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When I saw my bike hanging wheelless from a sign post last week, several thoughts entered my head. Among those thoughts was why the prick that stole my wheels (requiring a wrench) didn’t just use a bic pen and steal the whole bike. At least they could have rode the thing somewhere rather than carrying the crappy old wheels around.

So, this is farewell to a my old bike. It served me well over the last 15 years as a mountain bike first then a stripped down urban vehicle. Goodbye old friend.

Over the years, I have been in many meetings where someone will ask an engineer how difficult a particular technical problem is to solve. More likely than not–after a lengthy question and answer session–the answer will be something like “hard” or “trivial”. Most people in the room will respond to this question with a befuddled look. The silence in the room will eventually be broken by someone demanding to know preciously what date this problem will be solved by.

If you are one of the befuddled on a regular basis, you should read Understanding Engineers: Feasibility. It offers definitions for these common engineering answers. Knowing this information might prevent costly assumptions in the future. For example, you might get excited when you are told a problem is “trivial” to solve. You might think that you can have this trivial solution tomorrow or next week. Perhaps you should think again:

The only caveat is that triviality refers to how hard the problem is to solve, not how hard it is to implement the solution. So there is no necessary relation between a task being trivial, and how long it takes…

For those readers that are already familiar with these definitions, you might want to forward this link to people who need to understand them. This might be especially useful before a difficult status meeting. Even better, perhaps you can persuade your project manager to print a short summary on the back of all meeting agendas.

via Simon Willison’s Weblog

Fog Creek Software has an open house every year in their beautiful offices. But, even though I used to work right across the street, I missed it every year. This year will be different, I’m actually going to make it this time. If you are a technical type in the area of the West 30’s on Tuesday Thursday, the 19th, I suggest you do the same. The details are at joelonsoftware.com.

Its a New York City first. Some on-street car parking has been decommissioned in favor of bicycle parking near the Bedford Avenue subway stop in Williamsburg. This is a welcome change for cyclists since the area has been the scene of NYPD clipping incidents in the past (via). By creating this new area, bikes are locked out of people’s way on the sidewalk. It is good to see that the city is starting to provide an amount of bike parking commensurate with the number of cyclists. Let’s hope this is just the first of many bike parking zones.

Thirty years ago this Friday, a blackout sparked widespread looting and rioting in New York City. City Room has a good summary of how the media outlets around town are remembering the blackout this week. The City Room blog entries on the subject have been accompanied by great photos from the NY Times’ archive. The one above showing reporters working in a candle lit newsroom is just one example.

Photo: New York Times

There’s a place that has many, many books. You can take these books for free so long as you agree to bring them back. Yes, this place is your local library. Even though these libraries are everywhere and the price is right, Amazon links are ubiquitous. Amazon is great, but you might not want to purchase every book you would like to read.

With LibraryLookup, you can quickly find out if a book you are viewing on Amazon is available at your local library. Once you’ve put the proper bookmarklet in your browser, you click on the LibraryLookup bookmarklet from any Amazon book detail page. A new window will pop up with that book’s information from your library’s website. From there, you should be able to find out which branches have the book or reserve a copy.

Since different libraries use different systems, you’ll need to make a bookmarklet specific to your local library. The LibraryLookup site will step you through that process. If the New York Public Library is your choice, you can just drag this link onto your toolbar: NYPL Lookup

via 43 folders

If you attended or watched one of the Live Earth concerts today, you might feel compelled to take action. Don’t let that feeling subside, pick up a copy of The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. Even if you didn’t go, you should be able to use many of the 77 tips provided in the book. For a sample, take a look at the “Ride a Bike” chapter posted on Streetsblog.

How did I miss this? I should have been well aware of this Nabaztag bunny last year. I will immediately adjust my RSS feeds so I’m get the appropriate level of gadget news and this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

The latest Wi-Fi bunny, Nabaztag/tag, has a few more features than the original, including a bellybutton and and RFID reader. But, both can do all sorts of cool, internet connected type things. Best of all is the API. What’s better than a programmable bunny? Oh, so many possibilities.

Just one example is this Nabaztag/tag enabled build status notification. It helps a group of software developers know if their current projects are being built without errors. The bunny is in tune with their CruiseControl continuous build system. Good builds mean a happy bunny. Problems in the build process make the bunny sad–and nobody wants a sad bunny around the office.

I was skeptically excited when I read that Steorn would demonstrate their free energy machine in London this week. This machine would negate many years of science–enter my skepticism. I was excited because if they had the braggadocio to trot this thing out for all to see, they must have had something that, at least, looked like it worked.

Skepticism was the correct path. The deadline came and went but the free energy machine did not work. Today, Engadget has the full scoop, including video of Steorn’s CEO, Sean McCarthy, stating that the demonstration was a failure. McCarthy goes on to say that they will be back with a working machine on a yet to be determined date.

Its a good thing they didn’t cancel the Live Earth concerts today in anticipation of all the free energy that could be produced by Steorn’s magic machine.

The mouse and other pointing devices are great innovations for personal computing. Excessive use, however, can really slow you down. Since I’m not a fan of deceleration, I’ve been loving Quicksilver lately. Other Quicksilver users I’ve talked to share the same feeling. In addition to giving you quick, keyboard access to applications and files, it can do more advanced actions like providing speedy access to contacts in your address book. Many of these advanced actions are provided through a growing library of plugins. Applescripts can also be run with the tap of a couple keys. This makes Quicksilver exceedingly flexible. As a simple example, I made this basic Applescript that launches my most used applications in one go.

Unfortunately, Windows users are out of luck, Quicksilver is Mac only. But, there are alternatives. Launchy is quite popular and Lifehacker points to a promising alternative called Skylight. I don’t have any first hand experience with either of these Windows applications, but if they share at least some of Quicksilver’s features, I recommend trying them out.