Tim Buntel’s Long Overdue and Reluctantly Agreed-to Blackstone Blog (It’s a ColdFusion thing, so you know.)

Well, last week saw the launch of a new set of software that I wrote, and this software was a substantially refactored version of some software that I wrote last year. I, apparently, was much dumber last year, because I am generating the same result with my software as the set of components I wrote a year ago, but the new version is something like 2200 lines of code shorter. Anyway, I spent a good chunk of my weekend overseeing the live burn-in of that software, fixing some minor bugs that cropped up, and generating a punchlist for some improvements. All fun, and fun to cross a big project off my to do list.

Unfortunately, the end of that project coincides with the true beginning of our busy season. We have our first major event of the season this week. If I remember last year correctly, everything from this event forward is a blur of work.

I really do not know the first thing about software development Someday, maybe I will. I am trying very hard to learn.

Sotheby’s to Sell Belongings of Johnny Cash

Engadget: Real photo of the new Sidekick!

The Yankees beat the Angels last night to go a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East. Since the Sox swept the Yankees at home in April, the Yanks have won seven straight series now.

There have been quite a few sites yesterday and today linking to this Sacramento Bee interview with an ex-Marine who was in Iraq. I read the interview last night, and there is one section that made me a little nervous. The interviewer asks what an ICBM is after the Marine says that “I had one of my Marines in my battalion who lost his leg from an ICBM.” The marine answers that an ICBM is “a multi-purpose cluster bomb.” I always thought that an ICBM was a missile, so I went a searching. I could find no reference at all to a cluster bomb by this name. I sent an email off to the reporter who did the interview last night but haven’t heard back yet. Am I wrong? Here is one of the several comprehensive listings of American cluster armaments that I found online. Update: I just got an email from the interviewer letting me know that this was an error and that it is being corrected now.

More about NetNewsWire 2.0: “It will be a free upgrade for 1.x users. If you bought (or if you buy) NetNewsWire 1.x, all 2.x versions will be free. We won’t do this for every major upgrade, but we’re doing it this time.” No mention specifically about what new functionality is in this version.

As this year progresses, the political humor gets better and better. This defective yeti piece is absolutely hilarious, regardless of your political orientation. The Daily Show has been just great, and I don’t use that term as lightly as you might think, every time I have seen it in the last month.

This year’s Screen on the Green schedule looks delightful. Who could resist Young Frankenstein, a blanket and a couple of bottles of wine under the stars? Not to mention the expected fun and mirth of a mid-town crowd for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Finally, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda introducing Barefoot in the Park? I will be there, in the park, and also barefoot.

Leo says goodbye to Call for Help and Tech TV. I’m interested to see what the new channel, the ineptly named G4TechTv, has to offer, what it’s vision is, and what the quality level of the programming will be. I know that there was a huge difference, in my opinion, between the level of the existing TechTV, which was polished and informative, and G4, which has this sort of amateurish feel to it. I had watched both prior to this merger, so I don’t believe that I am biased in my thinking.

Mac OS X: Highly critical security flaw Mac users take note! It is easily fixed by changing some settings. (Solution is in the comments of that post.)

Danger to bring Yahoo Messenger to handhelds

According to the blueprint, Arrested Development, my favorite new show of this last television season, will be back next year. I hope they have the good sense to move it to a different night. (via)

NBC Fall Lineup announced. Two more years of Scrubs!! That is good news for those of us who enjoy that particular comedy. They are adding a fourth Law and Order show. Between the three CSI’s and the four Law and Orders, you could start a network that ran nothing but law enforcement dramas.

BugMeNot.com is a site that lets you bypass annoying sites that force you to register to view content. (via)

RipDigital and MusicRip are two examples of companies that will take your CD collection and rip it for you at about a dollar a disk. I’ve got a lot of music, and I don’t think I really want to spend the kind of money I would have to to get everything ripped. I, however, am thinking about choosing about 200 disks that I really want ripped and sending them off. It would probably take me a weekend to rip 200 disks myself, adding the time it takes to check the meta-data that the CDDB returns, which, for a lot of the stuff I listen to, is somewhat wrong. Anyone used either of these services, or know of any that are better? Let me know in the comments, I guess.

There is a very in-depth article on testing page load speed posted over at Surfin' Safari.

I had almost forgotten somehow that I can post here from my sidekick. I ended up getting a replacement Sidekick instead of going with the Treo 600. My existing Sidekick, the black and white model, had battery issues, and the battery in it is not user replaceable.

Daring Fireball: Like a Lead Zeppelin: “Don’t announce ship dates. Don’t announce forthcoming features. And don’t announce future pricing. When the software is done, then announce it. You will never disappoint.”

Guardian Unlimited has an interview with Evan, one of the founders of Blogger. It’s the first place where I have seen someone from Blogger actually comment on their stand on syndication. He says, “We went with Atom feeds for everybody - they’re on new blogs by default - because of the ease of use and simplicity.” I mean, it is Google’s software, and it is their decision to make, but I think that introducing Atom into the equation makes it more confusing. Even today, on a mailing list of some fairly technology savvy people that I am on, someone asked the RSS vs. Atom question, and I grimaced. If the best argument for going with Atom as a Syndication format is ease of use and simplicity, then they don’t really have a decent argument for not offering both and making Atom the default. This just makes them look ridiculous and bitchy to me. (via)

Blogger Help : Known Issues This is something that might be helpful to refer to in the future. A couple of interesting items in the list too. “Blog*Spot blogs occasionally render a massive amount of gibberish in Mozilla” Now that’s odd, I seem to see a lot of “gibberish” on Blogspot blogs, and I don’t always use Mozilla:-)

The Trailer for the next Pixar production, The Incredibles, is just flat out nice. There is more good stuff over at the movie’s Web site. I’m actually excited to see this movie now.

Couldn’t make it to Coachella, but want to wear the merchandise so you fit in with the cool kids? Well, now you can.

A List Apart: Separation: The Web Designer’s Dilemma