syncopated fun with Daichi wildcard beatbox. er.
Is he a beat boxer or ... is he the beat box himself?
Either way, it's two minutes of syncopated fun
ongoing developer notes
Hand Lawn mower
I highly recommend the Brill hand mower, available on Amazon.
Lightweight and strong, it is a precision machine which is also quiet.
It's greener than electric and will give you serious green cred. It's
surprisingly expensive but will last for years. Do it!
Posted by George Girton
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The Pragmatic Bookshelf | Domain-Driven Design Using Naked Objects
In this book, Dan Haywood first gives you the tools to represent your domain as plain old Java objects, expressing business rules both declaratively and imperatively. Next, you’ll learn the techniques to deepen your design while keeping it maintainable as the scope of your application grows. Finally, you’ll walk through the development practices needed to implement your domain applications, taking in testing, deployment, and extending Naked Objects itself. Throughout the book, you’ll build a complete sample application, learning key DDD principles as you work through the application step by step. Every chapter ends with exercises to gain further experience in your own projects.
via pragprog.com
I really liked Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans, which was not tutorial oriented. It was a great study group book.
Dan Haywood's new book is still in beta, but for people who enjoy learning something by going through a tutorial sequence, DDD using Naked Objects is probably worth a perusal. And the title is suggestive without being lurid.
Posted by George Girton
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Pomodoro: do not be interrupted by yourself or others! puro lavoro!
These slides are from a seminar taught by Staffan Nöteberg
the author of Pomodoro Technique Illustrated, available in draft download it
http://www.pomodoro-book.com/
I should mention that at time of writing I have not read this book but in time honored fashion have downloaded the PDF and looked at (some of) the illustrations, which I like. I think you ought to be warned that there is a page entitled "A cucumber and an artichoke walk into a bar," which contains a dialogue without a punchline. No joke!
The Pomodoro Technique (La Tecnica del Pomodoro) is based on the Italian concept of "puro lavoro" or "pure work" followed by a small amount of non-work time.
By yourself or others, do not be interrupted!
A slide showing the rationale for the pomodoro technique
(www.pomodorotechnique.com), a "software development methodology" which
has been taken up by practitioners of "solo scrum". Not that there can be such a thing,
but there is. It has three characteristics of Scrum, though: inspect, adapt, ask the team.
(The team in this case is an individual).
You start your 25-minute "tomato timer"
(everyone has one of these, right?) and work for 25 minutes.
Then! Glass of water! Drink in 5 minutes only!
Work 25 minutes. Then! Read! Five minutes only!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja9v8NZrTrk
(duration: 32 seconds)
This is what you do all day long if you're pomodoro'n it.
Pomodoro appears to be a variation, albeit much more systematic although no less whimsical,
than Alan Lakein's "Swiss cheese method" of time management, detailed in his book "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life." It is only a historical accident that the two have not yet been interleaved, much as mozzarella, sorrel (or basil) leaves, and sliced tomatoes with balsamic vinager.
Colophon: command-option-4
http://www.slideshare.net/snoteberg/the-pomodoro-technique-47135
Posted by George Girton
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What does a tomato have to do with object oriented development? -- Anti-If Campaign
What Is the Anti-IF Campaign?
The objective of the Anti-IF Campaign is to raise awareness of effective use of the Object-Oriented paradigm.
The primary purpose of our campaign is to become aware of the design consequences of using IFs and of control structures in general, applied by following the path of the procedural paradigm in Object Oriented contexts. This greater awareness will enable you to understand how to achieve more effective results in terms of flexibility, comprehensibility, testability, and ability to evolve.
Francesco Cirillo is translating the Anti-"If" campaign documents from Italian.
Also, "If" you're interested in agile techniques, and you're interested in learning Italian, the Pomodoro technique (the book) is available in Italian from http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ Pomodoro ("tomato" in Italian) relies on a 25 minute tomato timer.
After 25 minutes, you're probably wondering, what does the tomato turn into?
Posted by George Girton
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MotionServo target projector photos
Here are two photos taken probably in February of 1986, of the MotionServo Model 1200 Target Projector in the lab.
n_7ab6uvylc097.jpg
Event : Motionservo
Keywords : Workplace
Screen reads:
Thank you for running the Motionservo Model 1200 Target Projector real-time motion program...
... and thank you for flying Motionservo. The six boards to the right control motors in the target projector shown below, including azimuth, elevation, image roll, zoom, focus, and by means of counter-rotating neutral density gradient filters, brightness.
n_7ab6uvylc3067.jpg
Event : Motionservo
Keywords : Workplace
MotionServo Model 1200, mounted together with GE Light Valve (left) on aluminum plate. That big round thing is the elevation motor, driven by one of the six boards shown in the right side of the prior photo.
Posted by George Girton
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6th Anniversary of LA Flash blowout party at laflash.org "Puck off"
It was farewell to Puck, the energetic and faithful Boston Terrier who has enjoyed so many LA FLash get-togethers at the Rich Media Institute in Venice CA, home to the world's largest Adobe User Group. Puck, as it turns out, has waited until the cold Vermont winter has subsided before heading back to New England, at least for the summer and perhaps beyond.
Presenters from the Blitz Agency and Scematic.com, two local development oriented powerhouses, talked about iPhone development for those whose main programming language is AS3 (Adam Verturella, Blitz) and the role of duct tape and chewing gum in making user prototypes (Andrew Keegan, Schematic). Andrew's presentation was surprising, impressive, and fun, but you basically have to see it to believe it, since he showed a lot of futuristic technology in play, way beyond the role that I expected from an agency.
