Lisa Hannigan

Ever since I came across Damien Rice I've been watching out for evidence of his backing vocalist Lisa Hannigan branching out on her own. She is waaay to good to be a second fiddle.

And now she has. I hope she plays more dates in the US soon.

If you have not come across her before thing of a mashup between Norah Jones, Leonard Cohen with a touch of Mary Margaret O'Hara.

Oh for two slices of ... something

One of the perennial risks with Atkins-style diets is that there comes a point where you really, really want two slices of something to hold your bacon and cheese together in an ergonomic and non-messy way. The urge to grab that wonderful but seditious invention - bread - is very strong. Lettuce works but just doesn't feel right. Especially if you just lurve the smell of toast:-/

I am reminded of Woody Allen's hilarious short story about the Earl of Sandwich...

All joking aside, s/he who invents something that is very low carb (that rules out most of the so-called low-carb breads on the market), and can function like bread in a sandwich, has a bright financial future.

Suggestions?

Jython 2.5!

Great! Jython hits 2.5. I'm looking forward to giving this a whirl and using it extensively in upcoming projects.

Balisage looks good (again)

Again, the lineup for the Balisage conference looks good.

Some of the talks look intriguining. Markup as a nomic game sounds very interesting. Lots about pipelines...

I see that Michael Kay is going to talk about Jacskson Structured Programming and how it relates to XML and XML processing. Yay! Back in 1996 I gave a talk about JSP/JSD and SGML processing at SGML '96. I'm looking forward to reading Michael's paper. Jackson's inversion concept was a stroke of genius and his JSP/JSD work has very much influenced how I think about XML processing.

More techtorials?

I'm soliciting feedback/suggestions on the techtorials I have been doing with ITWorld.

I know that the handwriting quality is a problem for some people. Its tough writing with a pen interface and my handwriting is bad to start with...I have some ideas to address that.

I'm wondering whether the format has legs, what topics would be of potential interest and so on.

If you have something to say on the topic please use Left Field Techtorials feedback site or comment on this blog, or e-mail me.

career damaging self-description

career damaging self-description: some thoughts on how programmers describe themselves.

Risidual risk

A techtorial on risidual risk Is it secure?