noise, Allthatscool.com, Asterisk, College-Startup, Entrepreneur's Journey by Yaro Starak, Ian Landsman's Weblog, OnlyOnce, Paul Allen Blog, Stake Ventures, UrbanDirtbag

Startup: VCs

A VC, Feld Thoughts, Genuine VC, Now What?, Paul Graham: Unofficial RSS Feed, Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed, The Post Money Value, Bnoopy, EarlyStageVC, Joi Ito's Web, Texas Venture Capital Web 2.0 Blog, Union Square Ventures

Technology

Ars Technica, Cool Tools, Jon's Radio, MAKE: Blog, TechCrunch, timbl's blog, INSPIONS, Om Malik on Broadband, Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger

Tools & Services

HaloScan, Feedster, Google Blog Search, IceRocket Blog Search, Technorati Search, XHTML Validation, XHTML Validator to RSS, FeedBurner, Blogger, WordPress, del.icio.us

Waterloo

del.icio.us/tag/waterloo, Student Life Centre, University of Waterloo News Releases

Wonderful

Boing Boing, jwz

Technorati links new years thanks
del.icio.us links new years thanks

Google Hiring in Waterloo

2005-12-29T08:07:00.000-05:00

Rumours that Google will open an office in Waterloo have been circulating since Google seed investor David Cheriton donated $25 million to the UW School of Computer Science. The rumours have now been further fueled by a job posting for a Mobile Wireless Application Developer based in Waterloo.

Tip of the hat to Gary Will.

Technorati google waterloo rumour rumor
del.icio.us google waterloo rumour rumor

SICP Solutions Yahoo Group

2005-12-29T07:57:00.000-05:00

Bob Ueland has been putting my stalled attempt at posting solutions to all the exercises in the programming classic, Structure and Implementation of Computer Programs, to shame with a new newsgroup, SICP Exercises, over on Yahoo! Groups.

Technorati sicp programming scheme solutions
del.icio.us sicp programming scheme solutions

Louisette Lanteigne Withdraws Allegations

2005-12-29T07:42:00.000-05:00

I've been sitting on this one for a while, but figured better late than never...

After reporting several safety and environmental problems, and subsequently becoming the target of a lawsuit, Louisette Lanteigne has withdrawn her allegations against Activa Holdings. Her website now reads:

During the period of April 2005 to October 2005, I broadcasted numeriuos statements alleging environmental and labour law infringements by Activa Holdings Inc. on a website I established. since broadcasting those statements, I have since learned that Activa is not responsible for any of the fuel spills or labour law infringements depicted or reported on my website. Activa has not been charged with any environmental or labour law infringements. I apologize unreservedly to Activa Holding Inc. for these broadcasts. I am pleased to make this clairification and apology and regret any inconvience and embarassment which may have been caused to Activa Holdings Inc.

Yours Sincerely, Louisette Lanteigne

Tip of the hat to Michael Heimstra.

Technorati louisette lanteigne activa lawsuit environment
del.icio.us louisette lanteigne activa lawsuit environment

Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?

2005-12-19T19:32:00.000-05:00

Charles Petzold asks the question:

Visual Studio can be one of the programmer's best friends, but over the years it has become increasingly pushy, domineering, and suffering from unsettling control issues. Should we just surrender to Visual Studio's insistence on writing our code for us? Or is Visual Studio sapping our programming intelligence rather than augmenting it? This talk dissects the code generated by Visual Studio; analyzes the appalling programming practices it perpetuates; rhapsodizes about the joys, frustrations, and satisfactions of unassisted coding; and speculates about the radical changes that Avalon will bring.

I don't do very much programming in Visual Studio, anymore. Eclipse sees to that. Nonetheless, Charles's offers some interesting warnings against tools that try to do too much.

Technorati tags: programming, microsoft, visual, studio

Crunching Some Numbers on Fossil Fuels

2005-12-12T20:18:00.000-05:00

From a review of Jared Diamond's latest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, reads:

"I don't think we have another 20,000 years," Jared Diamond said in his impeccable German and with the same unassuming, polite composure with which he had answered all preceding questions. And he added: "I think it's closer to fifteen years."

