[362 total ]
Posted
6 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
Clearvision will be presenting a free demonstration of the Mercurial (mercurial-support/mercurial-support.html) and Subversion (subversion/subversion.html) Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution CodeBeamer...
Posted
8 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Garrett Rooney)
I spent a lot of time on a train this year, which for me translates into
spending a lot of time reading. Here are the books that stuck in my head
well enough that I remember something about them at the end of the
... [More]
year.
Sports
Mind Game, Baseball Prospectus
Actually, I just finished this one yesterday. It's a great book if you're
a somewhat geeky sports fan. It covers the 2004 Red Sox season from start
to finish, with a slant towards the underlying baseball analysis that
drove many of the team's decisions. The story is a fantastic one
(seriously, if you made this shit up you'd get laughed out of town, but
it actually happened), and they do a good job of looking at the numbers
behind the action. Well worth reading.
Now I Can Die In Peace, Bill Simmons
A collection (with extensive highly amusing footnotes) of Bill Simmons'
Red Sox related articles. Quite amusing if you like his writing style,
it's clearly written from a fan's point of view, not from a sports
reporter's, which is both good and bad depending on what you're looking
for.
Patriot Reign, Michael Holley
I started paying a little more attention to Football this year, and this
was my first attempt to dip my toes in the water of Football writing. All
in all it was ok, but not spectacular. I'm a huge fan of the author's
general method (embedding himself within the team and observing what goes
on), and I've enjoyed several other books that do largely the same thing
(Moneyball and 3 Nights in August, for example), but in this case it
didn't really do it for me. The subject matter was interesting, but I
just don't think Michael Holley measures up to Michael Lewis or Buzz
Bissenger as a writer.
Red Sox Rule, Michael Holley
Ironically, I didn't realize that this was written by the same guy who
did Patriot Reign until I started making this list. It was once again
some pretty decent subject matter (Terry Francona has had an interesting
life), but the book fell a little short of my expectations. It felt like
it left out or glossed over some of the most interesting parts of the
story. For example, the details of Francona's interview with the Red Sox
were extremely interesting, but there are a number of other places I
would have liked to see similar depth (the 2004 and 2007 playoffs, for
example) and it just wasn't there. Once again, the writing was
serviceable, but nothing spectacular.
Baseball Between the Numbers, Baseball Prospectus
If you've got any interest in the application of statistics to baseball
you should read this book. The baseball prospectus authors never cease to
impress me, and this is clearly some of their finest work. Highly
recommended.
Watching Baseball Smarter, Zack Hample
I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I'd read it earlier. It's
a great introduction to the dizzying amount of baseball jargon that's out
there, but by the time I'd read it I'd already picked up a lot of the
information on my own. I'd definitely recommend it for someone who's just
starting to get into baseball though.
Nonfiction
Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State, Andrew Gelman
If you're the kind of person who was frantically reloading
fivethirtyeight.com through the last few months of the 2008 elections,
you'll probably love this book. It's a fascinating look at how red states
got to be red, and blue states got to be blue, and lets be fair, on top
of that it's got a kick ass title. Well worth reading.
Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is a fantastic author, and this book, despite talking about
events that happened 20 years ago is still extremely relevant today.
Highly recommended to anyone who wants some insight into how Wall Street
actually works.
Einstein Never Used Flashcards, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick
Golinkoff and Diane Eyer
For someone like myself, who's never really known much about childhood
development, this book was quite eye opening. I mean really, it's
incredible how many things kids need to learn that adults take totally
for granted, and this book gives a great overview of how the process
works. Good stuff.
Bridge
Bridge For Dummies, Eddie Kantar
As a rule, I hate the "For Dummies" series of books. I think the title
alone helps to perpetuate the idea that it's ok to be dumb, which is
exactly the wrong message to be sending. That said, I got this book from
my wife as part of our plan for me to learn bridge as part of a present
for her father. Her parents met playing bridge in college, and their
family used to play together up until her brother moved down to DC and
they were stuck with only three players. I was drafted as their fourth,
and it turns out that I actually really enjoy the game.
Surprisingly enough, Bridge for Dummies is actually a pretty highly
regarded introduction to the game of bridge. It helped me along quite a
bit when I was getting started, although to be fair I probably should
have spent more time going through it before we actually stuck me in a
game. I finally did end up giving up on it though, but it was largely
because of the form factor of the book, not any issue I had with the
content. It was simply too large to carry around in my laptop bag, which
meant it was impractical for reading on the train. That said though, the
content is quite good, and if you want to learn to play bridge you could
certainly do worse.
Bridge Basics 1: An Introduction, Audrey Grant
Bridge Basics 2: Competitive Bidding, Audrey Grant
Bridge Basics 3: Popular Conventions, Audrey Grant
These are the books I switched to when I gave up on Bridge For Dummies.
