Last time I looked, MacPorts had a more paranoid approach to dependencies. That can be good and bad. Homebrew can be easier to use, until you run into a corner case that trips it up. MacPorts can be frustrating in how many dependencies it will insist on installing its own version even though the system-provided version might have worked.

I've gone back and forth. For a while homebrew could install a working GHC for me while I wasn't having any luck with MacPorts. Later something else caused me to switch back to MacPorts. Neither is perfect. Even MacPorts only allows dependencies at the package level, without regard to variants, or versions, if I recall correctly.

There are some variant packages, eg, php5.2.x vs 5.3.x

Intriguing idea.

Extending it to absurdity:

All functions should be stored in a searchable key/value database, where the key is a cryptographically signed canonical representation of the function source code. By "canonical representation" I mean a translation to a canonical form of the lambda calculus, so as to capture the complete meaning unambiguously.

This database would, of course, translate the lambda calculus to erlang, lisp, haskell, php, what-have-you, on demand at the view layer.

Metadata would need to be extensive, but we could crowd-source that Wikipedia-fashion.

Wooden boat building is a lot of fun, and doesn't have to take a lot of space. There are kits available for beautiful kayaks and such that people have built in their apartments. Be sure to plan how to get it out of the house if you build something bigger inside :) Also, beware of potentially toxic chemicals. Some wood dust (cedar) is dangerous.

Steve Yegge says every programmer should be a fast, accurate, touch-typist:

  http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/09/programmings-dirtiest-little-secret.html

I couldn't find his minimum-speed prescription, just now, but he does say 70 words a minute is easily obtainable for anyone with two hands.

Yeah, I disagree with this post a lot. Unless you're typing out Java factories by hand with no IDE support, any speed approaching touch-typing is going to do you fine. 70 words per minute is not necessary.

That's what you think, until you're working with someone and you watch him/her typing out Unix commands at 20 wpm, making constant mistakes.

People who watch horror movies and then complain about being scared have themselves to blame :P

When receiving criticism, I should do as you say, and assume my mistakes are the target, not my (oh so sensitive) self. But when handing out criticism, I should assume the other person will take it personally. It's like that principal for Internet robustness: be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you accept.

If, like me, you have heard bits and pieces about McLuhan, but never delved deeper, the 20 minute introduction by Tom Wolfe is well worth your time.

I'll have to look into it given my knowledge of McLuhan extends as far as his Annie Hall cameo.

I thought EMC bought VMWare?

They did, in 2001.

I can't judge how useful the data-mining stuff is, but there's some nice Lisp code in there. Simple, powerful, and makes it look easy.

Look into GBBOpen. Beautiful, industrial lisp code, thoroughly documented, though self-documenting as well.

If you own several different media properties like this guy, is it a good strategy to incorporate each one separately, to keep an unintentional Adsense TOS violation from affecting all the others?

Any thoughts on Heroku, now that you have some paid experience with it?

I like it, in a qualified fashion. For apps at the scale I operate at, which don't really benefit from the scale-to-the-moon aspect, the main selling point is the ease of deployment. You have to balance this with there being many, many headaches if you decide to use gems/libraries which interact poorly with Heroku's view of the world. I had to do an awful lot of R&D to get a client's project working, and that was for a wee little website which mostly turned strings into other strings.

Personally, at my combination of developer and sysadmin ability, I find using VPSes is a better use of my time. For client work where I want to hand over a product which doesn't require my ongoing involvement? Heroku all the way.