The news that changes everything
Ever since I was a boy I had the idea that one day there would be the news that changes everything.

It could happen any day. You might wake up one day, turn on the news, and there it is, the biggest story of all time.

This news could be one of a few things:

Communication with aliens
Undeniable proof of the existence or non-existence of God
Demonstrable e.s.p or telekinesis or similar
The invention of a time machine
Travel to and from parallel universes
The invention of a faster-than-light spaceship
Discovery of a super-cheap, super-abundant, safe, environmentally-friendly energy source

I’m still waiting. Any day now.
09:35 am #

Seth Dillingham on documenting Conversant
Seth Dillingham is writing docs for Conversant. He writes, “It’s like learning a new way to see the software, because I’m forced to explain it to people who don’t really know anything about it. It can be frustrating, but it’s also helping me to see areas that could be improved in the software, things that are obvious and make the most sense only if you were present at the creation.”

It’s an important lesson I’ve learned several times—it’s good for engineers and architects to write docs because it makes the software better.

The software is everything—it’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, it’s why we stay up late, it’s what we dream about.

In fact, as I was lying in bed last night waiting for sleep to come I got into that semi-dreamy state, only instead of seeing butterflies or sheep or whatever I saw linked lists. In my mind I was skipping along, following the pointers, jumping from one node to the next.
08:50 am #

The Joys of SSH
Brent Ashley writes about the joys of ssh. One of my favorite ssh-related things is scp. With one command I can back up my entire website (which lives somewhere in California) to my local hard drive. Easy and secure.
08:36 am #