Today was Donna's birthday. The original plan was to go out to a restaurant somewhere, but seeing as I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a bus (or at least by the latest virus to be going around) we shelved that idea. "Aha," I thought. "I'll cook dinner. Sure-fire brownie-points." →

Lachlan was recently interviewed for the Sydney Morning Herald about what he found exciting on today's Internet, and graciously threw the questions to the public. I thought I might give them a stab. →

Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, one assumes she took two stories that on their own wouldn't sustain a full article -- “stupid boss wants to replace Bugzilla with commercial issue tracker” and “stupid boss didn't turn up to early morning meeting he scheduled himself” -- and melded them together. Still, the artistic license really doesn't help the whole ‘suspension of disbelief’ thing. →

Back in 2002, I wrote "Five books I think you should read if you hack Java". I was a much more novice developer at the time and the book list reflects that. Still, such a list makes a great baseline, and there are very few changes I would make today. With the recent release of the second edition of Effective Java, I thought I'd revisit the list. →

Melanie, during a discussion on the internal Atlassian wiki over what to name our newly re-org'd internal services team. →

Why is it that, in absolute opposition to the last fifteen years of software industry trends, there's no way to try an iPhone app before you buy it? How do I know which of the six dozen different Solitaire apps I want to buy if I don't get the chance to play any of them first? →

Photograph taken Saturday August 2, 2008 →

You are announcing the launch of a new hard-hitting investigative political blog that promises to tear the roof off the establishment, breaking the kind of news that the mainstream media is too shackled with biases and conflicts of interest to attempt. For fifty points: what font do you use for your announcement? →

So next time I go to the States, I fully expect my laptop to be taken away and scoured for evidence that I am a fugitive drug trafficker from the West Indies who hasn't been heard from for twenty years, and is dumb enough to travel under his own name. →