10 Feb 2006 prla   » (Apprentice)

Reshuffle

Finally taking the resolution of getting up earlier than usual, I managed to rise at 7am, bright and early. Actually, forget the bright part because it was still dark outside. And considering the damn kitchen lights have gone tits up, I had to wait a while before I could grab breakfast. Not good.

But anyway, the morning was decidedly productive so I’ll definitely keep doing this and see how I get on in the next few days. Today I feel fine despite having somehow managed to partake in four football (5-a-side) matches since Monday. Somehow, I don’t feel tired at all, so either I’m doing something right or I will irretrievably crash soon. Time will tell.

Perhaps it is because my current main project focus so much on web application building that I feel the Ajax hype is reaching an all-time high. Web calendars in particular seem to be a dime a dozen these days and that seems to have tickled Joel Spolsky somewhat, I kid you not. He raises interesting points - though curiously none of those, in my opinion, are related to web calendars - especially when he mentions that a lot of companies nowadays are simply working towards getting bought by bigger fish. Is that a bad thing? Of course whoever works that way is basically throwing pride and enjoyment out of the window, but still, it simply comes down to business in the end of the day, doesn’t it? I see it as a great bonus, depending on where you find yourself after your startup has been acquired.

In the meantime, the web is burgeoning with interesting stuff, as far as I’m concerned:

  • Still on the topic of Ajax, check out this cool tutorial about an even cooler RSS Ticker. The possibilities just seem to be limitless…
  • I’ve been keeping an eye on Zimbra for a while now, despite not being a potential user, and it seems they have just released their collaboration suite after being alpha and beta for over a year now. Alongside heavy use of Ajax, it supports a plugin architecture (plugins that go by the catchy name of Zimlets), iCal, RSS/Atom plus clustering, fault tolerance and disaster recovery on its paid Network Edition. The free edition doesn’t include these but on the other hand is open source. In short, I really like how these guys work, how they present themselves and their product and how they integrate themselves within the open source community.
  • Think Secret is adding fuel to the rumours of a 6G iPod - the so-called “true” video iPod - being in the works. According to undisclosed sources it will sport a virtual digital click wheel built on the display itself which “appears when a finger touches it and disappears when the finger is removed”. Wow. It seems possible that Apple will announce and roll out these babies from April 1st, as Steve Jobs promised a big announcement by then celebrating the company’s 30 years. Engadget is showing off this cool mockup:

  • Finally, if you’ve ever wondered what is behind those cool Emacs programming modes, today is your lucky day.

And how about a brain teaser to end this post on a high note?

You look in a mirror, and let’s say you part your hair on the right side. You look in the mirror, and your image has its hair parted on the left side, so the image is left-to-right mixed up. But it’s not top-to-bottom mixed up, because the top of the head of the image is there at the top, and the feet are down at the bottom. The question is: how does the mirror know to get the left and right mixed up, but not the up and down?

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