I've occassionally wondered what the end of oil will look like. Tonight I thought I'd crunch some numbers to get a better idea.

Let's start with current daily consumption. I'll use U.S. numbers because they are quite easy to find.

How much energy does the U.S. consume each day from fossil fuels? According to this CBC article, the U.S. consumes 20.52 million barrels of crude oil per day, each of which contains 1700kWh of energy (according to this site). By my calculations (20,520,000 barrels/24h x 1,700,000Wh/barrel) that comes out to 1454 gigawatts of power.

When the oil runs out that energy will need to be replaced if we are going to maintain our current lifestyles. Where will it come from?

My guess is electricity, either directly or indirectly. Directly if we switch to electric cars; indirectly if we use electricity to extract hydrogen from our environment to power our fuel-cell cars.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S., as of 2002, has the capability to produce 905 gigawatts of electricity, one third of which comes from natural gas and petroleum. That leaves about 604 gigawatts of coal, hydro, nuclear, and other renewable energy to see Americans through the end of oil.

So it looks as though Americans will need to more than triple their current capabilities (~600GW) to cover the loss off oil (~1450GW). Is that what they are planning for?

According to the same EIA article:

Of the new capacity, nearly 62 percent is projected to be natural-gas-fired combined-cycle, combustion turbine, or distributed generation technology. From 2011 to 2025, 105 gigawatts of new coal-fired capacity is expected to be brought on line—more than one-half of it after 2020. From 2011 on, coal-fired capacity is expected to account for 40 percent of all capacity additions. Renewable technologies account for just over 5 percent of expected capacity expansion by 2025—primarily wind and biomass units. Distributed generation, mostly gas-fired microturbines, is expected to add just over 12 gigawatts. Because the best resources for hydropower have already been developed, hydropower capacity is expected to increase only slightly in the future.

Assuming that coal outlasts oil, that leaves about 105GW of new capacity will survive after we run out of oil.

That's a far cry from the 1450 gigawatts needed to fill the gap.

I don't want to guess what this means for the future, but it certainly doesn't look good from where I sit.

Technorati tags: energy, fossil fuels, oil

Get 4 Months of Vonage for the Price of 3

2005-12-06T19:25:00.000-05:00

Mandy and I have been using Vonage Canada as our primary phone service for over a year now and been very satisfied with it — especially the costs, although the voice quality is excellent, too.

We get our internet access via cable so we were able to sever all ties to Bell. Where we were formerly paying $60 per month for our phone service, our costs dropped to just $22 with Vonage, for a savings of about $456 per year.

Today I received an email from Vonage asking me to participate in a referral promotion that they have going. If I refer you to their service, you'll get your first four months for the price of three.

So if you are in Canada and already planning to subscribe to Vonage's service, send me an email and I'll send you a coupon for a free month.

Disclaimer: For every new customer I refer, I receive two free months with their service.

Technorati tags: phone, voip, canada, vonage

Pandora the Tease

2005-12-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

I've known about Pandora since it was first publicly announced, but I've been ignoring it until today when Paul Kedrosky managed to convinced me to give it a try. It is absolutely amazing -- at least the 4-song demo is, anyways.

Then it asks you to sign up.

It is the typical americentric registration screen: email address, password, gender, birth year, and zip code. So I check the terms of use...

In order to use any of the Pandora Services, you must be a resident of the United States of America

Gah! Foiled again!

If anybody at Pandora is listening, please come to Canada soon. I'd love to use your service.

Technorati tags: music, pandora, canada, copyright

Theories of Humour

2005-12-05T19:48:00.000-05:00

Scott Adams is giving away all his secrets:

The core of humor is what I call the 2-of-6 rule. In order for something to be funny, you need at least two of the following elements:
Cute (as in kids and animals)
Naughty
Bizarre
Clever
Recognizable (You’ve been there)
Cruel
I invented this rule, but you can check for yourself that whenever something is funny it follows the rule. And when something isn’t, it doesn’t.

