Friday, February 29, 2008

Barack Obama for President

At first, I thought that I would avoid talking about politics on my blog, but I've changed my mind. I've supported Obama since before Super Tuesday and I want everyone who reads this entry to know that. On my wife's birthday, we attended his rally in Boston on February 4th and that helped change me from feeling generally positive about him to feeling enthusiastic. I think he can win and start pushing for real change. As I learn of his primary victories in state after state, I'm actually excited! Thanks to Ian Clarke for linking to Larry Lessig's "20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack".

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

LibraryThing and Book Reviews

Jeff Winkler noticed that I like books and like talking about them and pointed me at LibraryThing. It's a website that effectively functions like a giant book club, allowing you to see who else has and likes the same books as you and what they'd recommend. I decided to set up my account and put a few of my books in my catalog. I plan to review books here and link to my reviews from LibraryThing - I've seen others doing the same thing.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Book: Free Agent Nation

I just started reading Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working For Yourself. So far, I like it quite a bit. The number of people working independently in the US (30 million or more as measured by several organizations) is staggering. I'll add more about the book as I make progress through it.

Sizer - nice little window sizing tool

I was just looking at the blog of Jeff Winkler, another member of the Boston Java Meetup and saw his entry, "Fix Offscreen Windows Easily with Sizer". Using a screencast, he describes a cool little app called Sizer, which allows you to set the exact size of an application window on a Windows machine (looks like it doesn't support Vista yet), but also helps you make lost/off-screen windows visible again. It comes with three preset window sizes (640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768), but you can easily add your own by right-clicking on Sizer's System Tray icon and choosing "Configure Sizer...". I've added a few which subtract the approximate height of the taskbar (30 pixels on my machine) so that I can see what an app would look like at other standard monitor sizes. I like my widescreen monitor, but I know not everyone has one. I hope you find it useful.