Rockin' with The Antix

I had some time to kill at Disneyland tonight, so I wandered over to Innoventions to see the Asimo robot do his tricks. Unfortunately, I missed his last performance (hourly from noon to 6), but I got a great consolation prize -- for just then, The Antics hit the stage at the Tomorrowland Terrace, singing one great rock 'n roll cover after another: Billy Idol, The Cars, Wild Cherry, Stevie Wonder. The first set was so good, I waited for them return after their break and then enjoyed the second set as well.

I don't see on The Antix web site where they tell you where you might catch an upcoming performance, but you can always hire them for a private gig (seriously, for weddings and corporate events, etc.). Check out their video clips online. And you can always look for them at Disneyland. Apparently they're regulars there.

Update: Scheduled dates can be found at http://www.myspace.com/brookewilkes and http://www.myspace.com/antixband

Stupid Procrastination Advice

And the award for the most inane utterance heard this week goes to the psychologist on NBC's Today Show yesterday morning for her advice on curbing procrastination. Her biggest tip? "Set priorities."

How stupid is that? Doesn't the term “procrastinate” pretty much imply that the items not being done are important? I mean, when was the last time you heard a guy apologize for not getting all of his TV watching done?

The Blank Page Syndrome
My personal procrastination demons are usually of the fuzzy-goal species. It's hard for me to get things done when I'm not even sure what "done" looks like. Whenever I realize that that is what's happening, I use a trick that they teach to budding novelists. “Write the ending first,” the professionals say. "Then, go back to the beginning and write to that end, changing it, if necessary, when you get there."

This trick works for all kinds of tasks. For example, in software maintenance I usually have to document the changes I make, explaining to the end-user what each bug fix or enhancement means to them and how to take advantage of it. I find that when I start with writing that documentation, pretending that I've already implemented the change, it really helps to clarify in my mind the specifics of the end result that I'm trying to achieve. Then, as I do the work for real, it gives me an acid test to know if I'm on the right track. In other words, does the software now work as advertised? A side benefit of this end-first exercise is that it often reveals latent issues and questions for which I have no answers. It also helps me to enumerate any assumptions that I've been making, which perhaps ought to be validated.

A Man Walks Into a Bar...

One of my clients is a connoisseur of "A man walks into a bar..." jokes. I made this one up for him, and he thought it was funny enough to share:

A cartoon character named Sam bellies up to the bar and orders a yard of beer.

The barkeep asks him, "Are you sure you want a whole yard now? It'll get warm before you finish."

Sam replies, "Yes, I'm sure. I've got a 2-dimensional gullet, so this beer will disappear in nothing, flat."

Tapestry Wins Award at JavaOne

Tapestry won a Duke's Choice award for innovation at this years JavaOne. "The fourth Duke's Choice Awards ... spotlight some of the most clever, practical, and inspirational Java technology applications on the planet." Check out Howard's blog (photos yet to come): http://howardlewisship.com/blog/2006/05/tapestry-dukes-choice.html

Best Pen for Margin Notes

I have a new favorite pen for writing notes in the margins of books. It's the Pilot Precise Gel 0.7 (a click pen). They come in four packs. It's ultra fine (great for when the publisher doesn't give you much margin space to work with) and it doesn't bleed through to the back of the paper. I bought a dozen of the pens and scattered them all over my house, car, and office, so one's always in reach.

Martin Luther King

"Man must evolve for all humnan conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggresion and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love." -- Martin Luther King

Ken Schwaber Speaking on Scrum 1/18/06

Ken Schwaber is speaking about his "Scrum" development process at a special meeting of XPSD this Wed (1/18/06). If you have never had the pleasure of hearing Ken speak, let me tell you it's well worth any effort to get there. He's a dynamic presenter with insightful material, and I guarantee you'll walk away enriched.

I first heard Ken speak in Pasadena a few years ago, and then again at an SD West conference in San Jose. In fact, two of the many highlights of that conference for me were when Ken joined me and my friends for breakfast and then later that evening when he led one of the most popular Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

If I wasn't already committed to hearing Michael Feathers speak at the OC Patterns meeting the same night, I'd definitely consider driving down to hear Ken again.

Tapestry Components, Naturally

Mike Henderson and my business partner, Vladimir Drndarski, presented an introduction to Tapestry at the Orange County Java Users Group meeting last night. For this demo, they rewrote the entire www.ocjug.org website (albeit without persistence), and threw in a few extra features to boot. It took them only a matter of hours. One of the main aspects of Tapestry that they showed off was how easy it is to componentize elements of your web pages for reuse. Indeed, developing in terms of components with Tapestry comes so naturally, that you’d practically have to fight it not to.

One of the extra features Mike added was a component to take advantage of Google maps to give you driving directions to the OCJUG meeting. Initially, it just shows a map of the meeting location. If you enter the address of your starting point, it first calls one web service to translate it into lat/long coordinates, and then calls the Google mapping API to generate directions and show the route map. Pretty slick. All of the code for this Tapestry example is available on Mike’s blog (www.behindthesite.com/blog). See also www.t-deli.com for a demonstration of more Tapestry components.

Mike is the evil genius behind Tapestry Palette (tapestrypalette.sourceforge.net) and had a hand in developing Groovistry (Groovy for Tapestry, groovestry.sourceforge.net). Vladimir is President and co-founder of Maxim Software Corp. (www.maximsc.com).

Further reading: There’s a recent Server Side article that compares JavaServer Faces to Tapestry (www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=35899) . By the way, www.theserverside.com itself is a Tapestry app (www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=31313).