In Ian Banks’ exceptional Excession, we find ourselves in a distant future when human beings have populated the universe. To help out with this task, humanity has developed sentient computers to fly their planet sized ships, fight their wars, and keep their houses tidy. There’s a hierarchy to these sentient beings. There’s the drones. Human… More

I’m in the midst of chewing on an article regarding things you absolutely, positively must have in order to design, develop, and ship product and what to do when those things just don’t exist. The article and my current work situation has reminded me the importance of bug tracking. In each company I’ve worked, the… More

Two bad omens in one day. First, the San Jose Mercury reported last week that U.S. students are forgoing educations in computer science because of worries about jobs being shipped offshore. The second omen was a REAL LIVE college student sitting in my living room echoing the Mercury News, “Yeah, I’d like to study computers,… More

At some point during the software development process, the engineering team will suddenly decided there is no way the product is: Going to be done on schedule and/or Going to be an acceptable quality. The realization is going to paralyze the team with fear, work will stop, and hands will be thrown in the air.… More

Steve, you’re a great guy. With great skills. You’re goin’ to do great. What the hell I’m coming with you. [5/17/04 Update]: New link… old one was blocked, sigh. [2/18/05 Update]: New link… old one vanished, sigh. [7/28/07 Update]: New link… old one vanished, again. [1/1/19 Update]: New link… old one vanished, again.

Nothing can kill a good buzz like facts. A University of Michigan study is often thrown in the face of N.A.D.D. by those killjoys who assume N.A.D.D. has something to do with A.D.D. It doesn’t. The alarming bullet points: “People who are multitasking too much experience various warning signs; short-term-memory problems can be one. Intense… More

I’ve had a couple request for the templates for the new design. Here they are. I’ve included the style sheets as well as a templates necessary to generate the front page. These are templates for Movabletype and will not work for other weblogging software without heavy massaging… or maybe someone has written a slick import… More

ed: Reading this article in the context of the recent rise and fall of Orkut service might give you the impression I’m pissed at the Orkut folks. Nothing could be further from the truth… I actually wrote this article late last week. Thing is, I don’t think I’m the target demographic for such services (looking… More

Google has dipped it’s toe (again) into social software with Orkut. While this service is not featured as part of the Google porfolio of products, it is developed by one (or more) Google employees so, well, it’s a Google product at the end of the day. Haven’t seen it — clearly, my trusted friends are… More

Your text editor is religion. You start ignorant… wondering what all the fuss is about and then you either discover or are forced into a particular editor. In time, you grow comfortable with it, like your favorite type of pen, and that’s it… you’re done. You are the wizard of Emacs or the king of… More