Blue Sky On Mars

In this article regarding Muslim law in Indonesia, a mention is made that:

Beliefs in witchcraft and mysticism are still widespread, especially on the main island of Java.

Hmm… If clinging to strong typing and checked exceptions is a form of mysticism, then the software development island of Java certainly has more than its share.

When working with large source trees, JQuery can be a big help.

JQuery is a flexible, query-based source code browser, developed as an Eclipse plug-in. After selecting a java working set of interest, a JQuery user can define his or her own top-level queries (or “browsers”) on-the-fly by formulating logic queries and running them against his/her source code. Alternatively, the user can choose from a variety of pre-written browsers, and use as-is or modify to suit their specific needs. Individual elements in the tree can then be queried individually in the same fasion. The user can specify how query results are organized in the hierarchical tree viewer using a simple variables editor interface.

Last week, I was reading through quite a bit of other people’s code… Had I but known about JQuery then!

Via Christoph Cemper I came across Enhydra’s workflow projects. We’re looking at open source workflow engines right now, so this is worth taking a look at. I do hope that we don’t have to drag along the rest of Enhydra’s infrastructure to use it.

Bill de hÓra wrote about his experiences moving to Subversion. I’ve been following Subversion for a while, but haven’t made the switch from CVS. It’s interesting to read about some of the differences in style of use.

A federal judge in Denver has halted the implementation
of the national do-not-call list on free speech grounds. I particularly enjoyed this quote from the article:

“Our Constitution allows consumers to choose not to receive commercial telemarketing calls,” [FTC Chairman Timothy] Muris said in a statement.

That’s crazy talk. Which Constitution is he reading? The one that was written pre-1800 certainly didn’t get into “telemarketing calls”, and I don’t think it’s necessarily obvious that Congress can block phone calls. Ultimately, I do think that telemarketing calls should not be protected speech because they are intrusive, person-to-person communications. It’s the same kind of thing as having a “No Solicitation” sign. People have a right to make their statements and be heard, but they do not have a right to invade my private space when they do it.

I’m getting a new PowerBook, and Apple is running a $200 rebate on iPods for education folks, so I’m getting an iPod, too. I was rather surprised when tracking the Airborne tracking number, Airborne reports that the last (and only) scan location for the package was Shanghai, China. I thought that was a mistake in the tracking, but a call to Airborne yesterday confirms that the iPod is hung up in customs because it was actually coming from overseas.

It’s crazy to think that it’s actually cost effective for Apple to ship individual units from China.

The Eudibamus Project from Fraunhofer FIRST is an integration of SnipSnap and Eclipse to allow developers to create links (in both directions, I believe) between code and documentation. I wonder how it integrates with CVS, since the documentation would ideally be shared as well… Sounds like something that is worth a further look!

I just spotted that the Eclipse Project Draft 3.0 Plan has been updated as of September 18th. There will be an M6 release in January, with a target release of 2Q2004. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet committed to early J2SE1.5 support.

Joel Spolsky describes his new “Bionic Office” layout, which he designed based on what he thinks will help produce great software. There are some neat ideas in there, and he even made it pair-programming friendly. Something of note is that I and many others have found that an open workspace can improve collaboration, but different people do have different work habits.

With the headline 5 Best & Worst Things To Say To Your Kids, I wasn’t sure what I’d think if this Parentstages article. But, I actually think that this is a good set of tips for saying things that are more productive.