Adam gave four links (shown) and recommended 3 books, highly recommending Aaron Hillegass's book on Cocoa (3rd edition), in conjunction with Bill Dudney's book on Core Animation. He didn't mention Stephen Kochan's book on Objective C, but I think this is the one to get. A question f rom the audience wondered what programming background most of the iPhone questions on the Apple forum showed, and the answer was interesting -- the full spectrum of experience was represented, including complete beginners.
https://devforums.apple.com/community/iphone/sdk
http://www.iphonedevcentral.org
http://www.iphonedevsdk.com
http://www.idevkit.com
Elliot Mebane returned to run two "critic" sessions just like in the old days, showing two sites, interactivedaysandiego.com and stevekauten.com, Steve attending remotely over Adobe Connect from Portland Oregon.
There was a huge drawing for TShirts and Adobe Creative Suite CS4, and an open contest for "Iron Flasher", but I attended remotely from a secure and undisclosed location, and after the last talk ended at 10:15 p.m. I packed it in.
And here's your moment of Zen:
Posted by George Girton
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I can't believe I watched the google datacenter movies
Very peaceful, though, and less boring than Beshkempir. For me, anyway.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/v02xr8qf9Po/designing-lean-green-energy-saving.html
Last week Google hosted a Data Center Efficiency Summit , bringing together approximately 160 industry leaders to share insights and best practices. Since it was April Fool's Day, we threw in a few jokes to keep the atmosphere fun ( oil-cooled data center , anyone?), but the topic is serious: How can the IT industry keep growing while also exercising good environmental stewardship? We disclosed for the first time details about the design of our ultra-efficient data centers . We also provided a first-ever video tour of a Google container data center as well as a water treatment facility . We detailed how we measure data center efficiency and discussed how we reduced our facility energy use by up to 85%. The engineers who developed our efficient battery backup solution even brought an actual Google server to the event. By the end of the day, we narrowed in on a recurring theme: Reducing resource use through efficiency efforts is not just good for the environment, it saves money too. And it is this economic advantage which makes efficient data centers not just green, but truly sustainable. For a tour of a Google container data center check out the video below or watch the entire summit: part 1 , part 2 , and part 3 . Posted by Jimmy Clidaras, Principal Engineer
Sent from my iPod
Posted by George Girton
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Blue icicle review (audio) on Windows (woof!) (or rather, no woof!)
Icicly Review by George Girton
The review of the Blue Icicle on Windows was a little trickier, because first I had to install Audacity for Windows, which included installing LAME 3.98.2 for Audacity. I chose to install beta 1.3.7. This whole process was a little more complicated than on the Mac, because on the Mac I had already done it long ago. The input choices in Audacity preferences (I didn't bother with Windows preferences) seemed a little complicated, but I went with Direct Audio for input and output, and obviously it has worked just great.
Here's a quick review of the Blue Icicle, a USB to XLR cable microphone converter and pre-amp that just walked in the door. It comes with a USB cable, which I plugged into one of the two front USB outlets on the Quad Core Dell running horrible Windows Vista, and the other end into this cheesy plastic Blue Icicle, which lit up a pleasing hue of blue as soon as the USB was plugged in.
The XLR cable from my condenser mic, a Behringer C1, was ALREADY PLUGGED IN to the other end from my test with the Mac 10 minutes ago. I installed Audacity started the free audio app "audacity" and changed its input to "Blue Icicle". After a short "testing testing testing" which worked beautifully, I recorded this short review
No firewire fiddling, no rebooting, no driver installation, no muss no fuss, and the line noise is, as you hear, no noise.
Colophon: Blue Icicle XLR to USB, Behringer C-1,
Audacity 1.3.7 with LAME 3.98.2
Windows Vista Ultimate, 2.6GHz Core 2 Quad
As it turned out, I wrote the text of the review on the mac, but recorded the review on Windows. So, to get it all together into one email package to send to devnotes, I enlisted the assistance of gmail. I saved the draft email on the mac, then opened it on windows and attached the audio file. Is this unusually creative or completely normal? I hope it's unusually creative -- I need some kind of an edge now that I've given away all my audio creation secrets -- and now that audio is as easy as (to quote the Blue product sheet) "Branchez, c'est tout". Or as we say in English, "Plug in, chill out."
Posted by George Girton
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Short (audio) review of Blue Icycle XLR-to-USB converter.
Before I get down to work this morning, here's a quick review of the Blue Icicle, a USB to XLR cable microphone converter and pre-amp that just walked in the door. It comes with a USB cable, which I plugged into one of the three USB outlets on the Macbook Pro, and the other end into this cheesy plastic Blue Icicle, which lit up a pleasing hue of blue.
I plugged the XLR cable from my condenser mic, a Behringer C1, into the other end. I opened the Mac system preferences, selected "Blue Icicle" for sound input, started the free audio app "audacity" and changed its input to "Blue Icicle" as well.
No firewire fiddling, no rebooting, no driver installation, no muss no fuss, and the line noise is, as you hear, no noise. This is supposed to work with Windows and I will try that next, and ... let you know!
Colophon: Blue Icicle XLR to USB, Behringer C-1,
Audacity 1.3.3
Mac OS 10.5.6, 2.33GHz core 2 duo
Posted by George Girton
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