Received my copy today of the Pro Web 2.0 Mashups book I did the technical review for. Always neat to see something you’ve worked on become real. Also, I hate writing bios like this.

I discovered today (and I should have known but I’d never bothered to think about it before) that my refrigerator has no less than three computers inside of it—possibly more. With those kinds of brains you’d think it could do my taxes and help my kids with their homework. Instead, it’s having difficulty just trying [...]

I’ve just rolled out an API for the Big Huge Thesaurus. Need synonyms? Give the free API a try.

DBDesigner 4 “DBDesigner 4 is a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.” Looks very robust. One of the few tools that supports reverse engineering. MySQL Workbench “MySQL Workbench is a cross-platform, visual database design tool developed by MySQL. It is the highly anticipated successor [...]

I just finished technical review on a new book due out next month from Apress called Pro Web 2.0 Mashups: Remixing Data and Web Services. (A technical reviewer basically just makes sure all of the examples work and that the technical stuff the author writes is correct and provides evaluations of the text from a [...]

Last November, after around 25 years of computing, finally, I setup a reliable, automatic backup system for all of my important files, documents, photos, and music. And today I needed it (timing, eh?). A bunch of important files took collateral damage from a program I was writing. And I almost panicked. But then the backup [...]

A to-do list in Tomboy Last week I asked for some help finding a new note taking application. I was becoming frustrated with BasKet Note Pads because, despite all of its great features, it would intermittently delete notes when I moved them (obviously, unacceptable). Otherwise, BasKet is a very good application for general note taking [...]

For a long while I was using Tadalist which I absolutely adored because of its simplicity. It made lists and you checked things off and it was wonderful. I migrated to Remember The Milk and liked it much better, presumably because my list making was getting more complicated. In particular, I liked the ability to [...]

I’ve just finished swapping out the Javascript library used on BigHugeLabs.com from Prototype/Script.aculo.us (P+S) to MooTools and I thought I’d share my reasons as well as my impressions for the benefit of any other developers thinking of following a similar path.

I’ll try to keep this brief but I wanted to post it because I couldn’t find exactly this procedure anywhere online. Here’s my situation: when I installed Ubuntu I didn’t just repartition my Windows drive—I added a whole new hard drive for it. So I ended up with Windows XP on /dev/sda1 and Ubuntu on [...]