• Hemlock: Because immortality might not be such a good thing

June 22, 2009

• Genetically Modified Turbine-Powered Rabbit

June 18, 2009 – Brilliant.

• Project Coin Announces Second Candidate List

June 18, 2009 – Lists some of the proposed changes to the Java language in Java 7. Some of the stuff looks very Groovy inspired – in particular the features dealing with collections. Looking forward to this one. Along with closures, it should be a good release to remove some of the pain-points.

• Computers still struggling with sporting schedules

June 18, 2009 – A real world application of the traveling salesman problem, with far more constraints than you could imagine. Who would have thought scheduling a league fixture was this hard?

• Sonic lasers promise 1000 times faster PCs

June 18, 2009 – Cool.

It’s done! After three months of hard work to build up a set I am officially a stand-up comedian!

The video suffered some technical difficulties during recording. Basically all the really funny bits are missing. Honest! You should have been there! No, not really… It starts with “There was a guy at the train station asking for change…”

I came off stage and had no idea what just happened. Did any of it make sense? Did I miss whole paragraphs? Who knows, who cares. They laughed -- hard -- and that was all that mattered.

For anyone who wants to give it a bash, it’s one of the best extreme sports out there. The fear lasts for weeks beforehand. The pressure to not-choke up, the distinct possibility of public humiliation and the endless self-doubt -- “is that joke actually funny?”, “should I really say that?”, “does this shirt bring out my eyes?” -- all brings together the perfect storm of adrenaline. Awesome!

All the guys out on stage that night were doing it for the first time, and we were seriously buzzing afterwards.

I can’t wait till my next run out! The best fun I have had in a very long time.

“When I told my friends I wanted to be a comedian, they laughed. Well, they’re not laughing now!” -- Bob Monkhouse

• What Pair-Programing is Not

June 16, 2009 – Clear and simple explanation as to why pairing is a good idea. Easy to grasp when you do it, but not always as easy to explain to someone else.

• Complete implementation of MS LINQ for Java released

June 12, 2009 – No environment’s an island, and we finally get a LINQ implementation on the JVM. Well worth kicking the tires on this one, even if the underlying providers aren’t fully complete.

• Oracle Coherence vs. GigaSpaces XAP

June 12, 2009 – Having just gone through an exercise in comparing these two similar-but-different products, this is pretty handy.

• Keynote: The Future of Java Innovation

June 11, 2009

• Expialidocious : Mary Poppins Electronica Remix

June 11, 2009 – Remixing at its finest. Both video and soundtrack. Amazing.

• Futurama is Back, Baby!

June 11, 2009 – Awesome.

After 3 months of work from absolute scratch, I have just finished putting together my first stand-up routine. 5 minutes, no fat. Just in time too – the final practice session’s on tomorrow night, and then it’s time to take off the training wheels and face the crowd on stage on Sunday night. It’s amazing what you can come up with under pressure. I think it’s fair to say that I’m absolutely terrified, but at least I know that the material will get me through. Now all I have to do is memorize it, and then not forget it in a haze of public humiliation. No worries!

• Home taping didn’t kill music

June 8, 2009 – The music industry fudging numbers on piracy? No, it cannot be true. I love the idea that according to their download data, they’re losing £175 per person in the UK per week. That’s a whole lot of CDs

• Microsoft’s Unveils New Awesome Wireless Controller: The Human Body

June 2, 2009 – Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you can’t have missed this. Gaming without controllers! Makes the Wii look like a ball in a cup.

• Microsoft Bing: The Decision Engine

June 2, 2009 – So far so good. I’ve been playing with this, and it looks as though Google have some serious competition on their hands. Some of the features (such as decisions about when to buy flights) seem to be US specific, but nothing particularly new there. I’ll switch over for the week and see how it goes.

• Google Wave – Most Innovative Product of 2009?

May 29, 2009 – Google Wave preview.

• Microsoft’s Vision of the Future (Parody)

May 29, 2009 – Hilarious.

• Google Wave: Reinventing online communication

May 29, 2009 – Chat + email + documents + everything else crammed into one tool.

• Google to end trips to the meter cupboard

May 27, 2009 – Once upon a time I remember reading on Google’s “about” page that they did nothing but search. Back when I had just switched from AltaVista.

• Designated Drivers

May 27, 2009 – Reminds me of my AI class.