From the monthly archives:

July 2006

A Hard Landing At Galt Airport

by Ron Bieber on Sunday, July 30, 2006

Last night we attended the Hard Landing event at Galt Airport in Woodstock. The featured bands for the evening were Hudson McCoy, Rare Earth, and Blue Oyster Cult.

I had never been to a Galt Airport event, so I had nothing to compare it to, but we had a pretty good time. Rare Earth and Blue Oyster Cult are seriously at the top of their game. They sounded absolutely great.

Hudson McCoy was pretty good as well, if you like blues music. I’m one of those people who likes blues, but when I’m seeing a band live its more meaningful to me if I have heard their music before. I tend to me more receptive to unfamiliar music with an album than I am seeing a live band. Most of the Hudson McCoy set seemed to be originals that I had never heard before. So overall, for me, Rare Earth and BOC was the highlight of the evening.

We tried to get pictures throughout the night, but we didn’t get many that turned out well. Our camera just doesn’t do very well at long distances when it starts to get dark.

The event was quite a bit smaller than, say, a Ribfest – and it showed. One of the things that they really have to work on for next year is having more hand washing stations around the washroom area.

I’m a compulsive hand washer – its one of those weird things for me that I’ve never been able to get under control (though, thinking about it, it seems that if your going to have an obsession, hand washing is a good one). For me, there is nothing more horrible than walking around somewhere and having the urge to wash your hands and having one station available that is completely out of water and / or soap. Worse than that though, is watching so many people come out of these washrooms trying to wash their hands and having no water available to do so.

Last night there were two scenarios. In one instance there was no soap in the station. For a neurotic like me, washing your hands isn’t washing them without soap. The second scenario was worse though – only soap and no water. For some reason, having soap all over your hands with no ability to rinse it off just sends my brain off into a ‘tizzy’ – that’s my obsessive-compulsive side at its finest. I wound up going to the beer tent and asking the people attending there to drop large handfuls of ice in my hands so that I could rinse the soap off.

So to summarize, the event was fun. There was great music and the crowd was considerably more laid back and considerate than they were at the REO concert earlier this month. The organizers definitely have to make some improvements in the hygiene facilities moving forward though.

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SvnX : A Mac OSX Subversion Client

July 29, 2006

I haven’t looked at it yet, but definitely will be. SvnX is a Mac OSX client for the Subversion Version Control System.

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Wordpress 2.0.4 released.

July 29, 2006

The Wordpress team has released version 2.0.4 of the Wordpress blogging software. From the release notes:

This release contains several important security fixes, so it’s highly recommended for all users. We’ve also rolled in a number of bug fixes (over 50!), so it’s a pretty solid release across the board.

This release contains security fixes. [...]

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Jonesing for Metallica? Try iTunes!

July 27, 2006

I was quite happy today to find out that Metallica is finally offering their music via iTunes. I asked for Master of Puppets for Christmas last year (because I had lost it somewhere) and on top of it, when I tried to rip my “black album” to my iPod I found that [...]

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Troy Needs an iPod

July 26, 2006

Is there anything sadder than a podcaster without an iPod? I don’t think so. One podcaster is holding a fund drive to get an iPod. Check out TroyNeedsAnIPod.com.

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Thoughtworks Buildix Package

July 26, 2006

I was going to write about the Buildix product released by Thoughtworks but Keith woke up from his blogging hibernation and beat me to it. It looks like a cool product.

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Random Thoughts on Lean Principles

July 26, 2006

Last night I finally received my copy of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. I’ve actually had quite a few books on order and as they’ve been coming I’ve hoped that they were this one. Finally it got here.
I started getting really [...]

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Yahoo News: Computer Program Helps to Reduce Drinking

July 23, 2006

Look out A.A, the 12 step program might be antiquated. The University of Wales, Banglor has created a computer program that helps excessive drinkers cut down. Good God, they’ve automated the Swish Pattern!

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The Emperor Gets New Clothes (NOT!)

July 23, 2006

I don’t think this picture needs any explanation.

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Flowers For The Spouse of an Over Time Worker

July 23, 2006

Jonna started a new job a few months ago as a QA Analyst. She has been working tons of overtime over the past few months due to a new site launch. When we got back from the Bristol Renaissance Fair yesterday evening, we found these on the door step. [...]

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iTunes Music Store Faster on a Mac?

July 21, 2006

I’ve been meaning to throw this question up here for a while. Is it just me, or is the iTunes Music store a hell of a lot faster on a Mac than it is on Windows?
While I like the convenience of iTunes, I absolutely dreaded hitting the music store [...]

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Interview with Dave Thomas on Agile

July 20, 2006

I found a really good podcast called The Agile Toolkit Podcast, in which the host, Bob Payne, attends agile conferences and interviews people there. Some of the interviews include people like Bob Martin and Mary Poppendieck among many others.
The most interesting show I’ve listened to so far is an interview with Dave Thomas [...]

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New Things To Learn!

July 16, 2006

One of the really nice things about switching platforms is the plethora of new things one now has the capability to learn that you might not have found a reason to learn before.
I’m a stickler on having something practical to do when learning something. If I don’t have a real thing to shoot [...]

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Happy Birthday Jake!

July 15, 2006

Happy birthday to Jake (or as we like to call him, “Boy #1″), who turns 16 today.

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Googles Marissa Mayer on Standford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

July 15, 2006

There is a great talk by Googles Marissa Mayer on the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast (see the Spring 2006 section). Marissa talks a lot about Googles culture and what makes them a great place to work. There are some GREAT things in this podcast. A must listen!

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Books: The Culture Code

July 11, 2006

Over the weekend I found an excellent book by an author named Clotaire Rapaille called The Culture Code : An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do.
Rapaille, a cultural anthropologist, has consulted with large companies for years. His talent is finding the cultural [...]

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More Fun with Pictures …

July 6, 2006

Comic Life makes going through older pictures even more fun than it was before. How did I ever get along without a Mac?
This picture would have gone really well with this post from late 2004.

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Podshow+ Now in Public Beta?

July 4, 2006

For the first time since joining the Podshow+ Developer Beta, this morning when I went to update my podcasts in iTunes I wasn’t prompted for the closed beta login. It looks like Podshow has opened up the site for public beta. Go take a look.

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Movies: Superman Returns

July 3, 2006

We took what seems like a very long 2 1/2 hours of our day yesterday to go see the new movie, Superman Returns. I’m pretty wishy washy about this one. I don’t hate it, but its not the best either.
One of the things I’m trying to keep in mind is [...]

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Podcast Site Availability

July 2, 2006

I’ve been having some availability issues with the podcast site and am trying to fix them. During this time the site will be temporarily unavailable (ironically). Thanks for your patience. I’ll have the site up as quickly as DNS can refresh.

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