A Canadian apology

found on michaelw.net from "This hour has 22 minutes"

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry.

I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron but, it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence, I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours.

I'm sorry we burnt down your white house during the war of 1812. I notice you've rebuilt it! It's Very Nice.

I'm sorry about your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer but, We Feel Your Pain.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you wanna have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism.

I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. We've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

After working on this uber (ab)User Guide I might need one

In a newpaper story found via /. seems researcher have made a mathematical model of a memory store called the hippocampus, and programmed it on to a silicon chip. My first reaction (and second, third, ....,forty-eth) was this was some right out Charlies Stross's short story (and the start of a wonder cycle of stories) called Lobsters.

Great read (time to re-read it!), Future Shock technology. Weclome to the 21 Century. I feel like a dimwitted Manfred or maybe one of the lobsters? probley one of the slower lobsters.

At the turn of the century

reading this story on Boing Boing I read this phrase and imaged something that happened a hundred years ago. The "Turn of the Century" at what it used to be!

Bit humour

Favourite Web Comics

PvP oneline

User Friendly

Rudy Park

Helen, sweetheart of the Internet

Penny Arcade

FoxTrot

Doonesbury
More later...

This must be why I feel like yeast

This must be why I feel like yeast

Tim Bray, one of the developers of XML, comments in Language Fermentation on other postings bouncing around the Blogoshpere such as Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing from Bruce Eckel (of "Thinking in Java" fame).

One conculsion : Strong Typing is a kind of testing, which I'll concur with based on my experiences with pascal, c and lotusScript: enforcing type catches sloppy coding mistakes.
Also : Test Driven Development (of which unit test is part of) may be one of the more useful concepts to come out of extreme programming practices, and that TDD may also lead to a resurgence of dynamical typed (or loosely type) languages, which can be more flexible and quickly written.

(Tim concludes with a neat Java Exceptions trick.)

The irony is not lost on him. The strong type-ness of Java was in part a response to loosely type-ness C bugs. My experience again: bad mixed typing (and bad casting), and pointers were the biggest causes of easily fixable runtime errors; both absent in Java. A strong testing mindset (testing before not after coding) may allow for the power and speed of C without the headaches that came with-it.

I wonder how a strong testing and the TDD mindset will effect the gathering of requirements?

One of the senior, very sharp, guys during my brief stay at the now defunct Orlan Karigan once made some comments about getting numerical data as part of the requirements for certain type of project. Part of signing off on requirements was agreeing that if the program gave output X for Input Y then it passed acceptance testing. This allowed the developers to code to the test data. Defacto test driven development. Only I could never figure out how to apply that sort of process to the sort of web work it did.


Phil Wiindley has also post comments on Tim's bit. No doubt there is more such over in the Java.blog community, such as ::Manageability::

The Strong Testing tool set seems inmature, but rapidly improving. Lee mentioned Mock Object as one way to go beyond the trivial sort of unit testing that need to be done in the real world. I wonder if it would be possible to generate some unit tests beyond the stubs using Java Reflection? Something allong those lines bubbled to the surface recently on Slashdot: FindBugs - A Bug Pattern Detector for Java.

I guess my point is : Learn the TDD mindset now. Non trivial systems need non trivial verification of completeness and robustness. This is at least a start.

Anyone for an Japanese Lit Blog?

From Scripting News : Starting weblogs at universities .

First, know that universities thrive on having their experts visible outside the university... So how do you get your professors on the radar, as acknowledged experts who can communicate to everyday people?

Some High Profile University blogs : Clay Shirky, the Weblogs At Harvard Law experiment, Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig

And I found this interesting post on Weblogg-ed. So the Professor-torial type bloging seems biggest in the Technology and Law crowd, which makes sense cause they are more likely to be aware of and comfortable with the tools of bloging, and Law and Technology is a heavy churning, rapidly mutating arena.

So why would you blog, if so what would you blog?

Why's: As a resource to others (students and peers) on your subject area. To become an acknowledged expert, as the adage states 'publish or perish', both with and outside your institution.

What's: Professional Bio and list of past and happening publications. Events in your subject area (even if only of the "I'm not able to go, but..." sort). Class outline and Reading list. New material published by others that relate. Opinons either too initial, too short or too hard to get posted in other media. Gain profile, in order to sell your skill set in settings where you can charge for.

Same reasons and things most of us blog.

Wish I could get my brother-law, distinguished gray beard at University of York,to it give It a go. But given the inertial Conservatism of the tenured, it will likely be his students that try to figure it out and take advantage of the new tool(s). You of the quotes from the Weblogg-ed piece " Did telephones change Harvard? Yeah. Did TV change Harvard? Yeah--probably." but how long did it take before it really changes and how many phone and tv's do they have in the Divinity department (and not the one's under lock and key!).

As I've allways said "The Technology part is not that difficult, It's the Culture part that's tough!"

Nope he didn't take the bait Hint.