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May 18 2007 - Photos on deviantART
Feb 13 2007
- Photos on Flickr
Feb 10 2007
- The Machine is Us/ing Us - something interesting I found at YouTube

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The human mind, if it is to be the physical organ of human reason, simply cannot be seen as bound and restricted by the biological skinbag.

It is both our triumph and our burden, however, to have created a world so smart that it allows brains like ours to go where no animal brains have gone before.

For what is special about human brains, and what best explains the distinctive features of human intelligence, is precisely their ability to enter into deep and complex relationships with nonbiological constructs, props, and aids.

We humans have always been adept at dovetailing our minds and skills to the shape of our current tools and aids. But when those tools and aids start dovetailing back - - when our technologies actively, automatically, and continually tailor themselves to us just as we do to them -- then the line between tool and user becomes flimsy indeed. Such technologies will be less like tools and more like part of the mental apparatus of the person.

As our worlds become smarter and get to know us better and better, it becomes harder and harder to say where the world stops and the person begins.

As technology becomes portable, pervasive, reliable, flexible, and increasingly personalized, so our tools become more and more a part of who and what we are.

What the human brain is best at is learning to be a team player in a problem-solving field populated by an incredible variety of nonbiological props, scaffoldings, instruments, and resources.

the quotes above are from: Andy Clark Natural-Born Cyborgs

amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca

  • Sept 4, 2005 - Greg Egan
  • Aug 27, 2005 - The Particle Odyssey review
  • Aug 21, 2005 - The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs review
  • April 18, 2005 - USB , I added a few comments to my old USB article.
  • April 16, 2005 - Drawing On A Form , This tutorial is appropriate for the beginning programmer, who wants to get started writing graphics programs in C# using SharpDevelop, an open source development tool. This is a rewrite of a previous article I wrote using Visual Studio.
  • April 16, 2005 - Your First C# Windows Application , Take a look at this tutorial, if you want to get started writing Windows applications in C# using SharpDevelop, an open source development tool. This is a rewrite of a previous article I wrote using Visual Studio.
  • March 20, 2005 - Dune

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

by Michael C. Feathers

amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
Get more out of your legacy systems: more performance, functionality, reliability, and manageability

Is your code easy to change? Can you get nearly instantaneous feedback when you do change it? Do you understand it? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have legacy code, and it is draining time and money away from your development efforts.

In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars: techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control.

The topics covered include

  • Understanding the mechanics of software change: adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance
  • Getting legacy code into a test harness
  • Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems
  • Techniques that can be used with any language or platform - with examples in Java, C++, C, and C#
  • Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made
  • Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented
  • Handling applications that don't seem to have any structure

This book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.


wburris at telusplanet dot net