Archive for August, 2007
August 24, 2007 at 1:00 pm · Filed under General
I filed this bug on the ‘to_xml’ method of ActiveRecord
I filed this bug with low expectations. Previous bug filings at other projects generally don’t get
a lot of attention since the developers are usually swamped. I was very pleased when I saw
them address the bug and patch it. It is also interesting in that they upgraded its priority since
these bugs are related to a potential security bug.
Overall, very cool. It feels good to know that in a small way, I have made the project just a tiny bit better
for everyone… just like others have done so for me.
August 23, 2007 at 7:14 pm · Filed under General
Paul Graham’s post on keeping a program in ones head.
I cannot stand distractions when I’m trying to get things done. It is always
good when I learn that I’m not alone on this topic. For example, I’ve read this same story but for people
in other fields that also require high-concentration.
In a video on Richard Feynman, he jokingly told the same story. His technique was to just not do
his job and work on the things he wanted to. Eventually the other people would stop
assigning him tasks and left him alone. (Note: it helps if you have already accomplished
great things in order to pull this off).
Also, in a biography on Arthur C. Clarke, his relatives explained how
he couldn’t be interrupted for “tea or anything” when writing. If you did interrupt him,
this mild mannered fellow would blow up in anger. This led his first and only marriage to a
divorce within one year.
Now, I’m not comparing myself to them, I’m just recognizing that
knowledge work that requires memory doesn’t work at all with distraction. When great
people who have accomplished great things say the same thing… then maybe there
is something to what Paul is saying. You don’t have to dig to deep in the software
industry to see that people are understanding this and starting to change things… which is good.
August 20, 2007 at 10:31 pm · Filed under General
Adobe just made an announcement
about their new codec support in Flash 9. This is being released to labs tonight and will probably
go out in a general update in the very near future. This comes right after one of their
key engineers announced multi-core support (aka threads)
for the latest version of Flash 9.
If you want the H.264 announcement tech details, go
here to Tinic’s blog post.
Otherwise here is a summary and some opinions:
This basically keeps Adobe fully in the internet video business. With the new standards compliant H.264 codec, AAC audio
support, and other code updates, several things happen:
- They have achieved full screen HD quality video in software
- Flash video doesn’t have to mean worrying about transcoding to the proprietary FLV format (Sorrensen or On2 VP6)
- Hardware support in the future is now possible
- You could imagine video conferencing with iChat (also H.264) as a possibility now
- They mention iTunes and AAC format a few times (web based iTunes possibilities)
- Much improved audio processing and filtering in general
- 3GP (which is also H.264) is also used by a lot of cell phones (Nokia), so there is synergy there
Overall, this just further extends the exciting possibilities that Flash video has created for the internet ( can you say YouTube )
August 17, 2007 at 4:45 pm · Filed under General
Plaxo is also doing interesting stuff
Wow, more recognition for the big shift at Plaxo from an engineer
I respect. Brad Fitzpatrick wrote most of LiveJournal and probably some important parts
of SixApart’s architecture. He just did a great brain dump entitled
Thoughts on the Social Graph. I recommend it.
Like the people that I know who think about this (Terry,
MarkJ, and Joseph, of course),
we wonder when the walled-gardens of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, etc.)
will open up. This document is a great starting conversation to the solution to that problem.
P.S. I thought 2006 was going to be the ‘year for identity’. Those initiatives have fizzled. I’m
a lot more excited about these directions.
August 16, 2007 at 9:57 am · Filed under General
Heavy’s NSFW Inventory with Branded Ads
Interesting side note. Tod’s post is almost 8 days old at this point.
August 12, 2007 at 9:54 pm · Filed under General
I didn’t have it on the calendar and none of my buddies did either, so I missed it this year. Damn.
August 9, 2007 at 6:28 pm · Filed under General
I went to LinuxWorld for the first time yesterday.
I don’t think I need to go back again. It really wasn’t bad, it just that
it was not that interesting.
I just didn’t see any ground breaking technology.
Most of the vendors were pitching data center tools. Frankly, I’m more interested
in virtual services like Amazon’s EC2, I don’t want to be in the data center
business anymore.
The most interesting group was the little corner were Ubuntu, Debian, OpenVZ,
PostgreSQL, and FreeBSD were hanging out. There were a lot more interesting
conversations happening there, but nothing you couldn’t find on the internet.
August 9, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under General
Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest mortgage backers, raised the interest rates on it 30-year, fixed-rate, non-conforming (AKA jumbo) loan to 8 percent last week. It is now up from 6.875 percent. Other lenders will probably follow the lead.
FYI, a jumbo loan for a single family residence in 2007 is $417,000. So, basically, just about everything in California 
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