I've just watched Paprika and I have to say it may be one of the best Anime movies I've seen in years. Absolutely surreal and epic yet perfectly sane. The plot borrows from some older scifi and takes things a step further. I think this story would make a wonderful Hollywood live action provided they could find an actress that could pull off the lead role without making us think that Paprika is merely silly, crazy, or deranged. The truth is Paprika is the wisest character in her world but wears it lightly recognizing that she and everyone she meets are merely the figments of other people's imagination.

TIOBE has published their yearly Programming Community Index and it got me thinking... What is the most commonly used programming language in the Slashdot community? What language did you learn in the last year?

Personally, I've just started working in Groovy this year which has entered the TIOBE list at number 35. The biggest mover on this list seems to be Lua and Lua's rank on this list is enough for me to decide to check it out.

jwagon sent me these mind bending groovy class manipulations in a chat today:

#!/usr/bin/env groovy

class AA {
                def msg
                AA(something){ msg = something }
        }

def c = { a, b ->
  def x =a.newInstance(b)
  println x.msg
}

c(AA, "foo")

Or how about....

#!/usr/bin/env groovy
def m = java.lang.String
def n = m.newInstance("foo")
println n

I was remembering how much I loved working in Europe but how the exchange rates ruined my contract there making it impossible to stay. I was paid out of Texas in dollars but I was living physically in Germany. A bad combination.

I wonder how hard it would be to get a job in London, paid in British Pounds, living on the British economy... as an American citizen. Has anyone ever done this? Is it possible for a geek? Do they need Software Engineers or Informaticians over there bad enough to entertain the idea?

Since this is not yet documented, I figured I would mention this here now... we are experimenting with some very rudimentary keystroke navigation in the discussion2 system. We support both FPS style WASD keybindings, as well as the standard vi layout of HJKL. Down/Up will cycle you through next/previous comment chronologically... left/right will cycle you through next/previous in thread order. Holding SHIFT down while you press the navigation key will collapse the previous comment. And when you get to the end, pressing down or right will attempt to retrieve more comments if you want them.

What this means is that you can now use D2 to simulate most of the most popular viewing modes of the original discussion system. By dragging both the abbreviate & display sliders right next to each other you effectively remove abbreviated comments which simulates nested mode. By toggling comment retrieval order to 'Oldest First' and using up down, you can effectivel read the discussion from oldest to newest. And of course the default settings gives you the best comments first, providing a nice default view of discussions for most anonymous users (who rarely participate and we want to really show only the best comments).

You can also disable D2 in the comment prefs (the word 'prefs' in the floating dialog box) if you are logged in. Right now we're testing D2 for a large percentage of anonymous readers. As soon as we finish IE7 support we'll roll out D2 for the rest of the ACs.

Is anyone out there using Groovy and Grails? Thoughts? Ideas about Groovy?

The Ann Arbor party seemed to go great- lots of people packed Leopold Bros place, doing battle with barflies and football fans. It was somewhat bizarre watching obvious normal bar people try to figure out what this large crowd of 'different' people were all about. We handed out a ton of t-shirts, drank much alcohol, ate nachos etc. Our party had a great number of Slashdot and SourceForge staffers... all folks who have been with Slashdot for so many years it's hard to remember Slashdot without them. I'm not exactly sure how many people eventually showed up... a lot of our RSVPs didn't show, and a lot more didn't bother sign up at all, so I think the two balanced out.

For me personally these sorts of things are always difficult. I'm not very good at crowds. I can smile for a picture, but I'm perpetually nervous when surrounded by strangers who have certain expectations of me. There's a reason I live life behind a keyboard!

Further compounding matters lately is baby induced chronic sleep deprivation. Me want REM cycles. It's always nice to get out and have a beer. Kathleen & I get only so many hours "out" together now, gotta make each one count. The party attendees were all cool... and understanding that I was pretty tired.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed up... I've still got the california party later this week. Hopefully my throat heals up by then. The only real problem with this location was the acoustics... I had to shout to be heard, and stick my ear in front of people to hear them (baby crying has done some amount of hopefully temporary ear damage). My throat is raaaaw from yelling. Sucking on cough drops helps.

As for other parties, boxes have been shipped. Hopefully they have arrived to most places on time, although I think they were shipped on a slowish shipping option so I'm not sure. I know some folks got shirts on friday, but I'm sure the others will arrive monday or so. Also, keep in mind that we only had 700 shirts and 2300 attendees from 136 parties with more than 5 attendees. So obviously not every party is getting a box... when we sent out the bulk mail, we had over 100 replies, and I'm sure there was nowhere near enough to fill even that.

