In The Pipeline – Chemistry related: This blog written by Dr. Derek Lowe focuses on Chemistry (and more specifically biochemistry drug related) research. Being a former Chemistry major and eventual Chemistry minor, I find Dr. Lowe’s writing very entertaining. I first found his site when someone posted a link to his series of posts about Things I Won’t Work With which have some fantastic gems about some incredibly volatile compounds he refuses to work with.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Personal Finance: Ramit Sethi is a Stanford educated entrepreneur that writes some very useful pieces in the realm of finance.

Bruce Schneier – Computer Security: Bruce Schneier is the defacto guru in the computer security space. He writes some very poignant pieces on security in the computer world as well as how those same principles apply to the real world.

Tim Ferris – 4 hour workweek – Lifestyle Design: I was very skeptical of Tim’s book but it was an enjoyable read with some really good information. His blog is also very entertaining and worth following.

Hacking Netflix – Netflix Movies: An interesting blog that keeps up with what is going on with the company Netflix and the movie rental market.

Blackbag, Barry’s weblog – Lockpicking and security: A very eclectic site that I found via Bruce Schneier that talks about physical security measures and countermeasures.

The Tom Kyte Blog – Oracle database: Tom Kyte is a well known guru in the Oracle world. His site Ask Tom is the place to go when looking for answers dealing with Oracle. His books are also incredible.

Travelzoo Top 20 – Travel: This site compiles a list of weekly travel deals (vacation packages, cruises, flights, hotel deals, etc).

I’m always looking for other sites with interesting content, if you have some favorites, please post them in the comments.

Unfortunately a mere months after the 3 year warranty expired on the car, the touchscreen display went out. All the functionality appeared to work, but the display was so dim that you could only tell it was on by shining a flashlight at it. So to the dealer it went for a repair estimate. The Toyota dealer decided that it could not be repaired and should be replaced. Cost to replace a radio unit that cost $2,000 3 years ago…..$3,000 dollars. So apparently in 3 years, the price of this technology went up 50%. The dealer was supposed to charge labor for looking at it but the rep was so shocked himself by the price that he waived the fee. Pretty bad when their own service reps can’t believe the costs of their own parts.

As Philip Greenspun has lamented multiple times (here, here, and here), this is a good reason the car manufacturers deserve to go under: selling a $200 device for $2,0000, not to mention the outrageous cost of navigation updates (~$350). It was extremely depressing to hear that this was the recommended outcome from the dealership on a device they sell. I could not stomach this recommendation since it seemed that everything worked on the device except for the display. Pity to toss all those fancy electronics because of a failing LCD screen. After copious searching on the internet for others with similar problems and suggestions for repair, I came across a recommendation on a Toyota Tundra forum for a company out of California that repairs these units.

The company is Hi-Tech Electronic Services out of Van Nuys, CA. I contacted them via e-mail and described the problem. They said they could fix it and would give a free official estimate once they received the unit (though the gave me a rough estimate via e-mail). I found some instructions online about removing the radio (one of the easiest cars I’ve ever seen for removing a radio I must add), and $30 of UPS shipping later they had it at their shop.

They examined the unit, repaired the 3 parts that had gone bad, and shipped it back all within a week for $585 total including return shipping. So a new replacement unit is $3,000 from Toyota, repair of existing unit, $585. A much, much better deal. They only offer a 90 day warranty on their repairs, but I suppose that is to be expected with electronic repairs in general. Overall a wonderful experience. I reinstalled the unit into the car and it has been working great ever since.

I highly recommend checking this company out if you have any kind of in-dash navigation unit that needs repair. And when buying a new car, I highly recommend you do not purchase the in-dash navigation unit. It is convenient, but the cost is way too high considering the advances in technology and that the dealers do not stand behind their product enough to warrant that risk/reward.

David Chappell is a vice president and chief technologist for SOA at Oracle Corporation. Though this book was written back in 2004 it is still quite relevant today. It provides a very good introduction to service oriented architectures. I first heard about the Enterprise Service Bus back when I attended JavaOne back in 2005. At that point it didn’t seem like the idea was fleshed out all the way based on the presentations I heard (though this book disproves that since it was written prior). I just couldn’t wrap my head around how something like this would fit in my company’s current tech model.

Many years of learning and experience later, reading this book gave me a new perspective on this model and how it could integrate into our environment. One of the best things about this book is that it approaches this integration in a realistic manner. It doesn’t recommend ripping out your complete architecture (like most pay by the hour consulting shops come in and recommend). It proposes adding these concepts in at the edge of your operation. The first steps actually involve adding them in so transparently that the applications that begin conversing across the ESB don’t actually know anything has changed.

