Comments for Architecture enabling business

Comment on Measuring Software Productivity by jkoppelm

jkoppelm — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 11:08:38 +0000

Apropos: http://tinyurl.com/DilbertProgress

Comment on Keyboards by jkominek

jkominek — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:29:01 +0000

Being a keyboard junkie can be a tough life. My classic favorite has always been the Northgate Omnikey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northgate_Computers#Keyboards. Big spring action rebound similar to the IBM Model M. And same Click-Clack sound. (How Birdman and Wabi could stand it I don’t know.) They also kept the control key to the left of the A, “where God intended it to be,” as Jerry Pournelle was fond of saying. When Northgate sold their keyboard business to Avant I took no chances and bought three at something like $150 each.

The Northgate/Avant keyboards have the big old 5-pin connector cable, which you can run through a converter cable — but that still makes an about-to-fall-out-at-any time connection. What finally made me retire the Omnikey was my shoulder. The keyboard has huge girth; the long swing between home row and the mouse resulted in the development of tendinitis.

The solution came the form of the Happy Hacker keyboard. With a width less than 30 cm the mouse can nestle in close. There are two families of Happy Hacker keyboards and it is an important difference. The Lite models use a membrane switch. These are nice, and I have two, but Professional series are ones made for keyboard lovers. The finger feel of the Pro 2 is smooth and gorgeous. They ship from Japan, cost $250, and have very subtle embossed lettering. http://www.geekstuff4u.com/happy-hacking-keyboard-pro-2.html. For those that can fly blind (not me), they sell a model with blank black keytops. Operating a naked keyboard must be bragging point among the Tokyo hip.

One complaint: the absence of an inverted T arrow keypad is a sorely missed feature. I’m still trying to train my right hand’s minor fingers to master the Rt-Fn – [ ; ‘ / substitute arrangement.

Comment on Keyboards by jeromyc

jeromyc — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:04:44 +0000

Fixed. Thanks.

Comment on Keyboards by Jim Sokoloff

Jim Sokoloff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:00:38 +0000

404 on the Model M link (you have a double-paste of the URL).

Comment on A domain-specific language for … interval workouts by jeromyc

jeromyc — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:23:20 +0000

Yep, Lisp is a really nice language for building DSLs, based on what I’ve read/seen. But now I’ve got some nice ideas to improve my version – there are a lot of potential improvements… stay tuned.

Comment on A domain-specific language for … interval workouts by sokoloff

sokoloff — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:49:56 +0000

When I think of the utility of a DSL, a significant measure is succinctness. (Unfortunately, the example above looks like it's calling pre-packaged subroutines in an API rather than a true DSL.) If you ignore the parens, the following feels a lot more DSL-y to me: [Jeromy: I couldn't get Jim's code to show up here, so I embedded in an update to the post.]

Comment on I’m a Mac-PC by Stephen Rossi

Stephen Rossi — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:21:20 +0000

Good post, and surprisingly similar to my Mac/PC usage. I am still giving Evernote a test drive, and hopefully the next revision will add some needed features. I haven’t set up Parallels yet, since my work laptop is Windows so I can usually defer any PC-centric tasks to when I have access to it.

BTW, I’m subscribing to your RSS feed in Google Reader.

Stephen

Comment on Fun with VoodooPad/Outlook integration by jeromyc

jeromyc — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:36:53 +0000

I’ve decided to face this one head-on, in order to not sacrifice the productivity I know I lose when taking paper notes (I’ve been around this block more than once, and for a long time took notes on paper and scanned them). The machine I use for taking notes in meetings doesn’t have wireless network, which means there’s no temptation to multi-task, and its much easier to send the right linguistic and body language signals that lets your colleagues know you’re fully engaged in the interaction.

Comment on Fun with VoodooPad/Outlook integration by jkoppelm

jkoppelm — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:10:21 +0000

I used to be an avid online note-taker, as you are. But then I realized that my co-workers, and more importantly, my customers thought I was fully multi-tasking (email, coding, etc.). And of course, while the vast majority of the time I was fully engaged, the call of email and IM is sometimes impossible to resist.

So when I joined VistaPrint, rather than continue to take notes online, I exclusively use Notepad — the paper kind.

Comment on About by Superb Tapas and Wine at Taberna de Haro in Boston « Jeannie Carriere’s Blog

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:38:30 +0000

[...] (my husband and I) tend to order our “usuals” with one or two new dishes, not because we don’t like new [...]