Category: Programming

I should point out that Ergnosis (which I joined at the start of this month) are still looking to fill a couple more “senior developer” posts. The company recruitment page gives details, and I’ll be happy to answer any queries by email. Basically, if you’ve been reading this blog for its technical content, and you have a decent software engineering background, then you’d be pretty well placed. The company offices are in Bristol, but I’m working from Edinburgh and flying down to Bristol once a fortnight for a couple of days. So, geography isn’t necessarily an obstacle (up to a point!).

From microship.com: “It is essential, when designing a complex system, to spend some relaxed time fantasizing about what it will be like when it’s finished. After all, this is what drives the process of engineering: at some level between rigorous and fanciful, an image of the finished product must be held in the mind, savored, and examined from all sides. Only after this playful interlude (which, to a manager, may be disturbingly indistinguishable from unproductive wall-staring) can decomposition of the design into subsystems, tasks, and packaging make any sense.”

Power supplies which can be controlled via IP seem like a pretty sound idea for sysadmins who don’t want to get called out at 2am to reboot a server.

They’re pretty expensive though, which made me realise that they’re an ideal application for the uCsimm “linux on a tiny low power board”. The boards come pre-installed with Linux, and has builtin ethernet and 18 i/o lines. Add a few relays, install a secure webserver and, hey-presto, homebrew remote power control.

The Harmonia Project releases some code and the world blinks a bit.

I also stumbled over videos from the 2001 Dynamic Languages Wizards Series, including a panel on language design with Guy Steele and Paul Graham.

Via some historical Ted Leung, a look at Apple’s Dylan project. I know a few people who worked for Harlequin who developed a Dylan environment, but they shut their Edinburgh offices several years ago.