Being a writing-implement fanboy, I had to try out the new Sharpie Liquid Pencils, which are erasable for a few days and then become permanent. I’m not going to explain it much further, because they stink.

The form-factor is very much like a cheap uniball pen, except that you …

Mauna Kea Geminids

This is a movie of last night's sky from Mauna Kea and is well worth downloading. If you're wondering "Why is the sky blue but I can see the stars?" that's because for the first half of the night, the moon was up! At around midnight, it …

I was looking at Poliahu's white cloak covering the peak of Mauna Kea, and then I put my face in the water and looked down at the coral reef 40' below me and what should I see swimming below me but a manta ray with a 12'+ wingspan?

• Imagine that you have a hierarchical object graph:

hierarchy

And you want to merge two instances. Some elements should combine elements from both, some must take their value from the master. My example scenario is artificial, so please don't say 'well, if all you have to do is number pages …

After the 3rd or 4th "Year of the Network" everyone in business finally all got network cards in their computers, discovered email and the "Respond to all..." button and the world hasn't been the same since.

I understood Novell back in those days, but since, it's been harder. The idea …

Making it stick.: This is not the one: On Lisp.

Dr Dobbs - Q&A: Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons on DSLs.

I just received Fowler's DSL book in the mail and look forward to reading it. In the meantime, here's a brief interview at Dr. Dobb's on the subject.

The Price Is Always Right – MITs Real-Time Inflation Index.

There's a lot of criticism of the Consumer Price Index, including suspicion that it's intentionally gamed to further political agenda. Instead, MIT has created an index that uses Internet purchases to measure inflation.

...using the same reporting and writing techniques as more traditional journalists.

via Internet Evolution - CMO Clan Editors Blog - Why Intel Went Into the Journalism Business.

Time to bite the hands that have fed me, but this is important: When a Marketing/PR department has editorial control over a technical article …

In my most recent column for SD Times, I discuss recent disappointing events in the world of the DLR and suggest that Microsoft's internal competitiveness is creating too much chaos.