They were definitely a step up, at least for me, but they're not perfect.
First, the good points. The form factor is considerably more convenient,
and they are in color, so the hearts and diamonds in the hand diagrams
are actually red, which in my opinion makes them easier to read. The
style of writing is also quite good. When teaching bridge it's easy to
just lay down a series of rules that the player should follow (i.e.
you've got 13 points and 5 spades, so you open the bidding at 1 spade),
which may simplify the process of getting someone playing, but it doesn't
do much as far as helping them understand why the rules they're following
actually helping them to win. These books do a good job of splitting the
difference between teaching you a fairly standard set of guidelines so
you can actually play the game while ensuring that you've got at least
some understanding of the theoretical principles that went into chosing
those guidelines.
This isn't to say that the books aren't without their flaws. The bridge
system (Grant Standard) they describe is a little different from modern
Standard American, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing (these
are just conventions, after all, as long as you and your partner agree on
them that's the important part), there are a few points where the
differences stand out. The big one is the point counts Grant uses for
dummy points. Basically everyone else uses 3/2/1 for
void/singleton/doubleton scoring, while she uses 5/3/1. In that
particular case I remain unconvinced that her way is better. To be fair,
when you do encounter these sort of differences of opinion, there are
usually footnotes that point it out, which is nice to see. Finally, the
printing of "Popular Conventions" that I've got is FULL of typos. It
really feels like it was pushed out the door without sufficient editing.
If you're paying attention you can see what the author was getting at,
but honestly, there's really no excuse for this may errors. I hope
there's a second printing that fixes some of these, because the series
really is quite good otherwise.
The Backwash Squeeze and other Improbable Feats, Edward McPherson
This book is different from the other bridge books I read this year. It's
about the larger game of bridge (i.e. the people who play it and the
various organizations who run the large tournaments), not the mechanics
of the game. It's similar to Word Freak, which tackles the competitive
Scrabble world, but with a game that has a much richer history behind it.
I enjoyed it immensely, and I'd recommend the book even if you aren't
interested in actually playing bridge, as the history of the game and the
people who play it are quite fascinating. Interesting footnote, the
Backwash Squeeze (a particular technique for winning a hand of bridge)
never actually happens in the book, as far as I can remember.
Speculative Fiction
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
I'm a big fan of Stephenson's work, so as you might expect I was
anxiously awaiting this book. It didn't disappoint. While it takes a
little effort to get things moving, Stephenson spins quite the
interesting story, filled with his usual array of interesting ideas on a
wide variety of subjects, ranging from musical theory, the many worlds
theory of quantum physics and how religion and science interact in
society. As has been the case with Stephenson's past few books
(Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle) it's long, but has an actual ending
(unlike some of his earlier books), and if you've enjoyed any of
Stephenson's past work I'd recommend picking this one up. If you haven't
tried any of Stephenson's stuff yet, then what are you waiting for?
Old Man's War, John Scalzi
The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
The Last Colony, John Scalzi
I've been reading Scalzi's blog for some time now, but I hadn't gotten
around to reading any of his books until a couple of months ago. All in
all I enjoyed them, although you've got to go in with the proper
expectations. They're quick sci-fi reads, lots of fun, a neat world with
interesting characters, but nothing earth shattering. I definitely
enjoyed them, and I'll probably pick up his new book (Zoe's Tale) once it
hits paperback, but I wouldn't put him at the same level as say
Stephenson.
Sundiver, David Brin
Oddly enough, I picked up this book because of a card game. The concept
of "uplift", where an advanced species uses genetic engineering to grant
sentience to another, less evolved, race plays a part in the Race for the
Galaxy, a Sci-fi themed card game we play over lunch at work. This book
is the first from the uplift universe, which appears to have spawned the
concept. Lots of interesting ideas here, and I enjoyed the book quite a
bit. The next two books in the series are currently sitting in my list of
books to read, and I'm looking forward to them.
The Risen Empire, Scott Westerfeld
The Killing of Worlds, Scott Westerfeld
These two are actually two halfs of one longer story, just published in
two separate books. I was incredibly impressed with Westerfeld's work,
the world building he's done is fascinating, some of the best I've read
in quite some time. I particularly like how his futuristic technology is
relatively grounded in real science, with no unforseeable advances
necessary to hold his universe together. Interstellar travel has real
relativistic effects, and communication between the stars is handled by
means of quantum entanglement effects. On top of the fascinating and
realistic world is a great story, well worth the time to read.
Unfortunately, this was the last adult oriented work Westerfeld did.
After this he started writing for a young adult audience, where he's been
incredibly successful. I wish him well there, but I can't help but wish
he'd come back and write a few more books for an adult audience.
