My thoughts and prayers Antonella

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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

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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”?

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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.

Web Development Links for Thursday, September 25th, 2008

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InfoQ: JSR 311 Final: Java API for RESTful Web Services

IBM developerWorks: Mastering Grails: RESTful Grails: Build a resource-oriented architecture

InfoQ: Joshua Bloch: Bumper-Sticker API Design

Aaron Swartz: The Semantic Web In Breadth

Mock Objects: “Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests”: Chapter 1. What’s the point of Test Driven Development?

Code To Joy: A fascinating quote attributed to James Gosling: “James Gosling once said that every configuration file becomes a programming language, so you might as well think that way.”

Wiki.Directi.Com: Building a Scalable Architecture for Web Apps – Part I

Previously: InfoQ: How to Design a Good API & Why it Matters

Truth, the Web, and the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

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Ben Kenobi, when he told Luke, “the truths we cling to are greatly determined by our point of view”, is looking pretty good right now.

And as Google is apt to promote the democratization of data rolls on.

As a software engineer and as a person with an interest in sociology and communications, it’s clear this presents a set of opportunities to be explored, problems to be solved. How do we learn of ‘truth’ when our echo chambers (our social networks, our friends, family, co-workers) are the best tools to keep us from the noise of modern media?

In a presentation at TED.com, Jonathan Haidt explains why Tim Berners-Lee’s new foundation is both timely and has such a hard fight ahead. The presentation reinforces that the questions I’ve been asking in some latest posts aren’t that invalid, and there is something more here to explore.

Shout out to Shelley Powers for posting about this (even if so few seem wanting to discuss) and to Antonella Pavese for the heads up on the video.

TED.com: Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives:

There are big echos of Dave Rogers in that presentation.

Bottom line – if we want to change the world, we need to start with ourselves.

Related and new at Salon today: Robert Burton: “My candidate, myself”: “Even when faced with new facts and insights, most voters don’t change their minds about their favorite candidates. A neurologist explains how they might.”. Timely.