Jamie’s Weblog

I’ve been accepted as a member of the Netbeans Community Acceptance Testing (NetCAT) program for the upcoming release of Netbeans 4.0. I’ll be testing beta-builds of NB 4 between now and the final release.

These two comic strips seem all-too-appropriate. In fact, the whole series obviously resonates with me. Oh, and procrastination is such a great word!

Not like this reader of Bruce Schneier’s Cryptogram (scroll down to the email from Ken Lavender). I first read the response and then had to go back and read Bruce’s original criticism of ICA’s encryption algorithm, Tree. Frankly, when you go to a company’s website and their measly bandwidth allowance has been exceeded (and they [...]

Wired magazine is not the only magazine which I buy but it’s the only one worth buying

Kottke reckons The Killers are pretty good. Me too, although I’m not sure about buying the whole album, I did buy the single “Somebody Told Me” a few months ago. This was the first single I can remember buying since the 80′s: A-Ha, Take On Me!! You can listen to snippets of The Killers’ debut [...]

Happy Left-handers day, Happy Left-handers day, Happy Left-handers day to me, Happy Left-handers day! update: It’s rather nice to think that my brian brain is weird wired a little different to most. This is probably a good book to read: Right Hand, Left Hand

MediaWiki v1.3 has just been released. This is the software which allows anyone to contribute to the online encyclopedia, wikipedia.

Monkeys can now be made more productive after a little spot of gene therapy. How long before this is made compulsory for humans joining certain companies? On the other hand, perhaps idleness is a better attitude to have? I think I’m probably in the latter camp, at least on most days. [inspired by this mornings [...]

Here’s my observation for the day: PhD students who get up from the desk carrying a notepad or laptop and return 30seconds later are playing a popular game known as “Catch the Supervisor”. This game has many variations but the basic idea is to catch your supervisor in the building (less points but still not [...]

It’s a gorgeous sunny day, complete with blue skies and the smell of freshly cut grass — and I pick today to question why I’m studying for a PhD, a qualification I have real interest in gaining. This occurs to me every few days, so it’s hardly unusual, but then I read Hugh’s 12th point [...]