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Oh Wow, Dr. Horrible is AWESOME!

Someone just pointed me to http://www.drhorrible.com , which is Joss Whedon’s newest epic. The first two acts are up on the web (the final act will go up on Saturday). They are spectacularly cool, especially to a musical nut.  I knew that Neil Patrick Read More...
Posted Thursday, July 17, 2008 11:34 AM by LarryOsterman | 4 Comments

Playing Librarian...

Those of you who know me (and my family) from beyond my blog know that among my our many passions, one of the biggest is books. And we've got a lot of them. A couple of years ago, Valorie got me a Flic barcode scanner and a copy of the program Book Collector Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:22 PM by LarryOsterman | 24 Comments

Think Geek Responds

Valorie just received the following email from Think Geek ( in response to our previous issue with them ): From: Caroline Offutt [mailto:<email address at thinkgeek.com>] Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 7:05 PM To: <valorie's email address> Read More...
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 11:19 AM by LarryOsterman | 14 Comments

How to lose customers without really trying...

Not surprisingly, Valorie and I both do some of our holiday season shopping at ThinkGeek. But no longer. Valorie recently placed a substantial order with them, but Instead of processing her order, they sent the following email: From: ThinkGeek Customer Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 15, 2007 3:21 PM by LarryOsterman | 25 Comments

Forced to use XP again

A couple of weeks ago, my old laptop's motherboard gave up the ghost, so after much price and feature shopping, I got a new Toshiba Satellite A100 laptop for work. In general, I love this box. It's pretty fast, has a good modern processor, a decent video Read More...
Posted Wednesday, October 11, 2006 4:10 PM by LarryOsterman | 24 Comments

So where DOES the mass of a tree come from?

Yesterday , I asked where the mass comes from in a tree. The answer is actually really simple: Carbon. Photosynthesis is the act of converting CO 2 from the air into O 2 and a bit of H 2 O. It turns out that if you ask new Harvard graduates this question, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 02, 2006 9:50 AM by LarryOsterman | 45 Comments

A Tree Grows... How?

Valorie's currently attending a seminar about teaching science at the middle-school level. Yesterday, her instructor asked the following question: "I have in my hand a Douglass Fir tree seed that masses 1 gram [I'm making this number up, it's not Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 01, 2006 9:52 AM by LarryOsterman | 95 Comments

Why are computer games like restaurants?

I was chatting with one of the devs in my group a couple of minutes ago, and we got to talking about the economics of movie computer-game tie-ins. As we were chatting, I had this sudden realization. The economics of a computer video game are almost completely Read More...
Posted Friday, May 05, 2006 5:57 PM by LarryOsterman | 6 Comments

I could get to like this "Internet" thing.

Last Thursday, when Daniel was at his music lesson, I got an email from a friend of ours. We have a vacation home in the San Juan Islands (just north west of Seattle), and he was visiting his place on the island and looked in on our house. He had noticed Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 7:15 PM by LarryOsterman | 11 Comments

WFP is my new best friend

I've mentioned our computer setup a couple of times before - Valorie's got her laptop, Daniel, Sharron and I each have our own desktop computers, and there are a couple of other machines floating around the house. Since the kids machines don't have internet Read More...
Posted Tuesday, February 07, 2006 9:34 AM by LarryOsterman | 25 Comments

Cool illusion found on Michael Gartenberg's blog

Michael Gartenberg pointed out this cool illusion. It's a circle of pink dots with a rotating highlight. If you stare at it long enough, the pink highlight turns green, and if you keep on looking at it, the circle of pink dots disappears. Very, very freaky Read More...
Posted Friday, November 04, 2005 11:31 AM by LarryOsterman | 12 Comments

Looking under rocks...

I've really been enjoying Jensen Harris's blog recently, he's been talking about the UI design that went into Office 12. Today's post (on turning over rocks) is no different, reading it brought a smile to my face, mostly because of this paragraph: I don't Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 11, 2005 10:19 AM by LarryOsterman | 14 Comments

Mirra, first impressions

We've currently got something like 7 computers currently in use in my house these days, and I've been looking for a centralized backup solution for the home for a while. Eventually, I settled on a Mirra - a small form-factor appliance-like backup server. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 07, 2005 10:57 AM by LarryOsterman | 17 Comments

How many computers does it take to make a Microsoft employee happy

Over the weekend, it seems like a mini-meme went through http://blogs.msdn.com , "How many computers does it take to make a Microsoft employee happy". Normally I don't do meme's but enough people have asked this question privately that... What machines Read More...
Posted Monday, June 27, 2005 2:25 PM by LarryOsterman | 9 Comments

Hey, I'm an author too!

Joel just sent me an email letting me know that the first edition of " Best Software Writing, I " has now gone live. I'm quite honored to have have had one of my blog posts ( Larry's rules of software engineering #2: Measuring Testers by Test Metrics Read More...
Posted Monday, June 20, 2005 1:32 PM by LarryOsterman | 8 Comments
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