It's News to Me

I've mentioned Colm Smyth here before. Last night, he called from Dublin (via Skype) and we talked for about 30 minutes.

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On Thursday, Dec. 29th, Joel Spolsky, in a post called «The Perils of JavaSchools,» flashed his «old school» credentials by complaining that kids these days have it too easy, because they are allowed to use Java in learning programming, and therefore he contends that they don't know nearly as much as they should, because they didn't have to learn programming the way he did. In particular he said ...

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January 1, 2006, dawns., originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

I welcome the new year, not because there was anything wrong with the old year, but because of the opportunity the new year offers. Though I did not see the old year out with revelry, I did get up early and celebrate the dawn of another year and the chance it offers to get it right this time. This is the 65th time I have seen a new year dawn. I keep hoping that this time I can improve on all the previous attempts at living the year right. We will just have to wait to see, I suppose.

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They say «timing is everything.» And I'd have to agree.

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Christmas is upon us.  Therefore you can anticipate that my blogging will be lite for a while.  Since I haven't sent out Christmas cards this year, let me point you to this online Christmas greeting (in the event that you care for such things) that my friend Jane Hascall made me aware of.  Clicking the symbols from right to left progressively changes the image.

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It's never too early to think about one's New Year's resolutions, and as I was doing my morning surfing today, I came across the LibriVox Project, which seems like a worthwhile effort.  This article on Wired News gives a good overview of the goals and objectives of the project.  Not sure yet whether I'll make participating in it a part of my resolutions for the New Year, but it seems like the kind of thing I might enjoy doing.

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IVR, or Interactive Voice Response systems, are those annoying «machines» you get when you call a company. Most of the time you must wait for all the options to be explained to you, trying all the while to decipher which option gets you to the service you want, before you can speak to a representative of the organization. Many of us, myself included, find them just another bane of modern life. One enterprising gentleman, Paul English, has created an IVR Cheat Sheet that gives you the codes to enter into your phone that will immediately send you to a human being. This is, in my opinion, a valuable resource worth bookmarking for future use.

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PopFile Report, originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

Spam is a pain. That, I know, is not news. However, the pain of it can be lessened. The way I deal with it is by using a program called PopFile, which is pictured above. If you'd like to see a much larger version of the image, click here. The program is open source and free and available from Source Forge.

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A new day dawns, originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

It's always good to get an early start on the day and sometimes you are rewarded with a beautiful sunrise. It's cold here in Knoxville today, but it looks like it is going to be a spectacular day, one just right for getting me in the Christmas spirit. Now to make something of the day that is before me!

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Today Yahoo acquired del.icio.us. That's news, not just to me, but to you as well, I think. Previously, Yahoo had acquired Flickr, another site that employs tagging as a strategy. I've been using del.icio.us since I started this blog on WordPress.com back at the end of October, and of course, I have been using Flickr as my photo sharing site since back in November of 2004. You can see my del.icio.us tags here. To answer your questions about what del.icio.us is, let me quote this excerpt from the Wikipedia explanation ...

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