There are some weeks that I try to cram too much into my head. I can always tell it’s getting full too, when it begins to refuse new material and I start to get cranky. Today I’m getting cranky.

This week I looked at a bunch of new technologies, I made significant progress on two separate projects at work, and I started work on a few personal projects that have been waning. I also started reading a textbook that arrived in the mail on Friday, Software Conflict 2.0, which resulted in a great deal of well-needed reflection.

The technologies I crammed in my head all proved to be deceptive, as they often are. Each promised to revolutionize how something is done, without any of the pain of the other approaches. Each inevitably made some small aspect of a problem trivial, at the cost of other things. The search was fruitful, though I’m not sure my muse has finished digesting it all.

The theme of this week’s brain-freeze: While a framework may make a few things easier, it always makes at least a few things harder.

I was going to continue to work some more tonight, but instead I think I’ll give my head a break. My muse has some catching up to do.

The people in the story, both dead and alive, shall show a sufficient excuse for being there. – Mark Twain (replace people with features)

Dan Simmons on writing well. You might remember Mr. Simmons from his Hyperion series.

Some notes on debugging a XULRunner application.

A large set of online XUL apps.

An excellent and exhaustive list of XUL widgets, displayed within an XUL application.

Aperture future in question as Apple axes bulk of team. Reported by ThinkSecret, who have been mistaken in the past.

Weird, Bloglines uses flat files for most of its backend datastore (instead of a database). I’ve always liked flat files at smaller scales, interesting to see it used for larger problems.

A longish interview with Matt Groening.

The problem with designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of a complete fool. – Douglas Adams