My exit paperwork is done. My laptop is wiped. My email account is disabled. My badge is turned in. I have cast off the lines, set sail, and await the wind. I’ve left a company I’ve known for almost five years. The product is a good one, being built and sold by good people. As […]
How To Watch
Sean W. writes: I’ve been busy working on a new business: How to Watch. This new business aims to help people find where a movie or TV show is available via online streaming (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant or iTunes). I got sick of having to search on each of the platforms to find “my […]
Watchlist, a Wishlist for Instant Video
So you’re talking with a friend, or overhearing a conversation in Twitter, and someone mentions a TV show or movie that sounds interesting. What’s a good way to remember it for later, in a service that’s easy and relativly inexpensive? Enter Amazon Instant Video’s Watchlist feature. Hop over to Amazon and search for a movie, […]
TDD is a Habit
Up-front admission: I am not “a software developer.” I dabble in software development. I work with software developers; I test and support their code and, though I write some code (and some of that has even shipped to customers as part of various products) I am not “officially” a developer. I don’t even play one […]
Ready Player One
It’s not often that I post book recommendations here, but here goes one. If you’re a child of the 80’s; if you ever walked into the arcade, dropped a coin in the slot in the slot let the “real world” fade away for a few hours; if you can quote lines — just a few […]
Intro/Refresher Resources for SQL
I was asked to find a few references for our people here; folks who are new to SQL or just haven’t used it in a while. Rather than have my notes tied up in email, I figured I’d put them here for all to use. We use both Oracle Database (10g now, 11g soon) and […]
Sharing your highlighted Kindle text
An addition to my previous post, about using highlighted text on the Kindle. Amazon’s Kindle preferences page, https://kindle.amazon.com/home/preferences can also be used to enable automatic sharing on Twitter and Facebook.
Getting highlighted text from the Amazon Kindle
Buying electronic books for the Kindle, and in conjunction the Kindle app on various devices – PC, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, etc. – has just become much more useful for me. Among the nice features of the Kindle software is the ability to hilight blocks of text and to take notes. This is hardly […]
Don’t Just Say…
Advice for my software testers, though it applies in many other parts of life as well: Don’t just say “this doesn’t work.” Use something like “This is what I did, this is what I expected, this is what I saw instead, here are the things I’ve tried, and this is what I think is wrong.” […]
Area 51
I just finished reading Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, by Annie Jacobsen. [Amazon] Lots of previously-unknown history. It’s a good book, even if there aren’t enough aliens.