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
This is Doctorow's first foray into young adult fiction, but I'd
recommend it for adult readers as well. It's also noteable in that all of
the technology mentioned in the book is pretty damn close to actual
reality, if it doesn't actually exist right now there's at least no
reason it couldn't if someone put some time into it. The story centers
around a bunch of high school students with hacker tendencies and their
reaction to a terrorist attack on San Francisco and the resulting civil
rights violations that come from the Department of Homeland Security's
response. All in all it's incredibly realistic, and I'd say it should be
required reading for any slightly geeky high school student. Good stuff. [Less]
Posted
8 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Stefan)
A new version of the CommitMonitor is available.
Apart from some minor bugfixes, new features include:
* ability to ignore a list of users (issue #92)
* ability to run a custom action after a new commit is detected
... [More]
(issue
#7)
* ability to open an url for a selected revision, for example to open
some review tools (issue #94)
You can get it from our tools page:
http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/CommitMonitor [Less]
Posted
10 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Ben Collins-Sussman)
This eulogy is really a continuation the one I wrote for Dad in 2005. It
was delivered December 29, 2008.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I stood here three years ago and tried to explain
... [More]
the shape of my
father’s life, and now, in a strong way I feel like this is a
continuation of that same experience. In my mind, it’s often difficult to
separate my parents… while intellectually I know that they were both very
strong individuals, their union was so perfect that they always felt like
a single “parental unit” to me. When dad died, I was not only mourning
his passing, but also the passing of the marriage itself.
As I’ve said before, their marriage was simply incredible… the kind of
marriage we all dream of and strive for. After 40 years, still holding
hands and looking at each other as if they had just started dating. After
40 years, still absolute best friends.
And so it’s been very hard for me to watch mom live as a widow for the
last three years. Completely ignoring issues around her physical health,
it also felt like part of her soul was missing. While I could clearly see
her glow as an individual, her spark still felt somewhat crippled, not
quite as bright as I was used to.
So while I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, mom’s passing is also
somewhat of a relief to me — partially because her physical suffering has
ended, but moreso because she’s finally no longer separated from her
soul-mate. It feels to me like dad left us prematurely, but now finally
mom is catching up with him — they’re together again, and things are as
they should be.
As I mentioned three years ago, mom and dad had somewhat reverse
stereotypical roles as parents. Dad was the “nurturing” parent, while mom
was the driving type-A personality, pushing us all to achieve. Her life
was one series of of ambitious projects after another.
In college she studied music and voice, and dreamed of being an opera
singer. When she realized she’d never make it as a professional singer,
her ambition switched: she went to grad school to become a psychologist.
It was there she met the love of her life and was married within a year.
After graduation, The two of them moved to Elgin and began working
together in the state hospital as psychologists. Several years later they
decided to have kids, and moved to River Forest. She spent a few years as
a stay-at-home mom, while working part-time at Loretto hospital. When we
kids were old enough, her ambition kicked in again and she started her
own private practice. She then spent 25 years counseling people, billing
herself as as a therapist who specialized in “women’s issues”. She and my
dad also worked as a dynamite team of marriage counselors: first meeting
with husband and wife 1-on-1, then working out issues with all four
people in the room.
I don’t think many people realize that in the 80’s mom was working on a
book that was never published — one which revolved around issues of
feminism. She was part of that first generation of women’s lib, and took
real pride in being part of that movement. She strove to be a living
example of everything that movement talked about: that it was okay for
women to break free of gender stereotypes and be “strong”, to be heads of
households, and to have egalitarian marriages. Years later, after I got
married, mom was always secretly thrilled watching Frances so easily
bounce effortlessly back and forth between children and career. She was
immensely proud that she had fought for the culture which enabled Frances
to do that — a culture that most folks of my generation now take for
granted.
Later in life, when my dad went back to school to get his doctorate in
psychology, she pursued her own continuing education by becoming a
licensed practicioner of NLP — a branch of hypnotherapy that focuses on
mind-body connections, and the ability of people to induce their own
healing. She made numerous friends through her training.
And toward the end of her life, when she was diagnosed with carcinoid
cancer, she became incredibly active in the community of carcinoid
victims. She attended support groups, helped organize conferences, and
was a source of comfort and wisdom to hundreds of people on email lists.
She was a beacon of strength to the whole community.
So that’s a snapshot of mom’s “external” life — her outward
accomplishments. However, her internal life was at least as rich. She
always spoke about my brother and I as her “two biggest projects” of
which she was the most proud, and her influence on us was immense.
Growing up in our home, she soaked us in a culture of music. Classical
radio played in every room of the house, every day. She sang all sorts of
lullabies to us, which I now sing to my own kids. While she had given up
her idea of being a professional musician, she had a rule in her house
that “all kids must take music lessions from age 6 until they move out”.
Needless to say, this caused quite a number of fights, usually ending
with “you’ll thank me for this someday”. And sure enough, over time, she
was right. By the time we were adults we were thanking her. Music is now
a major cornerstone of our lives and personalities.
