SVG

SVG is an XML format to describe pictures.
This is great because this is truly multi-platform.

The problem is that thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhere are very few tools that support SVG.
Ideally, you want to find multi-platform tools to create, edit and display SVG pictures.

Here are some of them:

Sodipodi
Skencil
SVGMaker (PDF to SVG)
The Gimp
Adobe Illustrator
Corel WebDraw

There are other Unix tools that can convert from various format (e.g. pic, fig) to SVG.

Learning the guitar

They only keyboards I can play are QWERTY.
I am thinking about learning a real instrument.

I got frustrated with piano. Guitar looks more intriguing and my roomate has a cool electric guitar.

I don't have time to take lessons (even though I am sure this is the best way).

Maybe this is the solution: a guitar that shows where and when to put your fingers. This is a really great use of technology for learning.

Sweet device

Here is a device from Siemens that recognizes human words and transmit them via Bluetooth to a computer or a base station.

Can imagine walking in my apartment and controling by voice what music plays, what channels are on, etc.

Seinfeild scripts

if you are a big fan of the "show about nothing", here are the scripts of all the episodes.

UML sequence diagrams, the easy way

If you need to generate some UML sequence diagrams and don't want to waste your time with traditional UML tools, check UMLGraph.

You describe your diagram as text: you define objects and messages between them. And the tool generates for you the diagrams.

Recommended readings

Two great books I just finished:

Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham: about programming, start-ups, education and other very interesting topics.

PeopleWare by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister: about management of people.