As a consultant, I’m always looking for the perfect Swiss Army knife-type tools related to what I do. Pulling the right adapter or gizmo out of your bag can save the day, avoid embarrassment (yours or your client’s), or make you come off looking like the hero. But you can’t carry a stack of steamer… Continue reading Consultant’s Swiss-Army Knife (Part 1)
Author: Jim
Getting your mind around it
Paul Graham gives an excellent inside look at programming. He calls it “Holding a Program in One’s Head”: A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he’s working on. Mathematicians don’t answer questions by working them out on paper the way… Continue reading Getting your mind around it
xcopy vs. rsync
xcopy vs. rsync, rsync vs. xcopy Though rsync has capabilities that Win32’s xcopy only dreams of, how do the two stack up when compared apples to apples? My test: synchronize a large collection of files, between two different local disks. 8.19 GB of data in 11,072 files across 182 directories. My platform: a Dell Optiplex… Continue reading xcopy vs. rsync
Elevator Drives then and Now
My business has been taking me into elevator machine rooms recently. It’s amazing how far the technology has come. These elevator drive motors are circa 1938, and still work fine. These drive motors are new, and a fraction of the others’ size. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
GNU Haiku
Noble Open Source* Contribute day and long night Landlord, Grocer scoff. * I know I should say Free Software, but it ruined the meter.
Where are the Good Programmers?
Frank Wiles discusses hiring programmers. Finding good programmers is hard in any language. And that a good programmer can be as effective as 5-10 average programmers. … You don’t need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can… Continue reading Where are the Good Programmers?
Ten Years of Data
I was looking for a years-old appointment and realized I’ve been using a PDA for ten years now. My data goes back to 1997. (I think I’m on my fourth PDA, but I’ve lost count.) It was a strange realization on a few levels. It was pretty cool seeing appointments from ten years ago. What… Continue reading Ten Years of Data
Quote of the Day
Guy Kawasaki, web entrepreneur: During the dot-com bubble, you needed $5 million to do stupid ideas. Now you can do stupid ideas for 12 grand.
Betting the farm
Doing some exploratory work for a VoIP application, I bought this nifty LinkSYS VoIP adapter. But I find that adapter only knows how to find Vonage. The firmware is programmed that way. Easy for Vonage customers, useless to us. But it seemed to be a reasonable business decision for LinkSys. Sign on with a big… Continue reading Betting the farm
Hyper-deflation
I threw away a bunch of old software today. I threw away the CD-ROMs but kept the (plain) sleeves. Ironic, that. Reminds me of a story I heard: Post-World War II Germany’s hyper-inflation, where someone stole a wheelbarrow full of cash. They stole the wheelbarrow, but dumped the cash. I’d say this software’s hyper-deflation is… Continue reading Hyper-deflation