Then as time allows and as experience with this style of architecture grows, you can kudzu the bus across the organization. Many of the scenarios and specific patterns that Chappell demonstrates and models are exact copies of problems that I’m encountering first hand at work. Reading this book has caused me to start looking at all of our applications with an eye towards how I can apply SOA principles as we make changes to existing code.

The book was a very quick read and the writing style and diagrams helped me get through the book with ease. I highly recommend reading it if you are looking for a great introduction into the Enterprise Service Bus concept.

The book was written in 1959 by Robert A. Heinlein but if you didn’t know that, you would think it was written in the last couple of years. The technology, tactics, and mindset he describes all fit with our current time. Pretty impressive for a 50 year old novel to accurately depict our reality. Makes you wonder if he predicted the future or the future modeled itself on him.

An interesting concept that the book lays out (one of the central themes) is the concept of being a citizen of your nation. Everyone from birth is considered a civilian. This classification gives them access to every right and freedom save two. They cannot vote and they cannot hold public office. To gain these two rights requires enlisting in federal service (joining the military) for a term of at least two years (the term is open ended if the nation is in conflict and needs you longer). Further, while you are doing your federal service, you cannot vote. So career military men would not be able to vote until their retirement.

The interesting thought of this setup is that the acting military does not get a say in the future of conflict or military infrastructure. Thus they cannot vote in their self-interest. All those that do get to vote are former military men that have seen the good and bad and put their own necks on the line. They should have a clear picture of what it really means to fight and die and can vote with that knowledge. It seems like a much better setup than some ivy league lawyer in Washington committing troops to some location without any first-hand knowledge of the reality of what that means. Also this would seem to prevent the concept of the military-industrial complex from being able to take hold since active military cannot vote.

Another thing this would seem to prevent would be the continued expansion of the government payrolls. This reminds me of Philip Greenspun’s recent post on Should Government Employees Be Allowed To Vote?. Employees of the government will always tend to vote for anything that expands or improves their employment situation. If the number of employees grows too large, then you create a situation where those kinds of votes will always pass. I think I would have to agree with Philip that the Constitution probably would have explicitly addressed this if they thought it possible for this to ever happen.

Also in this completely voluntary federal service commitment, they try to make it very difficult to join and easy to quit. They intentionally try to discourage everyone from signing up. If they fail at that, they make it as easy as possible for an individual to drop out. The only repercussion of dropping out is you can never sign back up and try again. This ensures that those that are in the service are very committed to the idea of putting themselves on the line for the good of the nation as a whole and really want to be there. This reminds me of Zappos paying new hires cash to quit.

I would definitely be on board with our current military adopting this kind of setup to see how it changed the shape of our military. With an all volunteer force, it seems a bit strange to change the rules the second you sign the dotted line. You are free to join, but not to leave. If it didn’t work, we could always go back to the old way of doing things, but I would imagine this would lead to an even higher quality force than we have currently.

There is one soliloquy in the book that is really potent (and makes it shocking this was written in 1959). It is about the term juvenile delinquent and the nature of what causes a young person to become delinquent. The argument is that to have a juvenile delinquent, you must have an adult delinquent that allowed this situation to occur by not using operant conditioning and discipline to mold the child into someone with a moral basis for behavior. He specifically talks about the removal of corporal punishment from youth and how purely at an animal/behavioral level this causes the individual to not properly learn the actions/consequences model that many of us learned at the end of a ruler or paddle. Fascinating stuff to ponder.

I did not find the book as controversial as the critics made out and thoroughly enjoyed it (only took 2 days to read it). Many criticisms have been made about its pro-military stance (Heinlein was an officer in the Navy), but I did not see it that way (with my background of never having been in the military). I saw it speaking of a more restrained military and federal organization than we have currently. Others critics disliked it saying it was more of an essay of Heinlein’s views versus an actual story arc. I can see part of this, but it was not very noticeable or distracting to me. It also might explain why Paul Verhoeven, who made the film version, is quoted as saying he never even finished reading the book (the movie doesn’t have much of the same story of the book).

I think this book is definitely worth reading if you have ever pondered what the responsibility is of the nation to its people and the people to their nation. It gives you some great food for thought and can spur some great discussions with friends. Of course there is Power Armor thrown in too so that is also a plus.

This technology allowed me to subscribe to a wide variety of information (Tech, Finance, Friends, Travel, etc) and have it presented to me in a simple format for reading. I have used this with great success to keep up to date on these topics.

Though there were always web-based feed reader programs, I have always preferred a thick-client installed application to present me more of an MS Outlook type interface. The app that I found which was my favorite was called Sauce Reader. It was built using Delphi and had everything I could ask for in a feed reader. Unfortunately the product was de-supported (though in just searching I see the company has posted their story and the executables are still there for download).