I recently read Comedy Writing Secrets by Mel Helitzer, who had a similar theory about humour (or as you Americans spell it, humor). His is the rule of THREES. The more of the following that a joke contains, the funnier it'll be:

Target: the butt of the joke
Hostility: works best if directed at somebody superior to the audience
Realism: be believable
Emotion: get people involved
Exaggeration: but not too much
Surprise: otherwise known as the punch line

The two theories are completely different, but both seem plausible when you think about it. So what's your theory on what's funny?

Technorati tags: humour, humor, writing

Publishers Lose Big in Chitika Audit

2005-12-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

JenSense is reporting that publishers are losing huge in a recent audit by Chitika:

In a thread at DigitialPoint, it didn't take long to see the full extent of just how significant these audits actually were. One publisher saw one day's income drop from $28.02 to $3.05 and saw similar drops on other days. Publishers are reporting drops anywhere from 10% to as high as 60% of revenue cut.

I applied to the Chitika eMiniMalls program when Darren Rowse was hyping it. It sounded like a an excellent opportunity at the time.

They rejected me, though, for reasons they kept to themselves.

Somehow I'm feeling pretty good about that now.

Technorati tags: advertising, chitika, audit

Nautilus NT-CC1 Owners Manual and Fitness Handbook

2005-12-02T11:23:00.000-05:00

Like the NT-CC1 Assembly Manual, some purchasers have missed out on receiving the NT-CC1 Owners Manual and Fitness Handbook. So here it is, in all its glory:

Government-Issued Speed-Controlling Devices

2005-11-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

Larry Borsato writes about some experimental new devices:

Transport Canada is testing an integrated GPS device that compares your speed to the posted limit of the streets you are driving on. The idea is to make sure that you can't exceed that posted limit.

You can read more about the device on Engadget.

While I find the technology interesting, I wouldn't want one of these devices in my car. I just don't want some centralized authority invading my life like that.

I've occasionally wondered whether there is a more effective approach to keeping our roads safe. Here's my nutty idea: Install a digital video camera on everybody's dashboard. The camera is set to constantly record everything. Accompanying the camera is a big blue button. When you press the blue button, the camera sends the last five minutes of recorded video to the nearest police station wirelessly for review. If the reviewer agrees that an infraction has occurred, the offending driver is immediately issued a ticket.

Technorati tags: traffic, automobiles, speed, enforcement

Other Orientations in Computer Programming

2005-11-30T19:12:00.000-05:00

Don Box:

I still find myself occasionally having to remind people that objects are at best a means to an end. They aren't the end unto themselves. Trying to design software only in terms of object-oriented concepts is like trying to speak English without using adjectives or adverbs.

Well said, Don.

I'm glad to see all the hype around object-oriented programming is waning. There are other ways to approach computer programming. If you don't believe me pick up a copy of Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming. It's worth it. Really.

Technorati tags: object, oriented, programming

The Short Head of Programming Languages

2005-11-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

The TIOBE Programming Community index is a list of the 20 most popular programming languages in use today:

The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

It should come as no surprise that Java, C, and C++ top the list.

Tip of the hat to Ian Landsman.

Wiki Software Flame War

2005-11-28T20:31:00.000-05:00

I am the recent beneficiary of new desktop machine at the office, which leaves my old machine available for other experiments.

In another bold step into the 90s, I'm looking into setting it up as an office wiki server.

I'm not at all familiar with any of the Wiki packages and I don't really know what features I should be looking for, though this comparison of wiki software chart has provided some hints.

One.. Two.. Three... Four... I declare a flame war.

Which wiki software is the best, and why?

Technorati tags: wiki, software, corporate, private, knowledge, management

It's Funny...

2005-11-28T20:06:00.000-05:00

In one of her rare blog posts, Mandy writes:

The next weekend is then Christmas... this year has certain zipped by, hence why I haven't spent much time publishing... oh, that and the fact that I would need to beat my hubby over the head with a stick in order to get any significant computer time. ;) Just kidding dear! :)

Heh. I'm reminded of that Homer Simpson quote: it's funny 'cause it's true.

