• Harassed for attempting to transition from employee to consultant | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  All your opportunity are belong to us…
  (tags: consulting techrepublic employers)
• What’s your geek quotient?
  Think of a number between i and pi…
  (tags: geek humor geeksaresexy)

• WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.6
  Just upgraded all sites. Watch for falling blogs.
  (tags: wordpress blogging sitenews)
• Assertions for Synergy/DE — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  assert_kind_of(ModernProgrammingLanguage, SynergyDE)
  (tags: synergyde assertions tdd)

Teeni, in her infinite generosity, has awarded me the Arte y Pico award, which roughly translates to “the peak of art”.

Here’s da rules:

1. 1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.
   2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.
   3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.
   4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
   5) Please post these rules.

I don’t really think of my blog as artistic except in a utilitarian way, but heck — I’ll take any award anyone wants to lavish upon it.

Now to choose five blogs that meet the criteria in rule 1 (in no particular order):

1. Eric, of // Internet Duct Tape.  Besides sporting a clean WordPress Template Design, Eric provides tons of free software tools.  My favorite is the Auntie Spam plugin for WordPress, which makes Akismet manageable even when you have thousands of spam messages to review.
2. Cooper, of Wonderland or Not.  Whether or not you agree with her “left of most lines” stance, she always makes you think — and her writing style is quite engaging.  You’re also guaranteed to see some change to her WordPress theme every few weeks.  She helps out the blogging community with her site Should be Famous, which promotes bloggers who are relatively unknown but deserve better.
3. Pisces Iscariot, of The Far Queue.  Thought-provoking poetry and essays for the 21st century, complemented by well-chosen photos and artwork.
4. Paul Raven, of Velcro City Tourist Board.  Flash science fiction stories, Friday photo blogging, and some of the most interesting links on the web.  Paul also writes for Futurismic, a blog about “Near-future science fiction and fact”.
5. Yvonne Tran, of nektros.  Site design is her strong suit, and her writing is witty and pointed.

Thanks for the award, Teeni!

• Torvalds attacks IT industry ‘security circus’ | Tech News on ZDNet
  “I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys…”
  Don’t be so shy, Linus. Tell us how you really feel.
  (tags: security linux openbsd linustorvalds)
• Being Smart Does Not a Good Developer Make
  “Some companies write software as if they were building a glass castle, while others write software as if they are shoveling dirt onto a pile.”
  Or a pile of something else…
  (tags: development programming career)
• Stu Savory’s Blog – Bizarre sexual practices
  Hint: prefix “bi-”, suffixes “-play” and “-lingual”. Clicking thru now?
  Answer: bilingual wordplay
  (tags: wordplay french)
• AncientWeb.org: The Ancient Worlds Great Civilizations
  I could spend a few millenia on this site. Thanks, Paul.
  (tags: history ancient civilizations culture reference archaeology mythology)

• Lucky to be a Programmer : Gustavo Duarte
  “Under the right conditions, writing software is so intensely pleasurable it should be illegal.”
  Don’t tell my wife, OK?
  (tags: programming inspiration computerscience elegance algorithms)

• Experts to Discuss One Puzzling Autism Case, as a Second Case Has Arisen – NYTimes.com
  Lots of unknowns here — what we need is more research that isn’t controlled by politics.
  (tags: vaccination autism mitochondria)
• Ten More Stupid Uses for Windows | NetworkWorld.com Community
  11, 14, and 17 give new meaning to the “D” in “BSOD”. via the Code Project.
  (tags: windows microsoft)
• Google’s new experiment – keyboard shortcuts
  I’m all over this, like vim over emacs!
  (tags: keyboard google experiment)

• Insurance for independent IT consultants: Policies to consider | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  The best advice I have about insurance is to be the insurer rather than the insured.
  (tags: techrepublic consulting insurance advice)
• IBM’s eight-core Power7 chip to clock in at 4.0GHz | The Register
  “IBM has an architecture that will let supercomputing types combine these 2U boxes to form a massive unit with 1,024 cores, hitting 32 teraflops of performance with 2TB of memory.” And they have even bigger plans for NCSA’s “Blue Waters” system.
  (tags: ibm supercomputers multicore processors ncsa)

• Arjan`s World » LINKBLOG for July 12, 2008
  Thanks for the link-love, Arjan! Also, your link to “Stealth Client Request” is a gem.
  (tags: linklove)
• My analyst warned me, but metaprogramming was so beautiful I got another analyst
  Live free or die
  (tags: programming metaprogramming ruby raganwald jeffatwood)

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my first post on TechRepublic’s IT Consultant blog.  While they pay me enough to make it as worthy of my attention as any of my other clients, the real value for me has been demonstrated in the more general principle of “if you really want to learn something well, write about it for a public audience” — especially one that can respond immediately in comments.  I’ve learned a lot from my fellow consultants, along with the research and thought that go into writing each post.  It’s made me a better consultant.  I’m happier about the work I’m doing, and I’m making more money at it.  My thanks to Jason Hiner and Toni Bowers for hiring me after I lambasted TR.  And of course, much of the credit for the blog’s success goes to my excellent editor, Mary Weilage, without whom I would be likely to brazenly split infinitives, use phrases whose subject don’t agree with their verb, and leave prepositions dangling off.  Actually, she does much more than correct my grammar:  she includes relevant links, SEOs the titles, and organizes the posts.

Today I finished reading The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester.  Wow.  I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read it, but I’ll make one comment about the ending.  I like where Bester left it, because to go any further would almost be impossible by definition — so he leaves the sequel to your imagination instead.  Reading this story has rekindled my interest in Science Fiction — stories that start from a “What if?” but inevitably lead back to an examination of the human condition.  So, I decided to finish the anthology in which Bester’s story was included — which begins with Re-Birth, by John Wyndham.

Tomorrow my wife and I go on diets.  She’s going for an Atkinsesque low-carb ketosis induction, in contrast to our recent habits which she affectionately calls the “no carb left behind” diet.  I’m going back to a strict interpretation of the Blood Type Diet for myself.  It has worked for me long-term, but over the past year I’ve let some bad habits creep in.  For instance, as I write this I’m sipping my last cup of coffee for the foreseeable future.  It’s back to Green Tea for me tomorrow.  Fortunately, as a Type O my diet is pretty compatible with Atkins, so we won’t have to eat in separate rooms — except for when she wants to escape my stinky breakfast.

Extra points for connecting this post’s title and subject matter.

• programming: To all the editors I’ve loved before…
  Mention vim online, and you start an instant “emacs vs vim” war. Works every time.
  (tags: vim emacs editors)
• Useful VIM features
  Did I mention I’m using vim almost exclusively now?
  (tags: tips vim)
• VI and VIM editor: Tutorial and advanced features
  We’re on a vim roll
  (tags: vim vi reference howto)
• Tip #305 – Best of VIM Tips (VIM’s best Features) : vim online
  :n
  (tags: vim tips vi)
• Best of VIM Tips, gVIM’s Key Features zzapper
  :wq
  (tags: vim vi tips)
• Neufeld Computer Services | Read this and Think PREVENTION
  Have your consultant vet the vendor before you buy.
  (tags: consulting)