The other major cultural gift she gave us, I think, was her immense drive
to learn everything and participate in endless activities. Her appetite
for learning was insatiable. We used to joke that she suffered from ‘FMS’
— “Fear of Missing Something”. She had too many hobbies to count —
reading, writing, knitting, tatting, neighborhood clubs and
organizations. She sang in choirs all through her adult life, all the way
into her 60’s. She read a book every two days, and so our house was
absolutely overflowing with stacks of paperbacks. Her brain was always
hungry for more, and she passed that traitdirectly on to us. She taught
me to play chess, how to play piano, how to write BASIC programs on the
very earliest home computers. She continuously hounded my brother and I
to chase our dreams — urging me to write more musicals, and urging my
brother to become an astronomer. Of course, one of the side-effects of
FMS was the constant risk of over-extending oneself — but she taught us
how to avoid that trap as well.
Over the weekend I joined the carcinoid email-list, to let all of mom’s
friends know she had passed. The outpouring of sympathy and stories has
simply been tremendous — a huge flow of emails full of shock and sadness.
I want to read one particular story I received, which I feel exemplifies
mom’s life:
“I met [Dana] for the first time at my first carcinoid support group
meeting in Hinsdale [...] I was still in shock of being diagnosed [...]
About 30 minutes into the meeting and listening to others speak about
their carcinoid journey, I felt myself coming apart, emotionally, and
thought I was going to ‘lose it.’ So, I quietly got up to make an exit
from the meeting room & was going to just calm myself down in the hall.
Before I knew it, Dana was out there in the hall with me, holding my hand
and telling me everything would be O.K. Then she told me about her
journey up to then and how well she was doing. She literally embraced me
mentally and physically with reassurance. Later in the meeting I learned
that she had just lost her husband only about a month before. I could not
believe how ‘put together’ she was…..so soon after her tragic loss. She
said she felt from the moment I walked into the meeting that we were
kindred spirits. When she spoke at our meetings, we were all in awe of
her knowledge of carcinoid and her ability to explain so many concepts,
procedures, protocols, research and resources to learn about and fight
this disease. [...]”
Now my father’s self-admitted life goal was to bring joy to everyone he
met. And while my mother never openly admitted to a specific life goal, I
think there’s a clear theme that underlies everything she did: she
brought hope to everyone she met.
She started her career by comforting ER victims in hospitals, calming
them down and raising their spirits, while also assuring the families of
the injured. She brought hope to women of her generation, urging them to
work for a society free of gender barriers. Over the decades, she brought
hope to the hundreds of women she counseled in her private practice:
helping to mend their lives and their marriages, helping overcome
depression and other ailments. And at the end of her life, she brought
tremendous hope to her community of cancer victims, comforting
individuals and encouraging them to fight.
So while my father’s headstone reads “Bringer of Joy”, I think it’s
fitting that my mother’s headstone have the words “Bringer of Hope”.
Decades from now, someone might walk through the cemetery and wonder what
the two mysterious side-by-side epitaphs mean: “Bringer of Joy” and
“Bringer of Hope”. And those privileged few of us — those here in this
room today, and those lucky enough to know Larry and Dana — get to know
the true beauty of the stories behind those words, and what an
inspiration these people were. May we all have lives this bright. [Less]
Posted
10 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
Subversion 1.5.5 was officially released on Monday 22nd December 2008.
Subversion (/subversion/subversion.html) has been recognised by Forrester as the sole leader...
Posted
16 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
The recent release of IBM Rational ClearQuest 7.1 is the result of a significant number of large-scale functionality changes.
Following...
Posted
16 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
In recent years Subversion has received a large amount of coverage as the open source SCCM tool of choice however,...
Posted
16 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Stefan)
TortoiseSVN version 1.5.6, linked against Subversion 1.5.5 got released.
This is a bugfix/maintenance release only with no new features.
You can get it from our download page : http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
Posted
17 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Stefan)
StExBar got a new version!
A lot of small improvements and a bigger change got into this new
version.
The change is how the edit box behaves when not in command line mode. In
previous versions, a text entered in the box would
... [More]
select the
files/folders that match the entered text in the current view. Now,
instead of selecting them, it filters them, i.e., all files/folders that
do not match the entered string are removed from the view.
For example, if you enter "meeting" in the edit box, all files which
don't have that string in their name will get removed, only files like
"meeting-oct.doc", "old_meeting.doc", ... are still shown.
This makes it much easier to find a specific file if you have a lot of
files in one folder.
The issues solved since the last version:
15, 24, 29, 33, 30, 28, 26, 32, 37, 31.