But shirts or not, I hope your parties go well. Remember to submit videos or pictures or whatever to anniversary at slashdot dot org for your chance at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate grand prize.

So if you only count anniversary parties with 5 or more attendees, we have 128 venues with a grand total of 2366 attendees. The largest parties include Pudge's in seattle with 129, mine in Ann Arbor with 194 and Hemos's in CA with 197.

I'm sure that there will be many RSVPs that no show, but still, that's still an awful lot of interest. We'll be shipping shirts to a good number of those parties, but we have triple the attendees to shirts available, so we'll see just how far we're able to spread the love. Emails will be going out to party planners in the next couple days to get postal addresses.

As we're nearing 100 signed up people for the A2 Slashdot anniversary party, we've changed the venue to Leopold Bros... it's just a block south from the other place and they can handle us. I've also got word that we'll be printing a few hundred extra shirts since there was already like 50 parties with 5+ people in attendance. We certainly won't have enough for everyone, but we'll make a good dent in it.

I will of course put this information into a story next reasonable chance I get for a story, but I figured at least I could get the word out there. The anniversary party entry on the official page has been updated with the new location & address.

The A2 party already has like 70 signed up. We're going to have to rethink venue or time I think if we really have that many people. Wait a few more days and see what we can work out. Keep reading in the party forum for info. We have 500 shirts to print and hand out... it'll be fun to see where they go.

more info as I get it. There will be notes on future stories as days get closer.

I just had a conversation with a promising young help desk attendant. He wanted to get into programming and asked if I could teach him. I told him that I could teach anyone to program... but just like singing... only some of us will ever do it well.

When someone shows up on American Idol and sings their heart out and the totally and utterly suck. How do you tell them? How do you tell the young bright and highly motivated student that they don't "think like a programmer" or that no matter how hard they work they will never become a great programmer. How do you tell?

I am convinced that anyone can learn to program and I can see a day in the not too distant future where every child is taught to program just as they are taught to use a keyboard and mouse today. The day is out there on the horizon.

Every child is taught science but only some will learn to become world changing scientists.

Every child may take music and art but only some will become musicians and artists. Their talent will be spotted early. They will be mentored to become better in their area of interest. They may even get to specialize on a particular skill.

One day programming will follow this path too. Just as promising young mathematicians and engineers are singled out and nurtured due to their skill. So too will the young budding programmer.

Today a child with an interest in medicine can visit a hospital and spend a day with a real nurse. An aspiring lawyer can visit a court room. An aspiring accountant (yes I've met children that aspire to be accountants) can visit an accounting firm and learn more about it.

Aspiring young technologists can visit Red Hat summer camp.

But, how do you evaluate that young dreaming no-talent that thinks he can be the next American Idol but clearly doesn't have the chops? What do you say to the young no-talent that wants to be a programmer?

I told my young charge that I can teach anyone to program but only some people will be great at it. Just as anyone can be taught the mechanics of writing and can write a 300 page novel if only they have the determination and willingness to learn. However, only the innate talent and skill developed by the pupil can turn them from merely a trained student into something great.

The teacher can give you voice lessons. The pupil can study. But only that intangible gift called talent can make them great. Study under the best. Work your hardest. And, it could pay off... if you don't try at all there is no way you will succeed. But, at the end of the day there is this intangible thing called talent that no one can give you.

You can paint a picture but no one may want to look at it.

You can write a book but no one may want to read it.

You can sing a song but no one may enjoy it.

You can write software but it may not be something others want to use.

Still, how else should you proceed? So you pour everything you have into your skill and into your art. You sculpt yourself and hone your abilities.

"Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men." Proverbs 22:29

You have to believe that or else not try at all. You have to believe that all your effort and sacrifice will pay off. You have to believe you can serve before kings.

those were the days... when slashdot showed me love. *sigh*

According to this dated BLS article Software Engineer is going to be one of the fastest growing jobs through 2014. Are the salad days of IT back?

I started writing in the slashdot journal system because most of what I write about is "news for nerds" type stuff. If I put a blog out on blog spot I'm lost in the crowd. Here I'm with like minds.

That said, why do you write in Slashdot Journal?

Had to pick which language to start a new server side project in, only languages on the table are Java and Perl... which do you pick? Go!