Crusty Blaa

Lately, I've been doing what I can to help finish the massive effort to port RHEV-M from C# to Java. Check out Livnat Peer's blog describing the various approaches considered and how the team settled on using a semi-automatic conversion process.

What Chris said. Go watch Eben's talk, it really is worth it. I'm going to watch it again.

Chris had a nice quote, but you can skip randomly to any part and get other equally nice quotes.

"The patent has become a real estate entitlement, not based upon the social value it produces, but rather irrespective of the social harm it may induce."

What I find most interesting about Mughsot is the team's total and no-bullshit commitment to making new and interesting software which doesn't suck.

I love the way they say their design process "isn't a checklist of activites you must do - it's an idea list, suggestions for how to work smarter". I love the way they prototyped a photos feature using flickr but were willing to drop it again after trying it on real people. I love the way they lock themselves in a room, leaving their laptops behind, and give themselves the time to hash out ideas properly.

I hope Mugshot itself is a success. But, more than that, I hope they help change the way the rest of us make software.

I'm always a tad shocked when Red Hat Magazine comes out every month with some genuinely interesting and useful articles. Really nice to see Integrating your applications into the desktop, Part 1 from Zana this month, for example.

I'm in Boston at the moment and I have to drive to work in
this this thing:

Brrr.