StExBar is available from our tools page:
http://tools.tortoisesvn.net/StExBar [Less]
Posted
17 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (C. Michael Pilato)
Our church put on a Christmas dinner comedy production this year. Amy has
said for some time now that she'd like to try acting just for kicks. So
she auditioned for the production, and was awarded the role of Beth, one
of four silly
... [More]
servants in the Bethlehem Inn. The cast performed their
show this past Saturday and Sunday evenings, to a combined audience of
around 100 folks, I'd guess. It was a fun show, and I think the attendees
enjoyed themselves. And in my completely unbiased opinion, Amy did a
great job in her role.
The boys also played a part in the show, as part of a troupe of child
Bethlehemian(?) dancers. Take seven energetic kids, add one tambourine
and two colored streamers apiece — instant cuteness!
I'm proud of my wife and kids, of the rest of the cast and crew, and of
Pastor Stephen Bounds and his wife who really drove the thing from
concept to completion. [Less]
Posted
23 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
Clearvision is pleased to announce the latest release of CQ2SVN (/products/clearquest-subversion-integration.html), the complete integration between IBM Rational ClearQuest and Subversion.
The...
Posted
23 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com
Mercurial (/mercurial-support/mercurial-support.html) is an emerging cross-platform, distributed revision control system for software developers. Distributed revision control (or Distributed Version Control...
Posted
25 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Hyrum)
We’ve reached that time of year: when all the good intentions and will
power of the entire year give way to the plethora of holiday goodies in
our home. To make matters worse, I was out-of-town all of last week,
which seemed to compound
... [More]
Heather’s baking desires, leading to a slew of
fresh treats. If anything, our dentist will be having a merry January, as
the season’s indulgence catches up to me.
One of the better treats, though, is our annual Gingerbread House. As a
child, building the house with my five siblings was a hallmark of the
season. Mom would make the House, and we’d spend an evening decorating it
with a wide variety of goodies, while clandestinely nicking candy from
either other’s allotments. Each side of the House had a unique style, and
over the next few weeks, eaves, shutters, decorations and people would
vanish from the House. The season finally culminated in a scene any
epidemiologist would find horrific: a group “bashing session” during
which my siblings and I would each get sick on stale candy and even
staler gingerbread—not to mention whatever germs landed on the sticky
exterior of the House during the intervening weeks.
This year, our family did our own Gingerbread House. Hannah is started to
get old enough to get into the spirit of the season, and she’s always
game for any activity which involves a copious amount of treats. The
finished product didn’t turn out too bad:
Hannah and the Gingerbread House
Now, if Hannah can go three weeks without picking at it, I’ll be
seriously impressed. [Less]
Posted
25 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Stefan)
TortoiseSVN allows you to specify your own tool for showing diffs and/or
merges. For example, a lot of people prefer WinMerge over TortoiseMerge
(even though I can't see why :-) ).
But sometimes you might want to prefer TortoiseMerge
... [More]
over your custom
diff tool. Changing the settings would be way too complicated to just use
TortoiseMerge once, for this particular situation.
TortoiseSVN allows you to use TortoiseMerge easily, without changing your
custom diff tool setup: just hold down the shift-key when you click on
the context menu to do the diff. If the shift key is pressed when doing a
diff, TortoiseSVN always uses TortoiseMerge. If the shift key is not
pressed, the diff/merge tool specified in your settings is used. [Less]
Posted
26 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (C. Michael Pilato)
Last night, while salmon steaks were baking in one oven, battered fish
portions in the other, and the spinach was awaiting its trip through the
microwave, it happened. I was upstairs at the time, reading the latest
edition of WORLD
... [More]
magazine, when Gavin ran into the room and announced
somewhat calmly: "Dad, as soon you get finished, could you come
downstairs? Aidan hit his head on the fireplace."
On a list of things I least want to hear, that's gotta be somewhere near
the top.
I came downstairs to find Amy holding Aidan in the kitchen floor, trying
to apply an ice pack to his bleeding and swelling nose. Seems the boys
were running around playing "rocket cars" (which unfortunately seems to
require great bursts of speed best experienced outdoors), and
Aidan-the-Rocket-Car crashed bridge-of-the-nose-first into the front edge
of our very hard, stone fireplace. Fortunately, the cuts on his nose
weren't bad at all — in fact, they appeared to be no more than abrasions.
But out of concern that he might have broken his nose and that his
injuries could impair his breathing, we packed the family up and headed
out to an urgent care facility a few miles away.
Aidan was pretty upset (understandably) as we tried to get into the car,
and dozed off a couple of times during our trip to the facility. Once
there, he quieted down, but mostly out of fear of this new place.
Fortunately, the nurses present were able to assure him that he would be
treated well. They took a pair of X-rays of his head that didn't reveal
anything alarming, and as expected he wasn't in need of any stitches. We
were sent away with a recommendation of some Children's Motrin (for the
pain and swelling), the promise of a follow-up call from the radiologist,
Tootsie Pops for the kids, and a smiling little boy with a busted up
nose.
