malvasia bianca

I’ve implemented my first story; the results can be seen at The Arcades Project. (Of course, if things go as planned, then the appearance of that page will drastically change over coming months!) I was pretty good about writing an acceptance test first. Which meant that I got to install Apache locally on my laptop, […]

I wish that I knew more about certain aspects of modern computer technology, espcially information-management aspects of technology. Examples of things that I wish I knew more about: Java. Ant. Eclipse, especially its automated refactoring tools. How to write a web page that doesn’t look like it was written a decade ago. Web pages that […]

In our house, as in apartments that we’ve lived in, sinks periodically get clogged up. If the drain plug gizmo (what is the name for those things?) is removable, we try removing it and seeing if we can get stuff out of there, but in the last few places we’ve lived, they haven’t been. (There […]

In grad school, Jordan introduced me to Daniel Pinkwater’s books. And they’re great! Well, many of them are great, and almost all of them are at least entertaining. (He’s written a lot of books.) For an introduction, I highly recommend 5 Novels; Jordan will be peeved if I don’t mention Lizard Music, and among his […]

The Arcades Project has been sitting on my to-read shelf for a year or so. (I’ve finally started reading it, about which more later.) One thing that’s been bothering me since I heard about the book, though: I’ve been to Paris several times, and I don’t recall ever seeing an arcade there! Have they all […]

Gran Turismo 4 is the first of that storied series that I’ve played. It’s almost the only driving game that I’ve played this generation (the exceptions being the forgettable F-Zero GX and a few rounds of Mario Kart with friends): I got pretty burned out on driving games last generation, and I needed some time […]

I ran into a manga called Crayon Shinchan a few months ago; I used to be a bit embarrassed at how funny I found it, but I’ve given up on that, and just accepted that it makes me laugh out loud on a regular basis. (I mean that quite literally: I really do inadvertently laugh […]

One of my coworkers pointed me at The Daily Sudoku. I’ve tried and enjoyed a few; I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but I’m not stopping yet. So far I’ve only tried ones rated easy or medium (and, honestly, I can’t tell the difference between the two levels); apparently the hard rated […]

Just what is the copyright office thinking? I can’t imagine they’re doing this out of bad intentions, but it’s pretty depressing that they’re apparently clueless about this sort of thing…

It’s been a while since I discussed a video game I’ve finished, hasn’t it? Not because I haven’t been finishing games, I’ve just been busy writing about other things. (The video games du jour are Shenmue II, on my new Xbox (about which more later), when Miranda is around, and the stunning Resident Evil 4, […]

I was unhappy with the result of our pair programming meeting for various reasons: we were all unhappy with how things were going, I was pretty sure that we were doing something wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. We’d adopted short-term measures to ease some of the pains, but I didn’t see them […]

About three months ago, my team started seriously experimenting with pair programming. It’s been more than long enough since then for us to take stock, so we had a meeting three or so weeks ago to talk about our experiences. The results were mixed, and really hard for me to get a grip on. Some […]

I was kind of bummed when Erubiel Durazo got hurt, and Scott Hatteberg’s performance has certainly been nothing to write home about this season. (I still have no idea why he’s gotten the contracts he has from Billy Beane.) But Dan Johnson’s performance has been a pleasant surprise: I’d literally never heard of him, but […]