All I can say is wow – the Zune video player is far superior to iTunes. It is so much faster and smoother.

One of the most interesting aspects of the psychology of system design is the number of very real limitations Architects impose on themselves based on past experiences that are simply no longer true. The fact is, we hire/evaluate System/Software Architects in large part because of the experiences they have had.  Frankly, performance is one of those areas which employers place high value in. At least, up until now.

Over the next few weeks & months, I would like to perform some interesting (I’d like to think) tests on ordinary desktop applications. My hypothesis is that they are now of the caliber we used to associate with mainframe/supermini computer performance and that PC’s are greatly under-utilized.  This may give even more fodder to the idea of virtualization.

Now, I am not looking to perform a scientifically based study – I will release the sourcecode and methodology for critique but this is essentially an emperical effort.  I’m looking for answers within an order of magnitude so give me a break.  The data sets will probably come from something like the USGS (US Geological Survey) because it is big, you can get your own copy, and I don’t have to type it.

Some of the things I’m looking for are numbers on:

1) Database Performance.

• Time to query a million row table with 20 columns (with and without indexes)
• Time to query 7 tables joined together for a number of matching rows.
• Time to query a million row table using a LIKE query (both pre ‘%’ and post ‘%’)

I’d like to run this with the following databases:

• MySQL Innodb
• Postgres
• MS Access
• JavaDB
• Oracle 10g
• IBM DB2

My hypothesis is that these systems will perform substantially the same and with very high performance.

Look, process gets a bad name in industry today. Nobody wants to have to live within a stifling bureaucracy. What I find about a well-designed process is that it makes exchange easy but leaves room for creativity.

For example, a software development process (even an Agile one) includes both development and configuration management/version control/build. Building code is not creative. Oh sure, you could make it creative but there is little reason to. What you find instead that the ability to rapidly deploy code and data in a safe, repeatable manner has greater value than the ability to have a creative license. Why not focus your creative energy in producing great software and leave the grungy parts to the process?

A canvas may be limiting but thousands of great artists have worked within the bounds and limitations to awesome success.

Seth Godin has this to say about it.

Dave Winer’s website, www.opml.org, has a free editor.

You’ll find it looks a heck of a lot like Manila and Frontier — what a surprise since Dave wrote those too!

This is a great little tool just for Outlining.

It may even be good for Blogging.

Time will tell

Ok, I think I’ve become a podcasting addict.

I can’t believe the number of sites I’m listening to. It has basically renewed my interest in radio.

I was considering getting into myself, using odeo but I have been disappointed in odeo. I have tried several recordings only to find that they don’t appear in the odeo account.  The user interface is pretty unusual as well. Your milage may vary. I’m looking for alternatives.

I’ve started using autohotkey on Windows/XP to automate things on my desktop.  I was inspired by a posting my Jon Udell where he described a distraction free desktop.

 So, I set my desktop background to black and my Windows XP toolbar to auto-hide.

Next, I setup some key bindings in autohotkey to :

1) hide current window

2) hide all others

3) hide/show desktop toggle

As suggested in Jon’s article.

I have to say this has been really easy.

The programming language is the same as in AutoIt, which I have used to automate backup processes. This makes learning autohotkey less painful since you are not learning a one-shot language.