So, after this, our first trip to an urgent care family, we say,
"Thanks", to the fine ladies at Expressmed's Concord Mills location, and
to God for protecting our little guy from what could have easily been a
much more serious situation. [Less]
Posted
27 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Garrett Rooney)
It's been multiple years since I lived in Connecticut, so I'm finally
making the plunge and moving to a new cell phone number. The old number
will keep working at least through the end of the month (just let it keep
ringing, it'll
... [More]
eventually forward on to the new one), but from then on
you'll have to use my new number: 781-471-4627. [Less]
Posted
27 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Lübbe)
on sourceforge today
Posted
29 days
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Stefan)
Moving and renaming versioned files inside a working copy must always be
done with the corresponding Subversion/TortoiseSVN commands. A
move/rename without those (e.g., with the Windows Explorer) leads to
problems since Subversion doesn't know that you have moved/renamed the
files.
read more
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Heather)
This year we spent the Thanksgiving holiday with Hyrum’s family. It was
great to see everyone that could make it. As the family gets bigger we
may need to start taking our tent with us!
We enjoyed lots of good food and good
... [More]
company. Friday, the women folk
traditionally make an early morning run to Jo-Ann Fabrics, this year it
happened at 7:30 pm–it included some soul searching, I was trying to
resist. Hannah loved playing with her cousin Josh. Every morning when
they met in the kitchen she would exclaim, “Josh, Josh . . .” and carry
on until some acknowledged his presence. It was as if she wanted to make
sure he wasn’t a dream. Jonathan enjoyed his bean bag throne we rigged in
the kitchen so he could hang out with us with out breaking my back. He
just smiled and told us stories when he could get a word in. Family is
great. Things aren’t always perfect but it’s fun to laugh and play.
I miss my parents and sibling terribly but I’m so blessed to have in-laws
that treat me as if I am a daughter. It helps so much especially at this
time of year. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to know these
people that have spent so much time with my dear Hyrum. I have learned a
lot about him and continue to be surprised–for the better. Happy belated
Thanksgiving to all of you and I hope you have a Merry Christmas. In all
we do may we remember the Lord, his miraculous life and wondrous
atonement that makes it all worth while. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Garrett Rooney)
So, a little while back I moved the RSS and Atom feeds for my blog over
to FeedBurner. I'm thinking about eventually moving from TypePad to
another blog host, and when I move I'd like to avoid any disruption for
the three people who
... [More]
actually read my blog ;-)
At the moment, if you're subscribed to the old feed URLs (i.e.
http://asdf.blogs.com/asdf/index.rdf or
http://asdf.blogs.com/asdf/atom.xml) TypePad's FeedBurner integration is
causing you to be redirected over to my new FeedBurner URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/rooneg),
but unfortunately the redirect is temporary. TypePad doesn't issue a
permanent redirect, so if I ever actually move away from TypePad anyone
subscribed to the original TypePad feeds will stop getting redirected,
which would be sad, because they would lose out on the approximately 3
halfway interesting things I post per year.
Is this annoying? Yes, very much so. It's extremely uncool that TypePad
(which I do pay for by the way, it's a great service) doesn't give some
way to make the redirect permanent. I'd like to think it's just an
oversite, but deep down I expect they simply don't want to jump through
even the smallest hoops to make it easier to migrate your blog away from
them without losing your audience.
Anyway, to make a long story short, if you want to keep reading this blog
for the forseeable future, I suggest migrating any feed readers you use
over to the new url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/rooneg. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Ben Collins-Sussman)
The great thing about being an amateur photographer is that every
thousand photos or so, you get a winner. Here are my two sons.
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Garrett Rooney)
A couple of years ago (way back on May 22nd, 2006) James Snell posted on
the Apache Incubator General list about a new project he wanted to bring
to the incubator. That project ended up becoming Abdera, and now over two
years later it's
... [More]
finally graduated to become its own new top level Apache
project. It took a really long time, and a lot of people put in a lot of
work, but I'm happy to say that Abdera has become a nice little community
built around some neat code, and I'm quite proud to see it moving on from
the incubator to bigger and better things.
The actual move from the incubator to our new home at abdera.apache.org
will happen over the next few weeks, but for now lets just give the
Abdera developers a round of applause. They've really done something
great. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Hyrum)
The year is rapidly slipping by, and I was moderately concerned about
visiting a state highpoint during the year. Today my fears were soothed
as I got a chance to visit the top of Alabama: Cheaha Mountain. I was at
the FSE-16 conference
... [More]
Atlanta and made the early morning drive across
state lines to visit the highpoint. It was a bit chilly, but the leaves
were nice, and it was good to get out of the hotel for a bit. See the
trip report for a full account of my trip. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Ben Collins-Sussman)
So everyone knows my job at Google is to tech-lead the team responsible
for our Subversion servers, as part of our larger open-source project
hosting service. Thus, having come to a reasonable temporary stopping
point with my previous 20%
... [More]
project, I’ve turned to a new 20% project:
making Subversion itself better.
