2006/01/30

Moby Quotes - The Quotations Page:
"I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.

Moby, quoted on CNN.com, March 2005"

2006/01/27

The must attend conference of the year!


Can't see the deadline for paper submissions but looks like some great talks: I particularly want to hear this one: Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development: "Pair Managing: Two Managers per Programmer by Jim Highsmith"

2006/01/26

NHS Analysis


Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online:
"Asked to explain how in the midst of plenty the NHS was running out of money, she[Patricia Hewit, Health Secretary] said that there were a variety of reasons.

“In some cases, it is financial mismanagement. In others, it is inefficiently organised services — such as not doing enough operations as day cases, or keeping people in hospital longer than needed.

“In some areas, there are too many services being provided from too many places. In others, the health community has been overspending for a very long time and taking money from other parts of the NHS to balance their books."


OK, so you are saying there are just a variety of different reasons, but then say this.....


“This is very unfair on underspending areas, which tend to be in the North and the Midlands — they are subsidising NHS services in the South and East.”"


Hmm, so perhaps it is not random after all! Let's see, the South and East - most densly populated, highest costs of living....... Sounds like a problem in the system as a whole to me.

Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts: A record-breaking year: "Life isn't easy. Commitment is no cakewalk"

2006/01/17

Shirley is coaching


What will coaching do for me?: "It was the perfect time to read again and study Ã?“Getting things doneÃ?”"

Shirley recently left her "regular" job and branched out into coaching. I think she will be good at it based on the workshops she did for us.

Glad to see that GTD is working its way into her repertoire - it will help with the new business and help her clients

Good luck Shirley!!

2006/01/16

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Thanks to PFI, the UK’s hospital building programme is bigger than that of the rest of the G8 nations put together, as health economist Professor Nick Bosanquet has pointed out. Do we need them all?"

2006/01/12

Squeak Programming for Kids


From the always interesting Ted Leung on the air: "At Mind Camp, Todd Blanchard brought by a copy of 'Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots', and the girls got excited by paging through it. It looked pretty good, and Squeak/Smalltalk certainly has the programming constructs that I want my kids to be exposed to straight off (at least if they are going to be programmers). Also, one of the original motivations for Smalltalk was for allowing kids to do programming and simulations, and that heritage seems to have carried through into the Squeak community. For a great/depressing look at some of the learning applications, you can check out this video from ETech 2003."

I just bought this book for my nephew - I am waiting to see how he takes to it. My own kids are still resolutely against programming - they obviously see what it has done to me!!

2006/01/11

Object Database usage


Starwood checks in with ObjectStore database for reservations - Computerworld: "And Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., the owner and operator of that online reservations system, gives credit in large part to a humble little object database from Progress Software Corporation."

2006/01/10

Don't try to own and control everything


Simply Albert: "Things like Barcamp and Torcamp and CESCamp don't 'belong' to anyone. That’s why they work. "

As usual, this is so true and can be applied to so many things. It's great to share even in business!!

2006/01/04

Slashdot | Portable OpenOffice.org 2.01 Released: "it's a perfect example of 'the kind of innovation developers can make when they don't have to worry about selling as many licenses of their work as possible.'"

2006/01/03

Lemonodor: Wingo SLIME Review: "The inspector keeps a stack of objects so you can dig down and come back up to where you were. I would kill to have this in Python"

2006/01/01

William H. Borah Quotes - The Quotations Page: "The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
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William H. Borah"