Musings from the Peanut Gallery

This posting on Martin Fowler’s page points out the appropriate way to build a new system to replace an old one.
The basic idea is to build the new system around the edges of the old one, gradually moving functionality to the new system until it entirely replaces the old system, and you can turn it [...]

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This book is well worth reading if you like fantasy and/or dragons.
From the Amazon.com review(1435 customer reviews average 3.5 stars):
Surpassing its popular prequel Eragon, this second volume in the Inheritance trilogy shows growing maturity and skill on the part of its very young author, who was only seventeen when the first volume was published in [...]

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Arnold Kling has an interesting question on Global Warming in TCSDaily yesterday. He’s an economist, not a climate scientist, but he does understand that science is not about “consensus” but about observation, experimentation and analysis.
The comments following the article are articulate and capture the heart of the discussion well.

Technorati Tags:
Weather, Climate, Global Warming

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Kent Beck has a paper on the things we can learn from Lean, both lean manufacturing and lean product development.It’s a brief article, but worth the few minutes it takes to read.Technorati Tags:Agile Software Development

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The Space Review reports on a COTS proposal by Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) and Constellation Services International, Inc.(CSI) to use simple, low cost containers to manage shipping to the International Space Station using a series of vehicles for delivery, much like the surface freight industry uses intermodal containers to ship freight by truck, train and ship.

Technorati [...]

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Elon Musk has a new update out on the SpaceX website. Some highlights of the update include:

First Falcon 9 Hold down firing (with one engine)
First engine firing on big stand
Merlin 1C engine development complete
Groundbreaking at Cape Canaveral
NASA COTS Critical Design Review
Next Falcon 1 Launch, spring 2008

My one regret is that the update has several images [...]

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The Golden Compass is a movie, based on the book by Philip Pullman, tells the tale of an alternate universe where people’s souls inhabit animal spirits, called daemons.
I found the story fascinating, a good tale. I can understand why some would not like it from the religious standpoint, although in this first movie in the [...]

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One of the guys on an RV forum I subscribe to is a truck driver and shared this picture of I-5 at Centralia, WA.
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This is I-5 at exit 79 looking north.

Technorati Tags:
Flooding, Weather, I-5

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Bought the above hard drive to use as a backup drive after our little episode upgrading to OS X 10.5 Leopard. It’s a nice little drive, near as I can tell so far. And the Firewire 800 is a fast interface. Of course, the two laptops interface to it over the network at 52 MBytes/sec [...]

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