Technorati tags: blogging, funny

Canadian Liber Government Falls to Vote of Non-Confidence

2005-11-28T19:43:00.000-05:00

Mandy just shouted up to me that the Liberals are dead. The opposition parties, led mainly by Steven Harper's Conservatives, have forced another election with a vote of non-confidence.

What I'm still trying to figure out is why the NDP would vote along with the Conservatives and Bloc on this. Their handful of MPs effectively had the much larger Liberal contigent by the balls. They could have gotten the Liberals to pass virtually any bill they put forward.

Or maybe not. Maybe those NDP pushed too hard, too fast, and Martin decided he'd rather take his chances in another election than spend another year pandering to Layton.

Harper, I'm sure, will be out taking credit for toppling the government, though he really didn't have much to do with it. What he doesn't seem to realize is that by taking credit of it now, he is winning the blame of voters when they are forced to trek out the booths in Canada's coldest month.

And that's politics as usual, in Canada.

Imaginative Poverty

2005-11-28T19:40:00.000-05:00

Dave Pollard asks an intriguing question:

But in a modern, homogeneous society, do we still need imagination? I think it's possible that in a hierarchical, overcrowded, enormously interdependent society imagination is an evolutionary disadvantage: It breeds dissatisfaction, nonconformity and discontent, and it suffers in an environment of homogeneity and monoculture. Even language, which has been shown to affect the way in which our brains are structured as we grow, drives us to think in linear, traditional, established ways. So I would argue that over the last 30,000 years imagination has been bred out of the human gene pool, and what survives is systematically squelched long before the school system has the chance to inflict further damage on it. Imagination can be frightening, and our society ridicules fearfulness (except of things prescribed by the government, the media and our peer groups as 'reasonable' to fear). I think we actually learn not to imagine.

Technorati tags: imagination, creativity, poverty

Ron Garret's Google Story

2005-11-28T19:32:00.000-05:00

Ron Garret tells the story of how he left Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab to work for Google in what so-far is a four-part series on Xooglers.

Back in the day, I spent a lot of time lurking on comp.lang.lisp. Ron was a frequent poster there, though it was always under ~~the pseudonym~~ his former name of Erann Gat in those days. His was one of the many distictive voices that I enjoyed reading on that newsgroup. I'm glad to hear from him again.

Tip of the hat to John Wiseman.

Update (2005-12-14): A comment from Ron corrects an important mistake about his time as Erann Gat:

That wasn't a pseudonym, that was actually my name at the time

Sorry, Ron. I should have checked my facts. Thanks for correcting it.

Technorati tags: lisp, programming, google, java

So long, John Vlissides

2005-11-28T19:04:00.000-05:00

Ehud Lamm:

John Vlissides, of GoF fame, passed away on Thursday, November 24, 2005, after a lengthy illness.

More on John on the wiki page dedicated to his memory.

John was one of four authors of a highly influential book on the topic of object oriented programming. He will be missed, though his contribution continues to be felt around the world.

Technorati tags: obituary, programming, design, patterns, object, oriented

Test Driven Development: The Double Entry Accounting of Programming

2005-11-27T16:25:00.000-05:00

I've been doing Test-Driven Development (TDD) for more than a year now. It's no silver bullet, but it has helped me catch plenty of mistakes that might otherwise have slipped through to our final product.

TDD, for those of you not familiar with it, is a three step process. When you realize that you'd like your program to do something different that what it already does, you:

write a test case that would pass if the change was implemented (it will fail intially because it hasn't yet been implemented)
implement the change so that the test case passes
clean up your code

It didn't take me long to notice that whenever I wanted to make a change, I ended up describing that change in two different places: once in the unit test and once in the production code. It used to bother me that I was doing twice the work that I had been before starting with TDD.

It finally dawned on me that the duplication is the primary benefit of TDD. TDD is the double entry accounting of programming. Whenever you'd like to change your program, you enter the change in two sets of books: test cases, and production code. The duplication is what allows you to detect your errors.