Concurrent Programming with Clojure

Video of Stuart Halloway's talk on Concurrent Programming with Clojure

More about the talk here: http://www.oredev.org/prod/oredev/site.nsf/docsbycodename/session?opendocument&sid=A63BC77001A119BFC12575D5003BC000&track=2556B90C592E1E23C12575A500499CC6&day=5

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The Taj

Last Sunday, we had dinner at The Taj with some British friends.  I was honored (or should I say "honoured") to be the only native born American in the group.  As Ruth put it: "Good food, great company."

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Guinness: Arizona Great Dane is tallest dog ever

http://www.accessatlanta.com/celebrities-tv/guinness-arizona-great-dane-321579.html

Guinness World Records: Giant George from Tucson is the tallest dog ever on record, standing 3 feet, 7 inches from paw to shoulder.

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Clojure, Compojure, Google App Engine and Emacs

http://www.hackers-with-attitude.com/2009/08/intertactive-programming-with-clojure.html

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Restaurant web sites that use Flash

There's unnecessary profanity in the linked post, but the sentiment is widely shared.  On second thought, it's hard to avoid swearing when you see Flash web sites...  (via DaringFireball.net)

http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-have-every-month-or-so

Here's a clue for restaurant owners: you need a simple web site that gives your address, phone number and hours.  For bonus points, add an HTML version of your menu.  Save the background music for the actual restaurant.

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Google Sitebricks

You can never have too many web frameworks:

Sitebricks is a simple development layer for web applications built on top of Google Guice. Sitebricks focuses on early error detection, low-footprint code, and fast development. Like Guice, it also balances idiomatic Java with an emphasis on concise code.

http://code.google.com/p/google-sitebricks/

An article on using Sitebricks:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-sitebricks/index.html?ca=dgr-twtrG-siteBricksdth-WD&S_TACT=105AGY83&S_CMP=TWDW

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Savannah River Site tour

Lisa and I took a tour of the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC.  The facility was started in 1950 to produce nuclear materials for weapons during the Cold War. The SRS complex covers 310 square miles.  Six small towns, with 6000 people, were taken over to built the site.

Originally known as the Savannah River Plant, the facility became the main site for handling tritium and was also an important source for plutonium.  The five nuclear reactors are now shut down, but they still process and store radioactive materials on site.   At one point, they employed over 25,000 workers.  Today, they have about 12,000.  A new Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant is currently under construction. Naturally, the buildings are spread out around the site for security and survivability.  They have a paramilitary security service provided by Wackenhut.  

They told us to arrive a half hour early to get through security, but they didn't actually start checking us in until the scheduled time of the tour.  We had a talk in a conference room about the history of SRS, and were given a lovely gift bag with a pamphlet about the facility, SRS note paper and a pen, plus my favorite item: a small spray tube with hand sanitizer.  I think it was infused with tritium, which explains why my hands glow in the dark now.  (Just kidding.)

After the introductory talk, we took a bus tour around the complex.  I was surprised to find out that they have an ecology group on site.  The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory is operated by the University of Georgia (I know, wrong state).  They showed us some of the local animals such as salamanders and snakes.  According to their research, the nuclear work has not produced many negative effects on the local wildlife, beyond what any large scale development would have done.  I confess that I was a bit disappointed that they had not found any ten-foot spiders or giant insects.

It was an interesting day out.  Not bad for a free tour.

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Choosing The Best CSS Framework: A Complete Guide

Which framework you choose is really a personal decision. There is no one “best” framework on the market at the moment. Different frameworks are better for different types of designs, and for different designers.

http://devsnippets.com/article/complete-guide-to-css-frameworks.html

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The Onion on Lost fans

Heh, I resemble that remark!

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Stephen Fry on the iPad

Stephen Fry was at the Apple announcement and got to play with a real iPad for a while.  Here are a few bits from his long blog post:

No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. You know how everyone who has ever done Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? always says, "It's not the same when you're actually here. So different from when you're sitting at home watching." You know how often you've heard that? Well, you'll hear the same from anyone who's handled an iPad. The moment you experience it in your hands, you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop – it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much. Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic textbooks, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. James Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron-like way, might even be trapped in one.

You may or may not be in the queue for an iPad in March, April, May or June. Or you may decide to stay your hand for version 2.0 or 3.0. But believe me the iPad is here to stay and nothing will be quite the same again. You should know, however, that plenty of industry commentators disagree with me. They have pronounced themselves less enthralled. It is perfectly possible I will be proved wrong about its enduring, game-changing place in the landscape and that people will gleefully rub my nose in this blog in two year's time. I'm certainly not wrong about how soul-scorchingly beautiful it is to use though. And that, for me, is enough.

Read the whole thing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/29/stephen-fry-apple-ipad

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