Category Archives: Books

My affair with Zope3

February 24, 2008 09:44 / Leave a Comment /

When Martijn Faassen introduced me to Zope3 in December 2004, something happened. I fell for her logic, her view on the future. Her looks were promising. We quickly partnered in a small project I was working on.

Then things started to get messy. Evenings of joy turned into evenings of long, frustrating conversations. She just wouldn’t dance with me anymore. She complained about my lack of understanding.

Last week I received Philipp’s updated Zope counseling guide. A fresh impulse to give our relation a second chance. Hopefully Philipp will assist me in understanding her better.

On first sight things seem promising. Zope3 let go some of her complexness and grew a bit more mature. Let’s see if we can get to dancing again!

Posted in: Books, Development, Zope

Don’t worry about people stealing your idea

August 31, 2007 20:15 / Leave a Comment /

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

— Howard Aiken, found in The Myths of Innovation

Posted in: Books, Development, Personal

Desire

July 18, 2007 21:20 / Leave a Comment /

Tis easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it

— Benjamin Franklin in Way to Wealth

From pick the brain, found via reddit

I should have quoted one about staying away from debt 🙂

Posted in: Books, Finance, Quotes

More Anti Patterns

June 22, 2007 09:28 / Leave a Comment /

Scott Berkun and commenters summed up undesirable methodologies like Development By Denial, Never Ending Story Development and Learned Helplessness Development.

Although I believe it’s best to focus on the positive, by visualizing how things should be done, recognizing failing strategies can be fun. And instructive.

Mr. Berkun happens to be the author of The art of project management and The myths of innovation. Both on my wishlist.

Via Vattekkat Satheesh Babu on Planet Python.

Posted in: Books, Development, Object Oriented Design

XML Topic Maps quotation on HyTime

June 2, 2007 18:00 / Leave a Comment /

Chapter 3, page 45, footnote 16:

HyTime is a holistic solution to the question of how to create metadata assets that impose all kinds and combinations of arbitrary alternative structures on arbitrary sets of arbitrary information resources.

— Steven R. Newcomb in A perspective on the quest for global knowledge interchange (pdf)

I bet the author must have smiled when he wrote this sentence. Just as I did after reading it (at least twice).

Posted in: Books, Development, Web, XML

Living a satisfied life

March 11, 2007 17:35 / Leave a Comment /

Living in the Place you Belong,
with the People you Love,
doing the Right Work,
on Purpose

— Leider and Shapiro in Repacking your bags

Posted in: Books, Idealism, Personal, Quotes

Don’t make me think!

January 13, 2007 15:18 / Leave a Comment /

book coverLast weekend I finally read Steve Krug’s Don’t make me think (2nd edition). One of the few books I actually read entirely. And this one even within two days. Not only because it’s easy to read. Also because it is a fun book, with valuable content.

The first edition dates back to 2001. After encountering several references to this book as ‘a classic’, I figured I should read it.

If you’re in a profession related to publishing on the web – who isn’t these day? – than I can only recommend you to read mister Krug’s work. It provides you with some usability basics, without getting boringly scientific.

Posted in: Books, Development, Web

Retournés de la France

August 3, 2006 22:26 / 1 Comment /

As of today, we’re back from three weeks vacation through Germany (Dortmund), Switzerland (Geneve) and France (Riquewihr, Annemasse, Annecy, Vaux-les-St-Claud). Three weeks of doing almost nothing 🙂

The total time I spent on the internet was just 1.5 hours! Most of it taken by deleting spam e-mails and spam comments from this weblog. The few times that I did want to send an e-mail, internet access was just not available. Somehow, France seems to be some years behind on The Netherlands. Internet cafĂ©s are hard to find. Many companies don’t have e-mail at their own domain, but rather with wanadoo: besson.meubles@wanadoo.fr. And, very inconvenient, most shops close between 12:00 and 14:30. But hey, I did get a rest!

One of the activities I did allow myself to do was reading. My holiday selection:

Of these, Linked is the only book I’ve read entirely so far.

Since my job switch, over a year ago, I really picked up reading. My goal is to read a book every week. Since I have a habit of starting to read a new book before having finished the last, it is a bit hard to monitor how many books I read a week. I estimate my current rate is 0.5 book a week.

To monitor my progress, I intend to post a short note on every book I’ve finished. So, expect a post on Linked next weekend.

Posted in: Books, Development, Personal

Currency Converter: FXConverter

July 7, 2006 13:29 / Leave a Comment /

A service I highly value: converting currency on a given date. In my case: converting expenses in dollars to euros.

oanda fxconverter

Very useful when filling in company declaration forms for my regular IT book shopping with Amazon 🙂

Posted in: Books, Finance, Personal