Monday, November 24, 2008

Productivity and Curiousity

I'm a curious guy. When a thread piques my interest, watch out!!

What happens in between topics of interest? Laa dee da dee da, skipping around, eyes wandering in a lackadaisical fashion... dee dee doooo... Cheryl to David, "Honey, why does salt make ice melt?" *Poof, alert, interested* "Hmmm... I don't know" *gears revving, BAM!!, sonic boom, David flies through wikipedia and google scholar to related links, topics and visualizations* *crack-azapers* *the yellow brick road bursts into a million pieces as David's wake follows him past Oz...* "Aha!! ..."

I tend to drift while I'm between topics of interest, but when I'm interested, I fly. Time seems to do the same, passing slowly when I'm bored and cheating ahead when I'm interested.

Topics that caught my eye this weekend: 
  • .NET and C#'s amazing catch-up to Java (including multi-platform runtime, open source support for projects like xStream, Spring, JUnit, and the frickin amazing new & free Web Developer Studio by Microsoft... http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/default.aspx)
  • Java EE design patterns, security approaches, scalability concerns...
  • NetLibrary's stunning varienty of technical refferences
  • The drama involved in crowning Solomon king of Israel and Judea.
  • The relationship between water phase changes and solutes
  • Mind mapping tools as a solution for writing technical documents, authoring presentations, composing emails, keeping track of work... (see FreeMind: http://freemind.sourceforge.net)
What did you find interesting this week? Pique my interest with something cool!! I'll love you for it. :)

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The Content of My Blog

Here's a visualization of my last six months of blog posts:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/334931/Untitled