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August 22, 2002

bill willingham interview

Comic Book Resources has an extensive interview with Bill Willingham, writer for one of the best new comics out there today: Vertigo's Fables.

Posted by Brian at 10:32 AM |

will wright

Great interview with Will Wright, creator of The Sims, SimCity, and other classic Maxis simulation games.

Posted by Brian at 10:19 AM |

August 19, 2002

feynman lectures

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom is a classic (1959) lecture given by the late physicist Richard Feynman, which discusses the possibilities of nanotechnology. Feyman gave many lectures on various topics, both hard-core physics and general science. Another of his classic lectures is from a CalTech commencement address in 1974, entitled Cargo Cult Science.

Posted by Brian at 11:32 AM |

August 17, 2002

tomcat 4.1.9

The Jakarta project has released a new look at some of the Java IDE's available for the Macintosh platform.

Posted by Brian at 9:37 AM |

jason hunter

IBM developerWorks has an interview with Jason Hunter, Apache's representative to the Java Community Process, and a major force in the efforts to convince Sun to open the Java platform up.

Posted by Brian at 9:36 AM |

Building a J2EE web log application

Building an Open Source J2EE Weblogger is a tutorial from O'Reilly Network that gives a good introduction to some of the technologies that make up the J2EE platform.

Posted by Brian at 9:34 AM |

August 14, 2002

software archaeology

Software Archeology: Understanding Large Systems tells the story of a huge, nightmarish software system at General Motors in the early 80's, maintained (such as it was) by EDS. (Update: this is actually part of a larger collection of papers from one of the OOPSLA conferences).

Posted by Brian at 1:30 PM |

oreilly BGP multihoming

O'Reilly Network has a good introduction to multihoming Internet connections using BGP. I need to dig into BGP, since we don't use it at work, and since it will be on the CCNP routing exam.

Posted by Brian at 11:48 AM |

ssh proxy

Ovidiu Predescu has an interesting weblog entry about using OpenSSH's external connection capability to connect to hosts through a firewall when you have access to an HTTPS-capable proxy server.

Posted by Brian at 10:37 AM |

integrating MacOS and UNIX

An older, but still excellent paper from Wilfredo Sanchez of Apple on the challenges they faced when integrating the BSD UNIX core with the traditionally single-user MacOS operating system for MacOS X.

Posted by Brian at 10:21 AM |

thinlet

Thinlet is a lightweight Java toolkit for building GUI interfaces. It uses an XML specification to define the interface, then takes care of all the Swing work for you.

Posted by Brian at 9:18 AM |

August 13, 2002

ieee and id

The IEEE's "Spectrum Online" site has an outstanding article on the technology behind id software's games, from Commander Keen all the way up through Doom III. Awesome.

Posted by Brian at 9:17 PM |

August 12, 2002

chimera

I just started using Chimera as my primary browser on OS X. It's a lightweight, Cocoa-based (i.e. native UI, non XUL) browser based on the Mozilla "Gecko" rendering engine. It's still pretty young, and some of the features in Mozilla I use heavily aren't there yet (bookmark keywords, mainly, plus the Movable Type bookmarklet doesn't work). On the other hand, it's MUCH faster and uses considerably less RAM than Mozilla or IE. I like it a lot so far.

Posted by Brian at 4:09 PM |

August 9, 2002

walmart CIO

CIO Magazine has an interesting, if not incredibly technical, interview with Kevin Turner, CIO for Wal-Mart. It's pretty amazing that he runs IT for such a gigantic company, using primarily homegrown IT tools, and he's only 36!

Posted by Brian at 2:33 PM |

pythoncard

Another article from onLAMP, this one on developing applications in Python using PythonCard, a development tool similar to Apple's classic HyperCard.

Posted by Brian at 2:30 PM |

atomic file ops

From OnJava comes an article on performing atomic file operations in Java, essentially implementing database-style transactions for working with files.

Posted by Brian at 2:28 PM |

python cookbook

OnLAMP has an article about the making of the new Python Cookbook. So far I haven't been able to find it at any of my local B&N's, but I'm really looking forward to picking it up.

Posted by Brian at 2:14 PM |

backing up OS X

O'Reilly's Mac OS DevCenter has an article on backing up directories on your OS X system automatically, and using the proper tool for the job to handle MacOS X files.

Posted by Brian at 10:50 AM |

osx startup scripts

Apple has an article on their Open Source site about how to create Startup Items under OS X. It's not as simple as a script in /etc/rc?.d like it is in most UNIX OS's if you want to do it right.

Posted by Brian at 10:43 AM |

Advanced Log Processing

SecurityFocus has an article covering "Advanced Log Processing," focused on different methods for handling system logs (primarily for IDS or firewall applications).

Posted by Brian at 10:26 AM |

eugene jarvis

Here's an interview with Eugene Jarvis, the creator of such classic video games as Defender and Robotron.

Posted by Brian at 10:24 AM |

evil overlord

Not really tech-related, but it's pretty funny: Things I will do if I am ever a vampire.... Similar in concept to the Evil Overlord Handbook.

Posted by Brian at 10:18 AM |

pypect

Pypect is a pure Python module similar to Expect, for spawning and controlling external processes, but without the need for Tcl.

Posted by Brian at 10:16 AM |