You've got friends visiting. They're in town for 9 days. One day involves driving 4 hours to go to a botanical garden which you've been to before and flowers aren't really your "thing" anyway. Do you do it, because, you know, they're your friends, you'll enjoy being with them, etc …

As the OLPC launch approaches, I thought I'd take a look at the development environment. Somewhat to my surprise, the \<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Getting_started_programming"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">OLPC Development Wiki says that:

• Technically any language is usable
• Python is strongly encouraged, to …

To the naked eye, it doesn't look like much, but through binoculars, 17P/Holmes is incredible. I don't know how dependent that is on seeing it in very dark skies -- we had a really dark night Saturday. This is definitely one to go out of your way to see.

Alan Zeichick struck a nerve by calling BS on the premise that Daylight Savings Time saves money. Personally, I dislike DST because during the Summer (or, at this point, non-Winter) Hawai'i is 3 hours behind the West Coast, while during the Winter we're an hour closer and I can begin …

Wrox has begun producing low-cost DRM-free electronic content. Their initial product offering is nicely eclectic:

Leverage LINQ in ASP.NET 3.5 Projects
by Roger Jennings
This Wrox Blox introduces you to Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a .NET 3.5 application programming interface (API) and set of extensions to the …

Mathematica, my preferred tool for algorithm development and exploration, now has a runtime viewer that allows full access to Mathematica "notebooks." This is a wonderful step forward and I look forward to making some notebooks available in the future.

From SapphireSteel, the makers of IronRuby, comes the first peek at an IronRuby visual design surface.

Those without an investment in other editors would do well to investigate Open Komodo, a free as in speech editor based on the good as in good Komodo editor.

Shapewriter, formerly known as SHARK, is absolutely the fastest text input method short of typing (mmm... possibly voice input in certain domains). For years Shapewriter has languished at IBM's Alphaworks site. I can't wait for them to ship for the Tablet PC, although right now the downloads link at the …

"\<a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/att-invents-pro.html%23comments"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance" is Wired's absurdly bad headline describing how \<a href="http://www.research.att.com/%7ekfisher/hancock/"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hancock, "a C-based domain-specific …