Insightful post from the creators of Structure 101:

http://www.headwaysoftware.com/blog/2008/11/software-erosion-findbugs/

I recently came across dropbox while scouting around for online storage solutions. It’s hit the nail on the head with its current feature set, it’s got a slick user experience… and best of all – it’s got tight Linux support.

I think it’s recently come out of an invite only beta…

Congratulations to JetBrains on releasing IntelliJ IDEA 8 – I have been using their EAP build for a number of days prior to the official release – and am excited with the speed and stability. I know the 7.x releases have taken a bit of a beating for having a slow and bloated feel. Redemption yay! Take a look at the new features.

(upgraded Wordpress; Added Flickr / Last.fm sidebars…)

Engadget / Gizmodo both reporting on the official launch of the new line of Sony Laptops.

From Engadget:
“The VAIO Z packs an option for dual SSD in a RAID configuration (which is just rubbing it in, if you ask us)”

yes. yes it is…

I’ve been really pleased with how my current laptop – The Sony SZ – has held up over the last two years. The form factor is great and it’s tough to find a similarly portable laptop that packs as much power. I just came across some information on an upcoming line of Sony laptops that will feature Intel’s new Montevina chipset.

The Sony Z. And the specs look great…

Core 2 Duo 2.53ghz 6mb Cache 1066Mhz FSB
4GB DDR2-800
Nvidia 9300M (speed) / Intel graphics (stamina)
320GB
HSDPA
1600×900 13.1″ (wahey!)
and all at ~3.3lbs

I’ll throw in a Solid State Disk when I get one, and let’s hope it places nice with Ubuntu.

Skype is a quite popular at work – used for most of our online conversations with the Seattle office.

This means I tend to have bothкомпютри Pidgin and Skype active at any one time. As well as having a single consolidated view of all my I.M. accounts… I personally prefer the Pidgin interface;

Just came across Skype API Plugin for Pidgin – created be Eion Robb.

UPDATE: after using this for a few days… I turned it off again. Pidgin was unstable, Skype didn’t always start automagically in the background.

Last night I spent a bit of time attempting DVD playback on the latest Ubuntu – Hardy Heron Beta.

Whether I tried vlc / totem / ogle / mplayer – I was getting the following hard crash

X Error of failed request:  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)

I was running my Sony SZ Laptop in ’stamina’ mode – which uses an Intel i810 graphics card. I had to sift through quite a few pages before I came upon a solution that worked:

Add the following line to the Device section of your xorg.conf file:

Option "LinearAlloc" "16000"

Also checked out bluetooth-alsa again – came across this site to ease the installation of a2dp (stereo bluetooth headset) on Linux. Worked incredibly well – comes with a nice script to toggle between speaker/headset. VLC & Amarok play nice as soon as you select the ASLA device as ‘bluetooth’.

(Watched a fair bit of TV over the weekend; West Wing, Lost, Southland Tales, Meet the Spartans, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Happy Valentines Day Anna Lynch.

Might be time to change your profile picture.

I’ve really been missing this feature for my Mac. Zooom.

It enables resizing and moving a window with keyboard shortcuts. Similar to the “Alt + Left Click” window drag and “Alt + Middle Click” window resize I’m familiar with in linux.

Spent a few hours this weekend finally getting some documentation together for modularity. It has been a pet project of mine ever since I was introduced to the concept by Malcolm Sparks.

modularity is a set of Ant tasks to help with the software configuration management of Java projects with a large number of modules. modularity aims to make maintaining ant build files a thing of the past – instead you maintain a set of ‘metadata.xml’ files describing your project’s layout and dependency tree.

I’m currently using modularity for all my pet projects (yes modularity also builds itself!) and I’m also luck enough to be allowed to use it at in NewBay. At work it is used to create the developers IDE workspace, build all software modules and ultimately release software.

Maciej Baranowski, Darragh Curran and Guy Granger all have helped tremendously on its development to date.