Recent Articles

“Indiana Jones and the City of Gods”: a brief review (w/spoilers)

“Indiana Jones and the City of Gods”: a brief review (w/spoilers)

| June 13, 2008 | 1 Reply

Oh, for things that might have been. I saw “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” on opening day, and — for all the grumblings that I’ve seen in other reviews — I actually liked it. Shia LaBeouf wasn’t as bad as I feared, and it was a joy seeing Karen Allen — […]

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Latest column up: more on IT project metrics

Latest column up: more on IT project metrics

| June 13, 2008 | Reply

My newest Baseline column is up: “Lies, Damned Lies, and Project Metrics (part 2)“. In it, I talk about why it’s so hard to apply metrics to IT project management and begin to suggest an approach.  Go check it out.  ..bruce w..

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Drill here, drill now, send oil

Drill here, drill now, send oil

| June 13, 2008 | 1 Reply

[06/17/08: Many thanks for Rand Simberg for the link from Transterrestrial Musings, one of my favorite blogs. C’mon, folks, I want Rep. Dicks to have a lifetime supply of motor oil. I want the whole Subcommittee to have a lifetime supply of motor oil. And then some.] It’s time for action. Oil is at $130/barrel, […]

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Eduard Burceag: a hero deserving recognition

Eduard Burceag: a hero deserving recognition

| June 12, 2008 | Reply

He deliberately put himself at risk — and died — in order to save his wife’s life: MOUNT RAINIER — Battered by a blizzard on the slopes of this mountain, Eduard Burceag lay down in a snow trench, trying to use his body’s warmth to protect his wife, Mariana, from the 70-mph winds. Rangers alerted […]

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Best Father’s Day gift ever still available!

Best Father’s Day gift ever still available!

| June 10, 2008 | 1 Reply

Yes! The best Father’s Day gift ever conceived is still available, at least over the ‘net: Here’s my write-up from last year. And, yes, I still have two of the sets I bought at Wal-Mart, though I have (so far) resisted the temptation to cut off Luke’s hand on one of them. And just because […]

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Fast web browsing

Fast web browsing

| June 9, 2008 | Reply

If, like me, you spend more time than you should browsing the web, check out alltop.com. Alltop aggregates all the top aggregators; so, for example, here are the sites and stories for programming while here are the sites and stories for movies.  I find it’s useful for tracking the top web stories on a particular […]

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And speaking of scary…

And speaking of scary…

| June 9, 2008 | Reply

…the Onion plays with all our minds: ‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’ Heh. ..bruce w..

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Horrors from the Uncanny Valley

Horrors from the Uncanny Valley

| June 9, 2008 | Reply

I’ve seen earlier video snippets of the ‘Big Dog’ robot that Boston Dynamics has been working on, but this one is longer, more varied, and more unsettling: This device looks, sounds, and moves like the unnatural offspring of H. P. Lovecraft’s psyche and the Terminator. At times, you’d swear that two people had been horribly […]

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Writing a new online column

Writing a new online column

| June 5, 2008 | Reply

I’ve been hired by Ziff Davis Enterprises to write a weekly column on IT Management for the online version of Baseline.  The column itself will be based on materials I’m writing for my (forthcoming) book, Surviving Complexity. My first column is up:  “Lies, Damned Lies, and Metrics (Part I)”; here’s the opening paragraph: When Capers […]

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How to lose a morning

How to lose a morning

| June 5, 2008 | Reply

James Lileks — Man of Many Talents (and Interests) — collects (among many, many other things) old motel postcards. As with all this other stuff, he scans them in and posts them on the web, with his observations. I made the mistake this morning of visiting that site and have been pretty much entrapped there […]

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