Xmas is almost upon us. Just in time for Xmas comes this instructional vid (delivered via YouTube), that promises to teach you how to gift wrap your gifts using 3 times the required amount of paper and way too much tape. …And yes it does include a speedy un-wrapping technique as well.

Watching a very interesting documentary - NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell. Wow — I had no idea that Disco, Rap and Punk were all brewing in NY in 1977 — talk about a single year having such major cultural impact. Anyway somebody being interviewed in the doco, quoted Andy Warhol - “Art is anything you can get away with!”.  So I extend this to mean, “Programming is anything you can get away with”. Therefor Art = Programming and Programming = Art. And from that I conclude that Programming != Science, most definitely.

Anyway NY77 comes highly recommended - go watch it.

The first computer bug was a real bug - a moth. The system was debugged to remove the moth and the moth even got added to the log sheet.

So I am thinking the first bug was the easiest to fix.

Debugging programs and modern day frameworks has a lot in common with Pest management. First there was Pest Eradication but Pests could not be Eradicated. They tried Pest Control but it was too hard to ‘control’. Finally they decided upon Pest Management: “We can’t eradicate the bugs! We can’t control the bugs! We can only manage the bug problem!”

… gives a whole new meaning to Project Management!

Room 401 is the best new show on TV (if you get MTV). Its a totally creepy supernatural like version of Punked. We can thank Ashton Kutcher for this one as well - so cute and so talented

…. at 37Signals

This one is recommended by Celine: Beat up your pc.

Classic Jim Carey with a rendition of Ice Ice Baby!

Wow - 92 apps got made in this years (2007) Rails Rumble (formerly known as Rails Day). The quality, quantity, and functionality are all superior given that these apps were all created in a mere 48 hours!
My favs:

• Invent a Story
  Collaborative story writing - 1 sentence at a time
• This Vs That
  Dual threaded lists perfect for debating
• DuctTape
  Create and publish simple lists/databases
• Researchr
  Group together ideas for a research paper in a drag and drop manner

Rails Rumble goes a long way to showcase the power of Ruby and Rails. In coming weeks I’ll be writing a few tutorials on using Rails to create e-learning/social collaborative apps. Remember that someday soon Rails apps will just deploy on a Tomcat instance - hint hint - Blackboard.

A funny series of pics to describe an IT project.

DHH responds to the “How do you keep up with new technology?” question. Good advice - learn on the job, learn because a project would benefit and if you can’t then it’s time to start looking for a new job.