• Velakor Feeds at Velakor Software
  (tags: rails ruby rss)
• 24 ways: An Explanation of Ems
  Finally, somebody who actually explains what an em is ...
  (tags: css)

Andrew chimes in on "That whole shutdown debate". In fact, I have the opposite use case: when I close the lid of my laptop, I generally don't want it to go to sleep. For starters, it takes way too long for my laptop to wake back up. My working place is often the living room, where I'm surrounded by 3 toddlers. When I get up to get a pacifier, it is not an option to keep the laptop open on the coffee table -- imagine toddles who start to hit a keyboard whenever they see one. So I close the lid. But I don't want to wait longer for my (windows) laptop to wake back up than I have time spent getting the pacifier. Second, my laptop gets backed up at night. So I just leave the thing running. A lit screen is unnecessary at that time, so I close the lid. And it can't go to sleep, because the "scheduled task" will not run then. So. Can you come up with even more scenarios to have all those options available? ;-)

• kuler
  colorpicker
  (tags: Color)

• Gliffy.com - Create and share diagrams online.
  Draw & share diagrams on the web
  (tags: web)
• Welcome to ScheduleWorld
  ScheduleWorld calendars, contacts, tasks and notes.
  (tags: web)

• MazeWorks - Java Games and Puzzles
  (tags: fun)
• the best brands of the world - vector logo, logotype, logos and logotypes

• PersonalDNA | Your True Self Revealed - Fast Fun Free Personality Tests
  my true self ...

• Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before
  (tags: map world)
• Streamed Lines: Branching Patterns for Parallel Software Development
  (tags: VCS)

While Joel can give Ruby and Rails a good bashing, he now has joined the "keep it simple" choir. This only proves that technology is only a means, not a goal. His conclusion raises a question, though:

This highlights a style of software design shared by Microsoft and the open source movement, in both cases driven by a desire for consensus and for "Making Everybody Happy," but it's based on the misconceived notion that lots of choices make people happy, which we really need to rethink.

Is that really true? Does software gives us so much choices because the people who made it went through a lot of effort to give you the choice? Or because they were too lazy to come up with the best solution themselves? Because making things simple for the user is anything but simple for the developer.

• techno.blog("Dion"): What's wrong with this picture?
• Locomotive
  Ruby on Rails development done the Mac way
  (tags: ruby rails)

• Using Rsync backup on Dreamhost | Fields Marshall - tech, kayaking & Patagonia
  (tags: rsync)

• A 100-pound weakling no more : Pensieri di un lunatico minore
  Microsoft has finally released the Windows PowerShell to the public, for free.
• Howto Backup your Mac incrementally over SSH
  Howto Backup your Mac incrementally over SSH
  (tags: sysadmin)

• rebelutionary: The Entrepreneurial Pendulum

• Acceleo : MDA generator - Home
  (tags: eclipse mda Programming)

Sarcasm in a blog is hard to convey. Of course I care (although I'm more on the "forking will be bad for Java"-camp -- but that's another history alltogether). Maybe I should increase my smiley-to-character-ratio ;-)

Sun relicenses Java under GPL. Sure. Who cares? Much more fun: Duke gets opensourced too! Finally some playful thingies to put in your Java-related presentations! Now let's hope some designers actually take some efforts to do something with this (because I don't have high expecatations on the Photoshop skills of most Java developers...)

• 19 Rails Tricks Most Rails Coders Don't Know
  19 Rails Tricks Most Rails Coders Don't Know
  (tags: rails ruby)

Bart is blijkbaar bezig met YouTube II. Ik ben benieuwd of dat gaat lukken: als kleine regionale nieuweling tegen een "gevestigde" waarde opboksen. En of ik benieuwd ben.

• GWT Designer from Instantiations
  GWT Designer™ is a GUI creator that supports GWT.
  (tags: ajax gwt)

En samen worden we oud: ik had me vanmorgen ook al zo'n bedenking gemaakt. En zeggen dat ik vroeger met 12 uur slaap per dag toe kwam...

An interesting point of view: Is Converging Towards the Desktop Good? The last 2 years or so, I've been using GMail. And every now and then, I step back and think "shouldn't I go back to using a desktop client, so that I can read my mail on the train?" And every time, the answer is "no", for 2 reasons: one, I don't like my mail to be attached to one computer (I have 2 computers at home, and I don't want to climb 2 stairs because that one email was received on my top-floor computer while I'm sitting in the living room) And second and even more important, I really like the "conversations" idea that GMail has. I'm actually quite astonished that no desktop email client has cloned this idea yet. Everybody seems to be wanting to clone Outlook (while touting how bad Outlook is - where's the logic in that?) On the other hand, you don't want to write some new Ajaxy widget for every functionality that you create - Ajax is hard to write as it is, and reusing other people's effort is 'nice', to say the least. What do you think? Does reuse really hamper innovation? Or is innovation easier if you don't have to care about the nitty gritty details?

• Raven 1.1: Build Java with Ruby
  2 worlds touch each other on a surprising spot
  (tags: Java ruby)
• disabling System.exit()
  (tags: java)

• Hotspotsvinden.nl | Vind hotspots in Nederland, België en Luxemburg

Dit is verantwoordelijk voor heel wat hoofdpijnen hier deze week: Het verdwijnende ventje Als jij het op een begrijpelijke manier kan uitleggen, doe het alstublieft, zodat we 's nachts terug kunnen slapen!

De nieuwe MacBook Pro ziet er wel uitnodigend uit: probeer dezelfde specificaties te bekomen bij Dell, en je betaalt ongeveer evenveel. Momenteel ben ik aan het uitkijken naar een nieuwe laptop, en verscheidene mensen zitten mij een Apple aan te raden. Maar ik maak me vooral zorgen over de GUI: in Windows weet ik alles zo wel terug te vinden (onder de rechtermuisknop!), maar bij Apple zou ik toch dingen gewoon moeten worden. Daar staat natuurlijk tegenover dat ik waarschijnlijk toch Ubuntu zou installeren op zo'n Dell, en mijn 2 meestgebruikte applicaties op een dag Eclipse en Firefox zijn, dus misschien houdt dat argument ook al geen steek. Heb jij een goed argument om geen macbook te kopen? Dan zou ik graag van je horen!

• The IT Crowd 2 - Google Video