Mentors can make a difference in your life

I am very thankful for mine.

The Simple Dollar has some advice on “How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing”.

Today’s CD production – too loud for Metal fans?

Wall Street Journal: Even Heavy-Metal Fans Complain That Today’s Music Is Too Loud!!!

Epilepsy, Autism, Schizophrenia – A Connection Found?

Science Daily: Epilepsy, Autism, Schizophrenia: Master Switch That ‘Balances The Brain’ Found

Can The Muppets be relevant in this day and age?

The NYTimes, in a recent story, documents the effort by Disney to reintroduce the Muppets. You might be wondering if The Muppets could be relevant to today’s children. Richelle had told me that she didn’t think it would be for Emma, who loved The Backyardigans, or The Wonder Pets, or Jack’s Music Show, or Elmo and Seasme Street (which has changed considerably from what I grew up with).

Well, I can report from my own experience that

The Muppet Movie – Movie – Review – The New York Times

The Muppets Take Manhattan – Movie Trailers – Preview – The New York Times

The Great Muppet Caper – Readers’ Reviews – The New York Times

Disney.com | Characters | The Muppets

Some Eclipse and Maven Links

Maven: What is Maven?

Maven: Maven Getting Started Guide

Maven: Guide to using Eclipse with Maven 2.x

Eclipse: Top 10 Tips for New Eclipse Users

IBM developerWorks: Migrating to Eclipse: A developer’s guide to evaluating Eclipse vs. Netbeans

eclipse-plugin: Weblogic Plugin for Eclipse

My thoughts and prayers Antonella

It’s coming up on the one year anniversary of my Mom’s passing. Antonella Pavese, who had an entirely different relationship with her Mom, then I had with mine, shares so much in a post that I feel I can relate to.

Antonella Pavese: Of things lost, of things found:

Slowly walking our karmic circles over and over again. I’m holding her hand, still cold but trusting, as I steer her away from furnitures and walls.

I look at my mother and I realize that all the memories she didn’t tell me about, all the memories I didn’t listen to are gone forever. All is left is this moment, in which she and I walk in circles, hand in hand, in a medium size apartment in Rome, the capital of a country with a painful past. In a few days, I will be thousands of miles away from this moment and this place. Right now, I’m here.

Thank you for sharing that Antonella. My heart goes out to you.

Development links for today, Sunday, September 28th 2008

stackoverflow: What are the best resources to learn about capacity planning

Charles Miller: Spring is Sprung – his thoughts on SpringSource’s new maintenance policy.

xkcd: Listen to Yourself

IBM developerWorks: Using Python to create UNIX command line tools

SEOBook: Google’s Chinese Wall Between AdWords Ads & Organic Search Results Disappears*

Erann Gat: Lisping at JPL – the history of Lisp at the Jet Propulsion Lab.

“a Manual for our Kids to Save the Future”?

That’s what John Baichtal at his Wired Blog “Geek Dad” called Cory Doctorow’s book sci-fi novel “Little Brother”, in his glowing review posted last week.

While you can download the book for free legally from the website, I’m going to want to buy a copy for the bookshelf – it’s a great book so far.

One of the best purchases of mine these past few months was following his comic book series “Futuristic Tales” from IDW. As a sci-fi and comic book fan, I gotta tell ya, it was worth every penny.

Available: Blogger Libel Insurance

Media Bloggers Association is offering to its members a plan for libel insurance.

Bottom line: it’s a big deal.

Read more at Dan Gillmor’s and Seth Finkelstein’s.