jra's thoughts

Author: jra

  • IBM makes metamaterials

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    This sounds important. Humans now have the ability to make materials with properties never before seen in the universe. That’s a big deal. You can get semi-conducting behavior out of natural substances (search for “crystal radio” and “razor blade” for an example). But you’ be hard pressed to find anything on the planet outside of…

  • Back from vacation

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    I’m back from a really cool 2 week vacation sailing in Croatia. I’ll be filling in weblog postings for the days of vacation in a bit. For now, let me just say it was wonderful, and I’d recommend Croatia to anyone!

  • Great band names

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    Sometimes I come across a saying and I think, “that would make a good band name”. Tonight, which watching Insomniac, there was a steel mill on. In the furnace control room, there was a dial labeled megawatts. Megawatts! I immediately realized I just HAD to have one for a coworker. So I searched on ebay,…

  • SCO Claim credible, according to incredible analyst

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    Seen in Information Week: “My impression is that [SCO’s claim] is credible,” says Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group analyst who was shown the evidence by SCO Group earlier this week. Who is this chick? Here’s her bio, from the ITF2003 speaker list. Laura DiDio, Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group Laura DiDio is a senior analyst…

  • VMWare on Servers

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    Another interesting Joel note is about using VMWare on servers. When VMWare came out years ago, smart sysadmins I hung out with realized that it would be useful this way. But it hasn’t really taken off among folks I know. At Tellme there are a couple reasons why we don’t use it. First, it doesn’t…

  • Mozilla Firebird is ready to rock

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    Mozilla Firebird is almost ready to replace IE on my desktop. It is fast, and almost all of my habits from IE carry over. Joel’s review of it is what got me to try again. I’ve tried Mozilla several times in the past and just given up because it was such a pig. I have…

  • Google can’t spell?

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    Google’s HTTP replies have headers like this in them: Cneonction: Close NnCoection: Close The first one happens for responses with result code 200. The second one happens with responses of 403. (If you are asking yourself how I got Google to give me a 403, try http://google.com/wml with a user agent that does not include…

  • Sailing Vacation comes through

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    OK, it is official, I am signed on to the trip to sail for 9 days off the coast of Croatia! Wow, this is going to be amazing! The sailboat we’ll be chartering is really swanky! We will be picking it up in Split, Croatia. From there we’ll probably be heading south in to the…

  • Smart people doing important things

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    I get this certain feeling when I read some things on the net. It’s this “click” in my brain that says, “This is a smart person, making good progress on an important problem.” I get it almost every time I read philg. Today’s dose of that feeling came from this article about what’s happening at…

  • SF Bay Bloggers

    —

    by

    jra
    in

    SF Bay Bloggers is a website for bloggers in the SF Bay Area that some geeky chick put together. Congrats Courtney!