Closing Out 2005 As An Independent

I just posted my three final invoices for 2005, my first full year of living in Hawai'i. The good news is that I beat my budget targets by 16%. The bad news is that, because of the move, I reduced those targets by 15%! The other bad news is that …

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A Tale of Two Micro-ISVs

::: {.Section1} [Gus Mueller, developer of Voodoo, a desktop Wiki application for the Mac, has been able to quit his day job based on the sales of his two applications. Eric Sink, who developed a guaranteed-winnable version of Windows Solitaire, made \$215 in 15 months and has sold off the app …

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Boot Windows XP off a USB flash drive

::: {.Section1}

[It would be a really good idea to do this as a basic safety process: ]{style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy"}[installing XP on your 256MB-or-bigger USB flash drive](https://www.tomshardware.com/articles/ "http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050909/index.html")

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XBox 360 Makes Me Want HDTV

I have what was considered a great TV in its day (the year 2000) -- a 27" Sony Trinitron. There are no over-the-air HD signals here on the slopes of Hualalai Volcano, I have basic cable, and my Tivo doesn't record in HD. Project Gotham Racing totally makes me want to …

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Turbo Ruby

::: {.Section1} [Wouldn't it be awesome if Borland released a complete Ruby development environment that could target native Windows, Linux, the JVM, and .NET? Plus, of course, Rails? ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"} :::

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Energy levels: MSFT vs GOOG

::: {.Section1} [I guess a bit of a theme is emerging today, check out this account from an ex-Microsoftian on the energy levels at Google:]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: navy; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}

A little over a year ago I left Microsoft and went to work for Google. During the interview process …
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das Blog developer joins MS

::: {.Section1} [Clemens Vaster, the original developer of my preferred blogging engine (dasBlog), has joined Microsoft as a Program Manager for WCF (Indigo). ]{style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"}

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[If the past is any guide, the next six months will have a significant uptick in moves in …

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van Rossum goes Google?

::: {.Section1} O'Reilly's Jeremy Jones is reporting that Guido van Rossum, creator and lead developer of the Python programming language, is now working for Google\< ?xml:namespace prefix = o />.

My immediate reaction was "Not Heinemeir Hansson?" (The creator of Ruby on Rails, the much more buzzword-y framework for Web apps).

Seriously …

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King Kong: Good Movie, But the FX Aren't The Best

I liked King Kong quite a bit, and I'll say that the special effects of Kong's face are the best I've ever seen. But in most of the action scenes, I thought the effects were a notch below Lord of the Rings. The dinosaur chase scene I thought was really …

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Getting Sacked The Week Before Christmas

CMP, a major trade publisher, laid off a bunch of people in their software development publishing group on Friday, including blindsiding a five-month pregnant editor who'd worked there for more than a decade. Ah, corporate America!

I suspect that at least two well-known but ad-challenged magazines are going to shut …

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