So beautiful, yet so violent. The full-size image is available at the NASA Earth Observatory.

This insider’s account of the USA‘s fight against terrorism from the Reagan administration until after 9/11 makes for gripping reading. Although Clarke apparently got a number of facts wrong, the big picture seems to be portrayed correctly. Some parts are heavily disputed, though, like the connection of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to Iraq, and whether the Clinton and Bush Jr. administration dealt adequately with al Qaeda (search online for Clarke/Mylroie to find details). But then, Clarke paints a positive image of Clinton’s actions, and a negative one of Bush Jr.’s actions, while Mylroie sees it just the other way around -and has her own books to sell- so some disagreement is to be expected.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quote from a news story:

His Pentagon-appointed lawyer stayed silent during the trial, refusing to even answer questions from the judge.

Read it at Gitmo jury: Life sentence for bin Laden videomaker and weep.

I was searching for some stats on the world’s GDP and came across this amazing map: US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs. Wow. The only problem with this map is when staring at it in a fully mesmerized state of mind I tend to attribute the size of country’s GDP to the size of the corresponding state, which is not correct, of course. Other than that, it’s a wonderful little example of information visualization.

Many people seem to like the new Pixar flick, but I think it’s a far cry from the likes of Ratatouille and Toy Story. A little robot cleans up the over-littered earth after all humans have decamped for more hospitable grounds far away, and he falls in love with a visiting robotess who’s looking for life left on the planet. Sure, it’s cute, and it’s fun to see where mankind might be headed once people are too obese to walk on their own, but the plot never really engages the viewer, and seems an incoherent whole.

More info at imdb.com

Here.

I hate twitter. I hate the idea of twitter. I don’t want to read about how some friend of mine just returned from his/her trip to bathroom and how it all went. And most of us aren’t visited by great ideas worth to be shared with the rest of mankind every 30 minutes. I know I am not. The only thing I am interested to know every 30 minutes is what my friends are reading, what page they are on and what they think about the book at this very moment.

GoodReads’ online book warehouse got it pretty close to what my dream book warehouse looks like. It comes with pre-installed “read”, “currently reading” and “to read” shelves, which is how I naturally sort my books. It allows you to rate your books and to post quick comments, and here they got it right again. To write a full-blown book review is time-consuming and I often lack will power to finish mine, or even to start them. A bookshelf so inviting to “quick-and-dirty” style of book reviews instantly won me over. Sometimes the book is so uninspiring, so all I want to do is to give it 1 star and to add “I wonder why it is even written”. Sometimes I want to keep a few quotes in hope that some day I will add some profound comments to them.

Thomas Paul apparently types away a couple of pages for every book he reads, but who else can do it? For the rest of us there is GoodReads.

I‘d like to recommend Kent Beck‘s keynote from this year‘s RailsConf to everybody interested in software development. Kent talks about his involvement with patterns, developer testing and extreme programming, how each came about, and what he thinks about the outcomes. An MP3 file and the presentation slides are available here, and a video feed (which helps tie together the slides and the talk) is here. The talk also touches on a range of other topics, such as architecture, Ruby, IDEs, technology adoption, marketing of ideas, and much else, and is a joy to listen to. The following are the books that get mentioned (and are thus implicitly recommended by Mr Beck). Christopher Alexander in particular has long been on my reading list; maybe this will actually coax me into reading him.

Read the rest of this entry »

JavaFX Script („JavaFX“ henceforth) is a new way to develop client-side Java GUI applications, comprised of a more declarative code syntax, and some new ways to couple behavior to code. That being the case, it (and by extension, this book) has two audiences: developers proficient in Java who want to learn about JavaFX, and web developers interested in building rich client applications who may not know much (or any) Java.

Read the rest of this entry »

The film depicts a neighborhood of Paris and its inhabitants in their pursuit of happiness, or simply their daily life. The focal point is a severely ill man who watches the people from his balcony but can’t take part any more, and his sister who helps him cope. There are some similarities to Short Cuts, although more attention is given to love and companionship here (as befits the city), sometimes in all its undignified -but all too human- glory. Imperfect people try to make the best of life in a great city, or -as the main character summarizes it- “That’s Paris – everybody complains, nobody just enjoys living.”

More info at imdb.com

Not difficult if you happened to be a Russian. Yesterday I was waiting in line in a pharmacy, and there was a woman before me who walked carefully, leaning heavily on her walker. Something was strange in her posture, and then I figured what it was: she was wearing shoes with high heels. Even before she started to talk to her husband I knew: she was a Russian.