How to reconcile agile and architecture in the enterprise?

Here's a thought-provoking presentation from the Thoughtworkers.

Krugman's missing word

There's a word missing from the English language! What do you call Laura Bush when she says something like this about Iraq:

And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this.

Flickr Tag Galaxy

Re-blog from Phasor Burn--a seriously cool flickr tag virtualization called Tag Galaxy.

Wish list: make it bookmarkable

De-anonymizer for Javascript

Here is a snippet of Ruby code to de-anonymize anonymous functions in Javascript files. It could, for example, be used in a rake file of a rails project, or a Capistrano script.
It will make your debugging and stack tracing experience a lot more fruitful:

def deanonymize(file_name)
  content = ""
  line_counter = 1
  File.open(file_name).each_line do |line|
    content += line.gsub(/(\w*)(\.?)(\w*)\s*(=?)\s*function\s*\(/) {
      $1 + $2 + $3 + ' ' + $4 + ' function sbrew_' + $1 + '_' + $3 + '_' +
      file_name.split('/').last.sub(/.js$/i, '_js') + '_' + line_counter.to_s + '('
    }
    line_counter += 1
  end
  content
end

Note that it tries to put as much information as possible into a function name, but not all de-anonymized functions will look the same. The information it uses is:

• The file name


• Line number of the function declaration (note: this will make the stack traces look a bit unusual, as you might expect to see the execution line in that stack trace but it is the function declaration line)


• Enclosing object

Phrase from nearest book

A meme from Phasor Burn:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

My result:

Add lukewarm milk mixture and 4 1/2 cups (1.125L) flour.

I wonder how long we will have to wait...

... for some of the insanity resulting from 9/11 to reduce?


Salon's Patrick Smith, as usual, has an interesting viewpoint:

"More than any clash of civilizations, tedium is the legacy of Mohamed Atta"

Hair of Dog not good for Economy

I really don't get it.

Flickr photo by Bukowsky18

I've been watching the american presidential election coverage a bit too much since reconnecting my television a little while ago.  The most baffling part is that lowering taxes appears to be a major plank of both party platforms.

American government, people, and corporations have been borrowing and spending like there's no tomorrow.  They are involved in two wars. During and after world war two, where the US government was in much bigger hock (but to its own citizens, mainly), people worked hard and made sacrifices.  Don't people understand they have to start paying back their bills?  And when the government starts paying their bills, they have to do it with tax money?

The only explanation is that people still believe the Reagan/Laffer line that lowering taxes increases government revenue, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.  Or that nobody cares about inflation eventually catching up when every mismanaged financial institution is backstopped by taxpayers like Joe the plumber to the point where the rest of the world figures out that greenbacks are meaningless and no US corporation has to face its own stupidity.

I hope all the excitement for change in the US somehow allows this reality to percolate into the general consciousness of the population.