Blinded by the (silver) light

You know, I am a real big fan of Pat Helland. I have never met the man, never corresponded with him, but find some of his content to be out-of-the-ballpark outstanding.

I'd love to watch the video on irresistible forces meeting movable objects but I need SilverLight to do it.

Now I'm on Linux at the moment and there is no SilverLight plug-in for Linux so that's it. I'm skipping over it. What a pity.

Fancy a Web 2.0 startup?

I have five web 2.0 ideas at the moment looking for a home. I don't have bandwidth to pursue them. They may be rubbish but I don't even have the time to do the work required to come to that conclusion.

I am also hooked into some mechanisms for funding Web 2.0 start-ups.

If you are a business-oriented type looking for a Web 2.0 idea to pursue, lets talk.

If you are a technology-oriented type looking for a Web 2.0 idea to pursue, lets talk.

If you have your own Web 2.0 idea but need early stage funding. Lets talk.

I am at XTech in Dublin next week. If you are too, lets hook up there.

You can contact me at my propylon e-mail address. Just take out the spaces in my name and but a dot between the n and the m.

Lumberjacks or magician?

"There are two types of integrated development environments (IDE) in the world. That is convenient, because there are two types of developer in the world.

To make things even more symmetrical and just super peachy, there are two types of opinions about IDEs in the world. Those that make grand generalizations and make everything look nice and binary; and those that do not.

The opinion in this article is in the former camp. There are two types of possible reaction to this..." -- When choosing an integrated development environment, prefer lumberjacks to magicians

Yummy. A puzzle!

Solve the puzzle that comes out later today, win some money, and provide even more money for a scholarship program. All you have to do is enter and answer, “who?”

http://scholarpuzzle.wordpress.com. I'm looking forward to it!

How to stop worrying and learn to love IT complexity

"From time to time I find myself feeling overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of all the moving parts that make up modern IT environments. Even if your job is not specifically about fixing stuff, it is so very, very easy to lose entire days trying to get X to work with Y. Or trying to find some way to make X work on top of Y. Or trying to figure out why X works on its own but as soon as you add in Y, X magically stops working ... It is amazing we get anything done at all really." -- How to stop worrying and learn to love IT complexity

77% growth? Wow

Looks like 1040 people attended Pycon 2008 representing a 77% increase on last years attendance. over 1k people at a Python conference! Times have changed. My one and only Python conference to date was in Houston Texas 10 years ago. (10!).

There was significantly less that 1000 people at that event. I remember we pretty much all bailed out to a Sushi bar one evening, handed over a collective bunch of dollars and asked them to bring "food" . Try that with 1000+ delegates.

The soul of the new machine

New Pet