Specifically, I want to right a wrong, undo something I’ve felt nasty
about for years. Subversion’s HTTP protocol is very complicated and
unintelligible to mere mortals. Honestly, if Greg Stein and I got hit by
buses, nobody would really understand what’s going on inside mod_dav_svn.
What’s the backstory here? Basically, we tried to make mod_dav_svn
implement a reasonable subset of DeltaV, which was a mostly-failed spec
written long ago to implement Clearcase^H^H^H^H version control over
HTTP. Eight years later, this extra complexity hasn’t bought us any
interoperability with other version control systems — just a big headache
to maintain and a icky performance penalty. The Subversion client, in
being a “good DeltaV citizen”, isn’t allowed to directly talk about URLs
that represent revisions, transactions, historical objects, and so on.
Instead, it has to play dumb and continually issue a series of requests
to “discover” opaque URLs that represent these concepts. It’s sort of
like the client playing a formal game of 20 Questions, when it already
knows the answers.
So after some chats with Greg Stein and others, I’ve collected ideas on
how to streamline our existing protocol into something much more simple,
tight, and comprehensible. Way fewer requests too. You can read our
evolving design document and send questions/feedback to
dev@subversion.tigris.org. Subversion 1.6 is planned to be released at
year’s end, so if we’re lucky we’ll see this new protocol in Subversion
1.7 next summer.
Speaking of Subversion 1.6, however: a smaller sort of glastnost is
happening there as well. In this new spirit of HTTP openness, we’re
officially ending our policy of “not telling people how to access older
revisions” over HTTP. If you recall, the Subversion book has always said:
Q: Can I view older revisions?
A: Your web browser speaks ordinary HTTP only. That means it knows
only how to GET public URLs, which represent the latest versions of
files and directories. [...] To find an older version of a file, a
client must follow a specific procedure to “discover” the proper URL;
the procedure involves issuing a series of WebDAV PROPFIND requests
and understanding DeltaV concepts. This is something your web browser
simply can’t do.
I’m here to break the chains! Reveal the lies! RELEASE THE KRAKEN. In
Subversion 1.6, we’ve gone and implemented an official public query
syntax for accessing older (revision, path) coordinate pairs:
http://host/repos/path?r=REV
http://host/repos/path?p=PEGREV
http://host/repos/path?p=PEGREV&r=REV
This query syntax offers the same peg-revision concept that one sees in
the Subversion commandline client. The first syntax means “start at PATH
in the latest revision, then follow the object back in time to revision
REV.” This works even if the object was renamed and exists at a different
place in the older revision. The second syntax allows one to pinpoint an
object with no history tracing: just jump to revision PEGREV, and find
PATH. The third syntax is very much like running “svn subcommand -r REV
path@PEGREV”: start at PEGREV, find PATH, then trace the object back into
older revision REV.
In any case, this means source code browsers and other tools can stop
using “secret” internal urls to access older objects. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Heather)
I feel compelled this evening to write a bit. The last couple of months
have been full of ups and downs. We’ve been so blessed to have grandmas
here to help take care of us and the support of dear friends here and
friends and family
... [More]
everywhere else. Jonathan’s birth, Hyrum’s
appendectomy, bishopric calling and travels and just all of us generally
trying to adjust to Jonathan’s addition has created a little craziness
around our house.
Jonathan continues to bless our life everyday as does Hannah. Hannah
loves her little brother and I’m sure she will have no problem mothering
him for the rest of his life. She loves to give him hugs and kisses.
Today she kept wiping the drool off his chin. Jonathan continues to grow
and look so cute with his double chin. I wait everyday for that first
real giggle. I think I heard one the other night but it may have been a
dream.
Hyrum is out of town again this week but happily for me this his last
trip for the semester, at least work related travel. He and Ian are
hatching a trip for over Christmas break, we’ll see what happens with
that. I sure miss him when he’s gone and so does Hannah. Today she heard
the wind rustling leaves outside our door and asked if it was daddy. I
said no and she followed up with Grandpa. She was pretty disappointed
that neither Daddy nor Grandpa was going to walk in our door.
We’ve seen the Wrights for the last two weekends and she loves seeing
them. We are glad they live close enough to see pretty often. We wish we
could see my parents more often though. We’re feeling pretty lucky for
having seen them twice this year. Family is a wonderful blessing. We’re
so lucky to be part of two big wonderful families. We just wish we could
all live a little closer together. I have siblings in Utah, Idaho, and
Colorado with my parents in New York and Hyrum’s parents are in Texas
with siblings in Texas and Utah.