My laptop where I was running Sauce Reader on Windows XP recently crashed. I reinstalled Ubuntu Linux and have been looking for a replacement feed reader program. Unfortunately I did not have a backup of my subscription list of feeds, so I’ve had to piece them together from memory. I decided to give the Google Reader application a try and see if the web-based readers had improved.

I must say that I am highly impressed with how the application functions. It is very easy to use and imitates a thick client application by having very nice hotkey support built-in and a great interface. It will also look at the feeds you are subscribed to and make recommendations of other feeds you might like. Since this application is web-based, I can browse my feeds from any computer and still keep track of what I still have left unread. In addition I can even pull the application up using my iPhone. Now I can truly read my feeds everywhere.

If you have tried web-based feed readers in the past and found them to be lacking, I encourage you to give the Google Reader application a try. Of course a small caveat from my paranoid self. Google knows more about you than any other company on the web, so putting your feeds in their application just gives them a little bit more of a picture of who you are. But if that does not bother you, then please try it out and see what you think.

Recently I became aware that you could stream Netflix directly to the Xbox (a fantastic gift from Casey last Christmas). This caused me to take a look at the packages available again, and I was very pleased with what I saw. They have a $9/month plan that offers 1 DVD out at a time via the mail as well as access to the entire streaming catalog. I went through checking out the streaming catalog via their website and saw there was a large collection of media that appealed to me. They have new movies available, full seasons of TV shows available, and of course an incredible collection of classic movies. Plus with their selection algorithm they supposedly can estimate what movies you will enjoy based on how you have ranked previously viewed movies. This is a great way to find undiscovered gems that you might not every watch.

To add to the appeal, they offer a 2 week free trial so there is no pressure before you decide if the service is for you. They also allow you to suspend your monthly account at any time if you find the need (the ultimate in low commitment). Given that there was no commitment or pressure, I finally decided to sign up for a free trial.

Much to my internet provider’s dismay, I have been watching and enjoying an incredible amount of streaming content in addition to the discs I have ordered through the mail. With just a minimal amount of watching media it is more than worth the $9/month. I wish I had been told about this service earlier. Oh, and if DVD’s and streaming via the Xbox are not enough, you can also watch streaming content via any PC or from Windows Media Center. It is really a fantastic service.

If you have not tried it I recommend going to their site and looking at the media available. If you see things that interest you, sign up for the 2 week trial and give it a go. I don’t think you will be disappointed. I’m really enjoying the movies and TV shows I have been watching. If you call and I don’t answer, I’m probably in the middle of watching a movie. Got to make sure I get my $9′s worth and then some.

You can read 2 great articles about the company and their technology here:

Clojure and Rails – the Secret Sauce Behind FlightCaster

Building FlightCaster’s Frontends for the Web and Smartphones

Their application is available as an iPhone or Blackberry app. Since I was to be traveling to Denver shortly after originally reading about this company, I decided to make my first app purchase for the iPhone (9 months of iPhone ownership and I still had only used free apps) for a whopping $4.99 (the price is now down to $1.99).

The app itself was simple and visually very appealing. As I went to enter my flights, I discovered that you can’t enter your flights until around 24 hours prior to takeoff. This is probably a limitation on the airline data available to FlightCaster so this was not much of a bother. On my flights out to Denver the weather was great and there was no prediction of delay. Sure enough none of my flight had issues.

Unfortunately on the way back home the application wasn’t able to find either of my 2 flights. They were small regional flights, but it was still a bit disappointing to not be able to use the app on the trip back home. That aside, I would still recommend this app to any traveler.

I’m definitely not a road-warrior so this was the only time so far I have tried out the application. Since my flights had no problems I can’t really say whether the app works as they say, but given the comments and reviews it sounds like it does (it did predict my experience on the way out correctly). If you travel much you really should check out this app. Especially with the lower $1.99 price, this should be a no-brainer for frequent travelers. And if you are a technology person, you should really read about how the company approaches and solves the problems of predicting the unpredictable. It is very interesting stuff.

http://news.ycombinator.org: This site posts various articles and commentary and has an extremely technical slant with a focus on the startup community. YCombinator is a startup incubator that was started by Paul Graham (whose articles are also an incredibly good read) of Viaweb fame. This site is what Slashdot was 10 years ago and what Reddit (which is a YCombinator alumni) was 3 years ago.

For actual print books I tend these days to read them online using the wonderful Safari Books Online from O’Reilly. I actually read them through my ACM membership account. The ACM offers a great selection of books online for members.

Coding Horror is a great site written by Jeff Atwood. I was a longtime reader of his site and actually got to hang out with him when my friend Brian worked for Vertigo Software out in San Francisco. He is a very sharp fellow that does some great writing. He is no longer with Vertigo and his moved on to create another site that I am a huge fan of.

