Posted by Eric Mon, 07 Jul 2003 00:00:00 GMT
Elliot Coleman is a farmer and gardener on the coast of Maine. He wrote Four-Season Harvest, a lovely and remarkable book about year-round gardening in snowy climates. (You definitely want to look at the drawings.) Even in the middle of January, he's harvesting fresh salad greens and sweet carrots from old-fashioned cold frames. Coleman relies on low-tech solar heating and cold-tolerant vegetables.
Read more...Posted by Eric Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
In my spare time, I design and implement programming languages. I'm currently trying to build a language which more-or-less combines the performance of C, the learnability of Python, and the expressive power of LISP. This is a fairly ambituous goal--and one of I've already failed to accomplish several times--but I think it's worth some effort. One of my friends has codenamed this effort "Mason".
Read more...Posted by Eric Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
My tomato plants look extremely healthy, but a little bit small. Weeding is pretty easy, thanks to an sharp collineal hoe. It's basicly a knife blade on a long stick, and you use it to slice the weeds off just below ground level. No bending, no digging, no cramps--and it's fast.
For irrigation, I use a soaker hose. This is a long hose which "weeps" droplets of water through the surface. I looped it around all the plats, and turn it on in the evenings if the garden looks dry. A soaker hose requires plenty of pressure to work--you'll need to fix any faucet or hose leaks, and you can't irrigate more than 75' or so before the pressure drops too far.
Since messing with hoses is time-consuming, I also picked up a bunch of ingenious GARDENA pluggable connectors which allow me to snap hose sections together. Some of these connectors automatically shut off the water when uplugged. They actually work surprisingly well, even under the high pressure needed for soaker hoses.
I don't know how well the soaker hoses or GARDENA connectors hold up; we'll see what happens by the end of the summer.
Posted by Eric Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
A week ago, I wrote an article about small, independent software vendors (ISVs), and their future role in the software industry. My major questions: Will small ISVs be niche players, or will they have a major effect on the standards and technology we use? And do small ISVs offer any hope--individually or collectively--of challenging software monopolies?
Read more...Posted by Eric Fri, 27 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
Charles Cooper writes: "After examining earlier this month what SCO claims is offending code, however, I think the open-source community better prepare itself to face tough criticism of its practices and ethics." Charles Cooper bases this charge on Linus' unwillingness to read other people's patents, and suggests that Linus also ignores other people's copyrights. Unfortunately, this generalization badly weakens an otherwise interesting article.
Read more...Posted by Eric Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
I'm a 27-year-old programmer. When I'm 55--in 2031--I want to still be a programmer. And in 2031, I want to love my job as much as I do today. What will 2031 look like? Right now, two groups are offering their visions for the future: Microsoft and the open source movement. A third group is conspicuously silent: small, independent developers. What do the Microsoft and open source futures look like? Will the independent developers speak up? Which future should I fight for? My choices, and the choices of hundreds of thousands of people like me, will help determine which future we get. So let's take a look and start talking.
Read more...Posted by Eric Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
My name is Eric Kidd. I'm a programmer living in Vermont. During the day, I work on a multimedia runtime (for a group specializing in educational software). In my spare time, I contribute to several free software projects, hike, read voraciously and (when I get the time) design programming languages.
Read more...Posted by Eric Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
Eric Raymond wrote an excellent article on similarities between open source and agile methods: "Second, in that passage Fowler described the practice of hacking better than hackers themselves have done."
Posted by Eric Sun, 22 Jun 2003 00:00:00 GMT
A few Linux users spent Friday waving signs in front of SCO's headquarters. According to PLUG, SCO employees attempted to join the protest while carrying signs reading: "I love software piracy" and "I don't pay for my music, I'm not paying for my os, so sue me." Pictures are available.
I'm not quite sure what to say.
Eric Kidd runs Kidd Software, which develops software for a variety of clients using Rails, JavaScript and the EC2 APIs.
He's into compilers, robotics, and programming language design. Right now, he's having fun with Node.js, Scala and Rails 3.1.
