Feb 092007
 

I just read an awesome article by Bruce Eckel, author of Thinking in Java, about Java, Javascript, AJAX and Flex among other things. It’s really about how to write web applications in general. Bruce has been around since the beginning. I remember downloading the first edition of Thinking In Java way back when. He was one of the first authors I remember that provided his book in electronic form for free.
This quote jumped out at me:

And more and more often, when I use web applications like GMail, my “control-c” copy operation stops working. It could be Windows, Firefox, JavaScript or something else but it seems to be associated with web apps and it’s been happening for at least a year. And frankly I don’t care why it’s happening, and neither does any other consumer. When things this simple are broken, the outlook is not promising.

I’ve noticed this as well and hadn’t spent the time narrowing it down to blame GMail. Anyway, I haven’t had much exposure to Flex and my experience with Flash was the same as his originally. Cost was a big barrier to entry. Apparently, that’s no longer the case. Time to take a look at Flex, I think. Where the hell have I been?

[tags]bruceeckel, java, javascript, ajax, flex, ria[/tags]

 Posted by on February 9, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Feb 092007
 

WTF? I’ve seen four stories in the last 24 hours from different parts of the country where parents have left their kids in the cold and they’ve either died or nearly died.

  1. A father in Pittsburgh who abused his daughter and then left her outside in the snow. She died.
  2. A mother in Newark is charged with child endangerment for, among other things, making her 10 year old son stand outside in the cold, naked.
  3. A father in Minnesota left his 4 year old child in the car while he gambled in a casino. The child nearly died of hypothermia.
  4. A mother in Wisconsin left her two kids in the car while she went to a tanning salon.

Parent of the year awards for all of them. Nice job, morons.
[tags]cold, kids, abuse, parents[/tags]

 Posted by on February 9, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Feb 092007
 

After years of not much news from the West Memphis 3 case, there’s an update this week that the results of the DNA testing are coming back and one of Damien Echols’ defense attorneys sounds optimistic. I really hope they’re able to get a new trial.

Mara Leveritt, who wrote Devil’s Knot, a book about the case (and who I had the good fortune to meet at a signing in Chicago in August of 2005), was also interviewed by KARK and is updating news on her site.

P.S. The links to the KARK story are screwed up. It looks like they moved to a new domain name and didn’t bother to redirect properly. I contacted the WM3 site to let them know. The correct links are here (story and video).

[tags]wm3, westmemphisthree, westmemphis3, damienechols, dna, law, crime[/tags]

 Posted by on February 9, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Feb 092007
 
 Posted by on February 9, 2007 at 11:17 am