Random Articles

• Leo Laporte Gives Up on Podcasting I’ve subscribed to the Daily Giz Wiz for quite a while now - the combination of goofy banter, unloved gadgets, generally silliness, and it’s brevity makes for great podcasting. It’s the only TWIT-family podcast I was still subscribed. Unfortunately, in today’s - #166 - the new TWIT intro calls it a ‘netcast’. Lame. What’s a ‘netcast’? Do
• Learning Ruby - Day 7  Day 7, playing catch-up. I’m continually impressed with how concise the Ruby language is. As I mentioned in Day 4, Ruby frowns upon loops. I’m getting the impression Ruby also frowns upon taking up 2 or more lines to describe an action. Slagell’s examples of doing something a traditional way take up multiple lines, his here’s-a-better-way
• Carbon Trading in the US and Minnesota If you caught the NPR/National Geographic segment on the European carbon trading efforts you may have gotten the impression that: the price of being carbon neutral is so low (+2%) that it’s irresponsible not to pay it. a market for carbon dioxide, mandatory or otherwise, didn’t exist stateside. True on the former, false on the latter. First Crack
• From Podcast to Publish If you’re in the Twin Cities, head on down to your favorite coffee shop and grab the Sept. issue of the Rake. Then turn to page 18, second column. Yep, that’s an article by yours truly. Sure, you could stay indoors and click this Prairie Home Companion Production Assistant link, but it’s a beautiful late
• Learning Ruby - Day 9  Day 9 - Program organization, Part 1 of 3. Back in my review of The Object-Oriented Thought Process, I talked about the difference between is a and has a in programming world. Dave was then kind enough to clarify. Today’s chapter was that. In practical, We’re-Writing-Code terms, rather than the abstract, This-is-How-To-Think-About-It way of the previous