breakfast first

New camera

With a baby and a house on the way, I know that I'll be taking a lot of pictures soon. And sadly, my old Canon Elph just isn't cutting it. It's nice enough as a little pocket camera, but it's just slow as hell when it comes to shooting (and powering on, for that matter, since it has to extend the lens). Slow isn't good when it comes to getting shots of babies.

So last weekend, I followed my camera-savvy friends (well, I'm about a year behind) and ordered a Nikon D70. The camera is amazingly fast, really versatile, and can take great shots in the hands of people who know what they're doing (like Tony, Ficus, and this guy). And with the recent introduction of the D70s, the price of the D70 has fallen a little bit. Time to pounce!

Excitingly, the camera arrived this afternoon. There's a ton of stuff to learn about this camera, and I didn't have time for that today. However, I did happen to sneak a shot of Owen waiting for a printout. See, I've got a lot to learn.

Sign of the (disturbing) times

The lead story in this morning's business section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was an AP article on the 40th anniversary of Moore's law. At the end of the article, you'll see a section entitled "The Law of Silicon Valley" where Moore's original observation is quoted. What's listed as the source? "Wikipedia.com."

Is it possible that the author, and his editors, couldn't be bothered to check the original source on a forty year-old topic? Is the Wikipedia the best available, most definitive source? I would expect a high school English teacher would reject that citation, let alone the editors of the AP. Of course, given that they didn't even get the website of the citation right -- Wikipedia is a dot-org, not a dot-com -- why should we believe that they did their homework anywhere else?

Programming language news: sad, interesting, and funny

Three interesting items on programming languages have come to my attention in the past 24 hours, so I thought I'd pass them along:

First, on a sad note, I learned today that Ken Iverson, the creator of APL, died back in October of 2004. I learned APL as a freshman in college, and it completely changed the way I looked at computers and programming. While I detected that shift in perception as a freshman, it took me many years to fully appreciate its consequence.

Second, yesterday CJ linked to an interview with Alan Kay in ACM Queue. I have something of a love/hate relationship with Alan Kay. While he's a very smart guy who has done some interesting work (Smalltalk, for example) and who continues to do interesting work (check out Croquet), he never hesitates to blast away at the direction computer science and software engineering has gone.  His comparison of programming to literature is faulty; what makes literature good or bad fundamentally comes down to a matter of taste (personal and social), while what makes software good or bad, like other feats of engineering, comes down to whether it works or not. And while the internet is a giant mass of duct tape and baling wire, holy shit, it works. While we can and should do better, don't pretend that this doesn't matter. Had the world decided to wait until everything was perfect, we'd still be waiting.

That segues nicely into the final, humorous item, a parody of Paul Graham's essays. Fantastic stuff.

Saving IM conversations

Now that I work remotely, an enormous amount of my work is done over IM, and a lot of these conversations have details that I'd like to refer back to (and search) later. I know that several companies make IM archival systems for the financial industry, but for individuals, why isn't there simply a "mail all conversations to [email protected]" option on IM clients? Having my IM client silently mail me a timestamped record of the conversation every time I close a conversation window seems like an ideal lightweight solution.

Today's Front Pages

This has been around a while, but I just learned of it: Today's Front Pages is a project that lets you view, as PDFs, the front pages of newspapers from around the world (322 from 37 countries, when I last looked at it). Apparently the newspapers submit their front pages, in some standard format, every morning. In addition to this neat website, the Newseum selects 68 front pages every morning, prints them out, and displays them outside in downtown Washington, DC (at the future home for the Newseum).

This display makes you realize just how wonderful a format for conveying information print newspapers are, and just how crappy websites -- with the same information -- typically are. I think it would be interesting if they also generated a PDF of the main page of the newspapers' websites in the morning, and displayed them side-by-side with the print version.

Intel Research

The Seattle Times recently ran a nice overview of Intel Research Seattle and some of the work that's being done there -- complete with a photo of my pal Ian Smith looking vaguely professorial.

Shameless Plug

If you're looking to pick up a Sidekick II, now's a great time. On Amazon, the price after rebate is -$50 (yes, negative), and they offer a T-Mobile plan with 1000 minutes, nationwide roaming, etc, for $35/month. That's pretty great. (Just don't forget to send in your rebates -- they have a whole team of actuaries betting you'll forget.)

Update: Pardon me! A loyal reader wrote in to say that the $35/month figure does not include data charges -- which are a flat $20/month extra. I just checked it out; the data charge gets added on Step 3, after you select a voice plan. Sorry about the confusion. He also says that you can't apply for the rebate until you get your first bill.

Independent confimation

See? I'm not the only one. Joi writes:

I'm at SFO on my way back to Tokyo. It definitely feels like Silicon Valley is "waking up" again. Hopefully, we've learned from our mistakes and the "recovery" will be a better managed one.

The place is jumpin' again.

Pixo

The Chron has a brief profile of Pixo, the company that built the UI for the iPod, and Paul Mercer, the company's founder. The profile comes complete with this photo. Woah, Paul, is that a Modo on your desk? That is old school!

(via Gen Kanai)

Can I just say?

It's really refreshing to see the tech economy picking up once again here in California. For four years everyone was hibernating, but "spring" is here once again and many friends and coworkers have decided to run with their ideas and start their own businesses. Good luck to all of you; you're an inspiration.