Greetings from Boston - 3/9/9, cooler in a way than 3/3/9, if less obviously so...  it was snowing today, so it was cool in more ways than one.  Fortunately I am safely ensconced in the Prudential center, and experienced the weather as a pretty vista through windows :)

You are getting tired of hearing me boast about meals, I know, so I will not mention the wonderful dinner in a French Bistro; nor the goat cheese salad followed by killer lamb, rare, nor the nice Rioja which accompanied it.  And I will certainly not mention the decadent praline cake for dessert.

Penn and Teller on ESP: Bullshit!  They are wonderful.

ArsTechnica review Watchmen: huge, awkward, and pitch-perfect.  I keep hearing good things about this movie, I guess I have to go see it.  So be it.

These lists are usually worse than this one: top 10 inventions of the 20th century that changed the world: 1) the Internet, 2) TV, 3) computers.  I notice derailleur-shifted gears did not make the list?

I read this in paper Wired, but here it is online: Design under Constraint, how limits boost creativity.  There's a real point here, all design involves limits, and creativity is often finding the hidden local maxima on a given potential surface.

Joel Spolsky: How to be a Program Manager.  Interesting for making the subtle point that programmers should not work for the Program Manager, so that feature debates aren't prematurely ended by fiat.  I am guilty of doing that pretty often...

Gerard Vanderleun: It seems to me.  Worth clicking through just for the blue screens :)

Sam Ruby tries Twitter: "Of course, this is totally and completely insane. Just yesterday, my sister-in-law was asking me how, if I just signed up on Thursday, did I already have 200 followers? Today it is over 300. I can’t begin to fathom what exactly is so riveting about this drivel."  Me either.