It seems these days, people want to measure everything, including builds.

Over at Cedric’s blog, he talks about building a ant profiler.

Seems cool, but I would need to see some actual applications before signing up to use it.

People rarely take UI usability into consideration, and even fewer people take API usability into account.

Steven wants to change that. Over on his blog, he dicusses how to run an API usability study here.

Ok, I get it. Star Wars can be re-shot using ANYTHING.

First Legos, now fruit.

And yet, the cure for cancer remains unknown.

Being a huge fan of Virtual PC, I was excited to see a list of tips for using it being produced.

Check out a top 10 list of virtual pc tips here.

First was flat files, then came RDBMS, then object DB’s. Now, XML gets slammed together with it’s last unconquered tier, the database.

Xpriori has made available, for free, a development version of them XMS product.

I would really like to see something like this take off, but with the speed I have seen from XPath over small, by DB standards, data sets, I can’t see replacing a relational DB with an XML one.

Who knows though, it may be useful & cool for something.

I know these have been floating around for a long time, but I recently came across them and HAD to post them for people who have never seen them.

There’s this guy, and I use the term loosely, who runs a Oracle consultanting company. He has some of the funniest pages ever on his site. The sad part is that the pages are serious pages. Here are the links:

Dress code for his consultants

And what is possibly the most crass page ever to be posted on a professional companys site:

Redneck Theology

Pay special attention to his picture at the top of each page.

So for mothers day, I bought my mom a iPod Mini, pink of course ( she picked it out ).

She originally wanted to shuffle, but I was able to upsell her to the 4GB Mini.

Frantically, she calls me one night and asks how she charges it. Now, I already had a iPod Mini, one of the original 4GB models, so I knew that she needed to just plug in the iPod to the small, brick looking charger and plug that into the wall. And then she said the strangest thing:

“It’s not here.”

Apparently, the only way to charge these new iPods is to use the USB 2.0 cable and charge using a computer or buy the $29 external charger.

The problem is that my mom doesn’t have a computer and uses my sisters computer just to load her music onto. So now shes stuck with a great iPod but no way to charge it without spending more money.

Seems pretty crappy to me.

Herb Sutter points out something subtle that not many developers are thinking about.

In his article here he gives a nice overview about how chip makers are increasing performance without simply increasing clock speed.

I will admit that when I first read the details about how Intels HyperThreading technology works, I was a little taken aback, as I realized that it introduced concurrency problems applications not written defensively. Interesting read.

I think it’s time to brush up on threading.

Patrick Burtzlaff points to an upsetting piece of news..

Apparently, Dave Chappelle has gone a little nuts and checked himself into a mental clinic in South Africa. Read the CNN article here.

Patrick also had the ultimate comment about the whole thing:

“I picture him in a corner of a white room muttering “I’m Rick James, bitch”