Green Day Blog

Something hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4SDQu7Izrk

And something useful:

• http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/energy-environment-2007/environmental_myths_a1.asp?caret=3a
• http://blog.guidewire.com/blog/marcusryu/archives/2007/10/more_important.html
  

How Old is the Concept of "Inversion of Control"?

Think this article by Martin Fowler, probably most quoted, is the first one talking about this concept? Well, then we were both wrong, because I have just found out this article, "The Dependency Inversion Principle", published as early as 1996!

Isn't that something?

With Wing Bark, No Quack

I have heard tons of insane software development project stories, and this one beats all of them added up...

I only hope the story is not true...

Atlassian and Cenqua

Two of my favorite companies from down under is now one. I love it.

Atlassian taught me that wiki can be cool and professional, and that Bugzilla is not as good as a bug tracking system can get.

Cenqua simply saved me from the CVS madness.

Thank you both!

Squeak - My New Language of the Year

When someone took the time and write a tutorial like this, the least that I should do is to read it through and learn it to show my respect.

I am not totally sold on the ""Learn at least one new language every year" (p. 14 on Pragmatic Programmer book). Not that I don't think it is a great idea. I just think for one it would be very hard to do since it normally takes one (me at least) several years to learn to fully appreciate the language. Another reason is that I think it is more important to contribute back to the society of what you have learned than keep learning for learning's sake. I know I have not contribute enough as it is, given the pressure to put food on the table, making my way to afford a house in bay area, take time to enjoy life, and such.

But when all you need to do is to download the Virtual Machine and Image, and read the tutorial, and you are up every night feeding the baby anyway, why not.

Update: As it just turned out, this post showed up in case you wonder what are the choices are out there if you want to learn smalltalk.

Second Update: Free (and Legal) online Smalltalk books

Reference: Really Bad Powerpoint

Julian sent me this link, "Really Bad Powerpoint", as a guideline as we are developing our presentation for the Agile 2007.

I do find the content convincing, especially about preparing full notes but not handing them out, and use less words on the slides.

I don't think I agree with the idea of no transition, though. I have had good experience using them, and I have seen others using them with good effect.

Build vs Buy

It has always been a constant debate on Build v.s. Buy. After working for an elite consulting company, and now a revolutionary product company, I start thinking that there probably is no simple answer.

http://www.addsimplicity.com/adding_simplicity_an_engi/

Maybe the truth is that this is the wrong question to ask, that the real question is "How to verify the return of the investment in IT"

Free Broadband using Sewer System from Google!

As expected, Google has something cool this time every year.

The last several ones that I have enjoyed was:

• How does google search work?
• Google drink
  

Or you can read all of them here.

Label Blog Post!

If you are a blogger user, did you know that you can put labels on your posts???!!!

I have been jealous of WordPress users for a long time but I am just too busy/lasy to set up a server of my own.

Until the other day I noticed a blog post with labels hosted on blogspot. Well, I guess that says how sloppy I have been on writing this blog.

Again, thank you Google!

Yet Another Keyboard Layout?

Interesting... Although switching between QWERTY and Dvorak, and telling people about Dvorak is already hard enough. If anything, I would be glad to see the day that Dvorak prevail.

Nevertheless, the comparison applet is still something very interesting.

Typing Contest : Dvorak vs. QWERT

After switching to Dvorak for almost a year, I decided to switch back to QERTY, for two reasons.

• I was pairing at least 6 hours a day and was driving everyone mad with the layout switching
• I wanted to see how fast I was with QWERTY.

Before I switched back, I timed myself in typing out the page "Dvorak Follow-Up". Now that I am fluent with QWERTY again (I should have done that earlier but I was too lazy), I just typed the page again using QWERTY.

And the result is...(drum...)...

DVORAK!

Time used with Dvorak: 9:28minutes.
Time used with QERWT: 9:55 minutes

I cannot say that I am not surprised. After all, I have been typing QWERTY almost my entire life and I only used Dvorak for a year. But here you go.

On the other side, 30 second is very small. I could just be tired tonight.

I also finished the "Joy and Pain with Fitnesse" in 29:30 minutes using QWERTY. If I ever switch to Dvorak again, I might do another contest.