StackOverflow.com – This site created by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky is what a Q&A site should be. I hate Experts Exchange with a such a passion that I actually update my hosts file to resolve their site to 127.0.0.1 so it fails quickly when I click on one of their links from Google. StackOverflow is an incredible resource for reading and learning and also for giving back to the community and answering questions. Answering questions is an incredible way to push your knowledge forward. Normally you will know an answer but still have to do some more research to fully prove and justify your response. I highly recommend getting involved with this community that Atwood and Spolsky have put together.

Joel on Software – Joel Spolsky tends to be a bit of a lightning rod in the tech world. Some people love his viewpoint and ideas while others can’t stand him. I am in the first camp and really enjoy his writing and thoughts on the industry and creating and running a company of technical resources. Even if you disagree with him, you can still learn much from him and the successful company, Fog Creek, he has built.

Then there are the sites that I don’t read everything, but just skim and find a few worthwhile nuggets to read like Planet Apache, the ThoughtWorks Blogs, Planet Eclipse, AskTom.Oracle.com (a great Oracle Resource).

Just by spending as little as 10-20 minutes per day reading some of these resources you can help keep yourself up to date with what is going on in the tech industry. Unless you want to find some legacy technology and become a greybeard you will need to make the effort to keep your skills relevant. The sites I have listed always have interesting content and great communities of people around them. Dive in and enjoy.

One of the issues when writing one of the greatest in-browser JavaScript libraries ever is testing all of your changes across the various OS and browser versions. The test suite for ensuring that there are no new bugs or regression bugs is very extensive. The hardware that would be required to have implementations of all of the OS’s and browser flavors for testing would be very expensive and prone to lots of maintenance.

John approached this problem in a wonderful distributed format with an application he calls TestSwarm. He created an application that allows end users to load up their browser and allow it to wait for tests that need to be run to be sent to it from the central server. So by opening up a browser window to a certain page, it polls for any work to do. If it finds something to do, it pulls the test, executes it and sends the results back to the central server. This allows JQuery to be tested easily across many OS and browser implementations and quickly find any bugs that may appear.

Here is John’s original blog post about TestSwarm. Being the forward thinker that he is, John also designed the code so it can be adapted to run any kind of distributed JavaScript testing, not just JQuery.

Kudos to John on a great application. Go check it out, sign up, and donate a couple of spare CPU cycles to the cause.

Adblock Plus
http://adblockplus.org/en/
This plugin strips out ads from web pages. It is the only way to browse the web these days with the ad-overload present on most sites. You will wonder how you every browsed without it.

Firebug
http://getfirebug.com/
If you are a Web Developer you must try out FireBug. It allows you to view and modify the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of pages you load in your browser. An indispensable tool for anyone that writes web pages.

IE Tab
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Even though I love FireFox, there are many web pages that still require Internet Explorer only. Instead of having to actually open IE, this plugin allows you to re-render the web page using the IE engine from within FireFox.

Links & Forms
http://mozilla.queze.net/
This one probably only applies to web developers, but it adds back functionality that was removed in FireFox version 2 that let you view Links and Forms info when looking at a page’s info via the Page Info menu item.

RefControl
http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/
When browsing to web pages, one of the values that a site can log is the web page that you came from to get to that page. This means that a site can record whether you came to their site from a Google search or any other page that led you there.

Of course the downside is that if you were sitting on your bank’s web page and then typed in the name of a new web page, that new site could log the URL of your bank in their web logs. The RefControl plugin solves this problem by allowing you to prevent the referring URL from being logged by those sites. It allows you to block the referring URL entirely, set it to something you want to display (like www.noneOfYourBusiness.com), or have it return the name of the site you are heading to. A good addition to FireFox to help protect your privacy.

*Note though that some sites use the Referring URL as part of their login validation so sometimes you may have to disable it to make some sites work.

Tab Clicking Options
http://twanno.mozdev.org/
The tabbed browsing available in FireFox is a great improvement over the old one window per browsing session that used to be the norm. This plugin allows you to close tabs by double-clicking on the tab. This is something I find easier than trying to click the X on the edge of each open tab in FireFox.

Web Developer Plugin
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Another must have plugin for Web Developers. This plugin adds a toolbar of amazing features targeted at those that write web pages.

PDF Download
http://www.pdfdownload.org/
I love the PDF format, but I hate Adobe Acrobat’s PDF Reader. I use the FoxIt PDF Reader instead of Adobe’s when I view PDF’s on my computer. I never like when PDF’s open inside my browser window either. This plugin gives you a pop-up when clicking on a PDF that gives you the option to open it in an external program (like FoxIt).

If there are any must have plugins that you use within FireFox that I haven’t listed, please let me know about them in the comments. I’m always on the lookout for new plugins to make FireFox more useful to me.