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Alas Poor Houseplant, We Knew Him

Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 7:30 AM by johnmont
My wife has had a houseplant for the past ten years. It's one of those plants with huge leaves that thrives on being ignored. Despite ridiculous underwatering and one notable experience where we left it in the sun for a couple of days and it started to Read More...
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Pandora and Classical Music

Posted Friday, July 04, 2008 3:03 PM by johnmont
When Pandora launched it garnered a lot of coverage in the mainstream press. I tried it then and found, as with most music sites, that its classical knowledge wasn't very good. I went back today, propelled by I don't know what, and found it much, much Read More...
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Comcast Music Choice vs. XM Radio Web Sites

Posted Friday, July 04, 2008 2:33 PM by johnmont
When traveling, I often like to listen to music. Unfortunately my choice of music tends to be classical. Classical music listeners are a minority, and most places have at best one classical station and that will be filled with commercials. One of the Read More...
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Surprising Family with Food

Posted Friday, July 04, 2008 2:22 PM by johnmont
Every time I'm out visiting my mom, I cook a few times. I'm not sure why, I just do. This time I made something that I thought was simple -- home made marinara sauce with grilled steak, fresh mozzarella cheese, and lightly-dressed arugula . To me this Read More...
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RSS Bandit "Phoenix"

Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008 6:36 AM by johnmont
I'm an RSS Bandit user. I have been for years -- before I knew it was written by Dare Obasanjo . He and his RSS Bandit team on Sourceforge have been working on it for years. It has one deficiency that I haven't liked: I read feeds on multiple computers Read More...
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"To Truly Understand What It Is to Be an American You Must Eat Wonder Bread"

Posted Friday, June 27, 2008 8:04 PM by johnmont
Earlier this week, two engineers from Microsoft in Germany (Sebastien Peray and Marcel Tilly) joined the Popfly team to work on adding a feature to Popfly. They invented a clever way to substitute one Popfly block for another a few months ago and were Read More...
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Why Build a Game Creator?

Posted Friday, May 02, 2008 3:38 PM by johnmont
Several people have asked me, "Why would we do this?" They imply that there are so many better things to do. I typically speak about it in terms of increasing the potential universe of people who can create -- developers of a sort. And I've Read More...
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Popfly on Moonlight

Posted Friday, April 11, 2008 12:51 PM by johnmont
I'll be darned. Daniele Muscetta has Popfly running on Moonlight . Technorati Tags: Popfly , Virtual Earth , Moonlight , Silverlight , Mashups Read More...
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Turing

Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:12 PM by johnmont
And this is an interview question how? Read More...
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The Art of the Demo

Posted Thursday, March 27, 2008 9:24 PM by johnmont
A conversation on Twitter got me thinking. That's kind of rare. Thinking, I mean. At least for me. In my time, I've given a lot of demos. I am not a demo god. Don Box is a demo god. Scott Guthrie simply exists on a separate plane. I mostly note what they Read More...
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It's About the Data

Posted Thursday, March 20, 2008 12:18 PM by johnmont
Popfly , a mashup tool, depends on three things: data that is simple to access programmatically, interesting, and available under terms that enable users to work with it. As with most software endeavors, you can pick two. The government has a huge amount Read More...
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What Happened at the Beginning of 2006?

Posted Thursday, February 28, 2008 7:27 AM by johnmont
I got hooked on plugging sites into Alexa a couple of nights ago, and started to see some patterns. Mostly, I saw that a lot of large-volume sites saw their peak at the beginning of 2006 and have been tapering off since, but a few others have grown ridiculously. Read More...
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Taking Down Christmas Decorations

Posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008 7:13 AM by johnmont
When is the right time to take down Christmas decorations? Growing up, my parents typically did it just after New Years. My wife and I had our tree up until this past weekend (more as a result of laziness than any statement we were trying to make) and Read More...
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Flexible Priorities

Posted Sunday, January 13, 2008 10:03 AM by johnmont
I start every day with a list of things I need to do. Generally, this lists comprises a collection of email messages, Outlook Tasks, meetings and calendar items, TFS work items (oops, better check those), things that are just in my head that I haven't Read More...
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Change of Plans

Posted Tuesday, January 01, 2008 10:24 AM by johnmont
After many ruminations and a second drive of the Mazda3, I changed my mind, but not for a reason I was expecting. You see, last Saturday my wife and I went to the Mazda dealership to buy a Mazda3. We had everything ready. We just needed one last test Read More...
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