Just ran across this interesting site. If the world could vote. Basically, a very large scale poll on the US Presidential Election.

Someone asked me why Sarah Palin scared me. Here's why.

Quoting from the 'About' section of this clip:

In response to Palin's suggestion that her experience was somehow normal, an exhaustive (and exhausting, to me and you!) of Governor Palin's experience as compared with every other vice president in US history.

Was playing with the Indeed job search engine (no I am not looking for a job, all you headhunters) and ran this little search/graph. Cool.

Another article painting a not-so-nice picture of the Republican VP candidate. Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes - NYTimes.com

A short letter from someone who has known Sarah Palin for a long time. Crosscut Seattle - About Sarah Palin: an e-mail from Wasilla I don't understand why people are excited about her as a VP candidate. She scares the heck out of me.

My lovely wife got me an iPod touch for my birthday, and I really like it. Since it has WiFi and the safari browser, its like having a tiny computer. I have been using it to check email (both through the gmail web page and the IMAP client that comes with it, again hitting gmail) read blogs (google reader), twitter (using safai and hahlo), listen to podcasts, etc. etc. All very cool.

Today I wanted to set up bookmarks to my del.icio.us account (easy enough) and a 'post to del.icio.us' bookmarklet. Setting up bookmarklets on the touch is difficult though - there is no 'drag this link to the toolbar' gesture in the touch interface. Luckily, I found a bookmarklet called iTransmogrify that allows me to see flash videos that are embedded in web pages. They have 2 sets of instructions for setting up a bookmarklet. One involves a PC and sync'ing bookmarks, which I didn't want to do. The second is somewhat tedious, but it is all doable through the device itself. Click on the link above to iTransmogrify and find the link that says 'add iTransmogrify from your iPhone' for a good set of instructions.

I haven't been able to find a delicious bookmarklet in the correct format, so I'll put one here and give you instructions on how to use it.

1. read all the directions first, and get them in your head.

2. Click on the link below, and then bookmark the page that opens.

3. Change the title of the bookmark to 'post to delicious' or something similar.

4. After bookmarking the page, go to your bookmarks, and select 'edit' at the bottom left.

5. tap the newly added bookmark to edit it.

6. Change the URL by removing the leading part of the URL, all the way up to 'javascript:'

7. change the word "username" that is in the remaining link to your username.

ok - now go install the 'post to del.icio.us' bookmarklet using the iTransmogrify instructions

I was reading a set of questions and answers with Robert Riech, and really liked this one:

Q: What should the U.S. government change in its current fiscal policies in order to lead by example?

A: The federal budget should be divided between past obligations (Social Security and Medicare), current expenditures (Medicaid, food stamps, national defense), and future investments (infrastructure, basic research, and education).

Past obligations should be funded by past and current contributions for these purposes. Current expenditures should be paid for by current revenues. Future investments may generate a deficit if the estimated future benefits from such investments exceed the estimated future borrowing costs. Families should do the same, no?

Something I think I need to look at and see if I am doing or not.

Happened to run across this site - firetree flood maps in which a guy has mashed up elevation data from NASA with Google maps, and can show (very roughly) what would be flooded if the oceans rose by differing amounts. The link above shows Houston (an area I know pretty well, and which seems like a very flood-prone area) with a 14 meter increase. Pretty scary, if the oceans actually did rise that much.

The system can generate overlays for sea level rises of 0 - 14 meters. 1 meter sounds like a whole lot to me, given that some quick research on WikiPedia shows only 20 cm per century. That said, a 1 meter rise doesn't affect Houston a whole lot . Of course, this ignores all sorts of things like tides, seawalls, etc. More details at his "about" page, along with lots of comments both positive and negative.

Some of the more dire predictions (like if the whole Greenland ice sheet melts, or even all of Antarctica) have sea levels rising 20 to 60 meters!

Back when I was at DataCert, my buddy Jeff Palermo wrote a blog post on this topic. Since then, I have switched languages from C# to Java, so here is the same thing, translated to Java.

import fit.Fixture;
import fit.Parse;
import fitlibrary.DoFixture;


public class MyDoFixture extends DoFixture {

  private Parse currentParse;

  public void RunSystem()
  {
      //hook into system
  }

  public void MakeSureFileWasSaved()
  {
      //hook into system to make sure file was saved.  if it wasn't. ..
      wrong(currentParse, "File wasn't saved.");

  }  

  @Override
  protected Object interpretCells(Parse cells, Fixture fixture) {
    currentParse = cells;
    return super.interpretCells(cells, fixture);
  }
}

The key thing being to override interpretCells() rather than MethodCells().

Note that this will mark the first cell of the current row as wrong. If you want to mark a different cell wrong (say the 3rd cell, for example) you would do this:

 

  public void MakeSureFileWasSaved()
  {
      //hook into system to make sure file was saved.  if it wasn't. ..
      wrong(currentParse.more.more, "File wasn't saved.");

  }  

The other cool trick that I am using in my current project is to use the abandonStorytest() method, which also requires the currentParse.

I am using FitNesse to do integration testing and it connects to a database. One thing it does it clean up all the 'test' data. To ensure that the tests don't accidentally delete data in a database that isn't a 'development' database, there is a check in the FitNesse page that checks for non-developer databases and stops the test cold (i.e., it never gets to the "clean up all our test data" cell of the table).

The Continuous Integration and Testing Conference is coming to Texas! The folks doing this conference (Paul Julius of Thoughtworks and Jeffrey Frederick of Agitar) have done 2 of these before, and all the reports I have heard have been good. I just registered, although it means that I will be out of town, away from family, and doing "work-related stuff" on the day before my 40th birthday!

• What: OpenSpace event discussing all aspects of CI and Testing, together
• Where: American Airlines Training & Conference Center, Fort Worth, Texas
• When: Friday and Saturday, April 27 & 28, 2007
• Who: Everyone interested in CI and Testing
• Cost: Free

Click the link above for all the details and to register. Limited to the first 100 folks, so get going!

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Update

Argh!!!! I looked at my calendar and it turns out I will not be able to go to this after all. Hopefully someone else from DrillingInfo will be able to go.