I’m really looking forward to the holiday season. I love the smells, the
music and just the general feelings. I love shopping for Christmas
presents and planning my goodies for the holiday. I bought fabric the
other day to make a tree skirt. I am really excited. I love creating
things whether it’s crafts, dresses for Hannah, food or something else. I
feel intelligent when I figure out how to make a pattern for the project
I have in mind. These days, an opportunity to use my brain is greatly
appreciated. I always hated math in school but I have to admit that I use
it a lot when I am making a pattern. I never thought I’d say that.
We’re doing well just trying to make it one day at a time. We are loving
life and dealing with all the excitement and the daily happenings that
remind us we’re alive and really blessed. I’m glad that my problems are
potty training our toddler and keeping our infant happy. Those things
really are pretty simple compared to things other people have to deal
with. I’m grateful for my husband. I have two beautiful children and the
opportunity to care for them and love them is such a blessing. God has
blessed us and for that I am grateful. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
Mark Phippard
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Mark Phippard)
This past summer, via my role as project owner for the Subclipse project,
I decided to participate as a mentor in the Google Summer of Code
program. Summer of Code is a great way to bring some visibility to your
project as well as build
... [More]
relationships with other open source developers.
One of the first things you have to do when participating in Summer of
Code as a mentor organization is to come up with some ideas for projects
that students can work on for the summer. It needs to be something
interesting enough to attract talented students and at the same time it
ought to be something where a measurable amount of work can be
accomplished in just one summer. I came up with a number of ideas, but
the one I knew someone would go after, and the one I hoped would get
done, was to add a revision graph feature.
One of the top requests I hear from new Subversion users is the desire
for a good revision graph feature. Unfortunately the way that Subversion
stores information in its repository is not conducive to providing a
feature like this. Specifically, Subversion does not currently track
"copy-to" information. It can tell you the history of a given item and
trace that history back through all of the places it was "copied-from",
but for any given path/revision pair it cannot tell you if it has been
copied to another location. This is an essential feature to create a
proper revision graph, so in order to draw a decent graph, you pretty
much need to have the entire history of the repository available so that
you can construct the "copy-to" information yourself. Performance would
be terrible if you had to get this history every time, so a good local
cache of the information is essential. This is a fairly challenging
engineering task and therefore was one that the existing Subclipse team
was unlikely to ever find the time to do. At the same time, it was a
great task for a motivated student. Combined with the ability to
visualize the information in cool ways via the rich graphical library
that Eclipse provides, I knew we would attract some interest.
We were fortunate enough to attract a great student, Alberto Gimeno. He
dove right into the task when the Summer of Code program started and did
a great job delivering the feature. I was hoping we would come out of
this with some interesting code that someone else might want to pick up
and finish, but Alberto was able to drive this feature to a point that it
was nearly ready to ship when the summer ended. We have just spent a few
months adding some Eclipse-polish to it and integrating it into
Subclipse. Today we release it, and this is what a simple graph looks
like:
[IMAGE]
Notice that the graph is capable of showing merge information when used
with Subversion 1.5. It also contains a number of nice features made
available via the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework. Namely, the
ability to zoom in/out, export to an image file as well as the ability to
navigate a large graph via the Outline view.
This feature will be included in an upcoming release of the CollabNet
Desktop - Eclipse Edition. You can get it today via the "dev-builds"
update site for the CollabNet Desktop. Download information for the
CollabNet Desktop can be found at the project home here.
Additional details on the revision graph feature can be found at the
Subclipse site.
I would like to close by once again thanking Alberto for the work he did
on this feature. I look forward to his continued involvement in this
feature and the Subclipse project. I would also thank Google for running
Summer of Code and including Subclipse in the program for 2008. [Less]
Posted
about 1 month
ago
by
Mark Phippard
Posted
2 months
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Hyrum)
It’s been almost ten years since I graduated from “dear old Allen High,”
but yesterday, I had a chance to go back in time for a few minutes. My
youngest brother is a drum major in the Allen Eagle Escadrille marching
band, and a
... [More]
senior this year, so we decided to take in a game and a
halftime show. Heather and I packed up the letter jacket, loaded up the
kids and made the 4-hour trek up to Allen for the final home game of the
season.
It’s the first high school football game I’ve been to since being in high
school myself, and I’d almost forgotten what high school football in
Texas is like. The football wasn’t particularly stellar, but the
environment can’t be beat. Even the little kids enjoyed it, though I
think they were ready to leave after we saw the band at half-time. Seeing
the 500 member marching band perform was amazing. It was also a new
experience, since I’ve always been in the band, not watching it.
Allen ended up winning the game by 3 points, and will mostly likely go
the playoffs, though based upon what I saw last night, I’m not very
confident in their chances. Still, for a few hours, it was good to be an
Allen Eagle again. [Less]
Posted
2 months
ago
by
nob...@example.com (Lübbe)
The intervals between millions are getting shorter. Looks like we are
constantly having > 500.000 downloads per month now.
