One Year down

It's been one year now since we were married. This year has flown by...

It's been a very good year. ;-)

To kill a Tree or not?

I'm looking at picking up a tech book. I thought that I was supposed to be out May 1st, but apparently the release date has been moved to Sept 15th. That's a bit of a wait that I wasn't expecting.

They are offering the book in pdf (as a beta) where you'll be able to download the final book when it comes out. Now the question is do I want to just get the pdf version, or should I pick up the dead tree version as well since they are cheaper as a package. It's going to be around 900 pages, so it's not exactly a pocket book either.

What do you think the pro's vs con's of the dead tree version?

Basic mutator for java

One technique that was discussed in school that I thought was really interesting was mutating your software in order to test your test suite. What I'd like is a "basic" mutator that just comments out your line and tells you if that had any effect on your test suite. For everything that I've found, they are mostly papers published by PhD's with more discussion and less implementation, seemly abandoned projects, or projects that I can't actually find code for. They all do one level above of what I'd want for a basic mutator: they change the code rather than commenting it out.

I think that showing lines that "don't matter" to the test suite in conjunction with lines that are hit / not hit with your test suite would be really, really useful.

No DMCA for us

Dear Minister Prentice,

I'm quite concerned by the news that I've been reading about the introduction of US style copyright reform into Canada. I fear that the introduction of reform of this type will not benefit the consumers, artists, or society at all.

Dr. Michael Geist has proposed eight key principles that should be addressed to maintain a balanced, fair approach to Canadian copyright law. I'm sure that you've taken the time to read it, but it's worth reading again.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2572/125/

I've CC'ed my MP as well as the PM and I hope that everyone understands how important this issue is to me and Canadians as a whole.

I'm looking forward to seeing you make legislation that is best for Canadians.

I have no idea if this will make a difference. Let's hope so. Go Geist go!

I'm such a noob...

Sometimes when you're using a tool you figure out how to do something but it's not the proper way but it works well enough. I've been doing this for a long, long time while using *nix tools. Like when using man I'd "exit" it by ctrl-z. I know that this just stops the process and when I exit the shell it warns me that there are stopped jobs in the background. I just didn't know how to exit it properly. Maybe I just remember using csh and it was different or maybe I just forgot.

The most annoying thing: I found the answer really hard to find because it's so, so simple. Just press "q" and it'll quit. Damn command line and their cryptic commands... q for quit... what kind of a genius thought of that one? I'd have thought that it would be something like shift-h-1-t. You know, so everyone could figure it out.

Now all the geeks can read this and think less of me. I just have to say "we all have gaps". :-P

Everything has a camera, just don't use it!

One thing that I've noticed a lot lately is that there seem to be a lot of posts on boingboing about "security" people going after people taking photos. The reason is either 1) "I've copyrighted the street" or 2) "Oh nooos! You could be a terrorist!!!11". Either way it seems like an abuse of power over nothing.

The part that I find funnest? That cameras are being put into practically everything. Phones, computers, pda'a... you name it. Even some cameras have the ability to take pictures now I hear. There are in everything, but pretty soon it seems that you won't be able to use them, unless your a government, then you have to use them. You know, in order to protect the children...

My one tiny comfort is that this seems to be in the UK and USA. The craziness doesn't seem to have taken hold here (yet).

Scary thought: One day carrying a camera will be mandatory, but taking pictures will be a form of thoughtcrime.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

Life is cyclic

Laura pointed out the other day that all our pictures seem to be the same. Every year we bike to the tulip festival and take (arguably goofy) pictures of ourselves. I saw pictures from last year and the only way I figured out that the pictures were from last year is because we were in different clothes.

I think that's just the nature of life though. Sunrise, sunset and all that. I'd start to worry if we stopped doing stuff like going to see the tulips just because we have done it before.

Support is a *good* thing

The response that I usually see when a bug is raised in an open source project when someone asks for fix is "it's open source... so fix it yourself". That makes sense and seems like a reasonable "cost" for using the free software, but it's not that helpful all the time. Even if you fix it and submit a patch, that's no guarantee that the patch will be applied to source control in any reasonable time.

One of the maven plugins we use and had to patch (someone else supplied the patch) went without the patch being supplied for close to 2 years. It might be longer but I was (at the time) monitoring the mailing list and when they were going to cut a release I asked why the most voted for issue, with a patch, wasn't going into the release.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about open source. I'm just saying that it has some drawbacks when people are not working on it as their paid full time job.

Sometimes there are benefits to have a support contract for software. Yes, I know that you can get this with open source... It's just nice to be able to file a bug and not worry about solving it myself. To have someone who is familiar with the code fix it (as a committer) is a nice thing.

If this seems rambling I think that it just means that I need more coffee... oie.

Just one task

Something that I'm going to try to do is every night make sure that I do at least one task that I'd rather not do. Something, anything will count... raking the leaves, working on my bike, doing the dishes, assembling something, drinking beer... it's all work and it all needs to be done.

I think that (one of) my problem is that my natural state of being is sloth. I find it really easy to come home and do nothing at all. Maybe stare at the tv or surf the 'net. Wasted time that I can't explain where it went at all. Not good.

I hope that this becomes a habit and not just another failed experiment.