I’m lovin’ my recent birthday present from my wife: a shiny new iPod Touch. It’s quite a step-up from my 2nd gen iPod (which served me well for six years, despite its monochrome display, bulky form, dwindled battery life and lack of a dock connector).
It’s handy to check email, news feeds or the weather from (almost) anywhere, in addition to having music, pictures and movies at my fingertips. Browsing for music and apps without needing my laptop is also convenient, albeit a temptation to splurge (since I buy much of my music from Amazon MP3 rather than iTunes these days, it’s not quite a one-stop-shopping experience).
Some of the free apps I’ve found useful so far: Facebook, Exposure, Evernote, Twitterific, Remote, WeatherBug, Othello, Wordpress, BoxOffice, Last.fm, Pandora Radio.
Someday I hope to get an iPhone 3G, but for now the iPod Touch is my perfect PDA.
I recently finished Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg. It covers the development of Chandler, an open source, cross-platform personal information manager (PIM).
A project of the Open Source Applications Foundation and led by Mitch Kapor, Chandler was meant to revolutionize desktop PIM software by eliminating the ’silos’ that separate email messages, contacts, calendar events and to-do tasks and enable peer-to-peer sharing of such information (as opposed to being proprietary and locked-in to a central server, ala MS Outlook and Exchange).
Along the way, Rosenberg delves into the bigger picture of software development by reviewing its history and thought leaders, differing ideas on organization and project management, methods of information sharing and collaboration tools, the open-source and free software movements, contemporary programming languages, modular and object oriented programming concepts, user interface design challenges, coding and quality control issues, and much more.
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In case you haven’t noticed, I listen to scores of new releases (so you don’t have to) and pick out my favorites (for one reason or another). So, check out (won’t you?) these excellent releases from the first half of 2007 (part 2 of 2):
Yes, I’ve been lax in keeping up with new album picks. Still, that’s no reason not to check out these excellent releases from the first half of 2007 (part 1 of 2):
I’m not big on shopping for clothes. I prefer to buy a batch of shirts and pants once or twice a season and be done for a year (or three). I like plain, neutral colors without any visible logos, prints or decorative patterns so I can mix and match at will. Think modular.
Trouble is, there aren’t a lot of stores in my area with quality, affordable yet flexible, youthful yet professional threads that fit the bill. Most of what I find is either too casual (and cheap) or too formal (and pricey). And there are only so many Merona designs from Target each season. So, I was pleased to discover about a year ago that Sears (of all places) purchased the Structure line for Men. Not everything there matches my taste, but here are a few recommended picks for summer:
BTW, their shirts run a little large, so I went with one size lower than normal (medium instead of large).
