This is an idea I have been toying with for a couple of months now, but I think a recumbant exercise bike might be a better than a treadmill. My hair-brained scheme is to use the bike to drive a car's alternator (cheap and used), and use that to drive a power inverter & battery. Then use that whole Rube Goldberg contraption to power my laptop. If I get too tired to keep the laptop running, I could switch to AC power. If I find I can't generate enough power to keep the lappy running all day, I could always power the uh... iPod instead? No exercise = no music. I would HOPE I could generate enough power to keep an iPod running.

Green and lean, but mostly... geek.

With all that space between the keys, there's room for even more buttons!

Makezine ran an article last week on an interesting robot that looks appropriate for that age group.

42

That worked out pretty well with Mike Brown, didn't it? At least the Senate had sense to ixnay Harriet Myers.

Code reuse is the one practice that can impact the cost of a project more than any other thing. But it can impact it in either direction, depending on the code you reuse.

Management has a tendency to ask engineers to reuse the wrong code almost every time. Code that has been badly designed and/or badly implemented is code that comes up in management meetings. Every week. For months. They start tracking it, and finally, someone beats the code into submission, and they add up the cost. "Wow. $150 thousand!"

The next time a project comes up and management can possibly imagine that their $150,000 "investment" might get leveraged, they push the engineers to reuse that code. "It must be good! It cost us $150,000 to develop it!" The reality is that this code should have been taken out behind the shed and shot. When it gets reused, even more bugs will be found, and the cost of the project will go up.

On the flip side is beautifully designed and implemented code. It works almost immediately, and without wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. It therefore never sees the light of day at a management meeting. It is beneath their radar. They will never suggest that it be reused, because they know nothing about it. That's the code you want to reuse.