Screaming Penguin

http://dhanji.posterous.com/taking-out-the-trash-and-other-cliches

The SoftReference class should really have been called the SuccubusReference, because that's what it is--a seductress of meretricious and superficial beauty, who will drag your soul to hell and leave your corporeal body a listless shell, exhausted and empty.

Not much more to say, excellent article, read it. (Really well written, interesting, and addresses some important stuff anybody using the JVM should be aware of.)

I have been working on a few Android apps lately that use various public APIs. Some of these APIs are excellent, easy to use, sensible, some are, well, not.

To make a long story short, I ended up stumbling on the Yahoo Query Language (YQL). This is a fantastic thing. Maybe I am late to this party, having never seen or used YQL before, but basically it's a common and public front end for various public APIs. It's a big wrapper (with one format) around all of the intermash.

I spent several hours this weekend poking around GWT 1.7, and introducing myself to AppEngine. I have several ideas for applications to build, but as a starting point I wanted to keep things simple so I built Android Drawables Explorer.

I am immobilized this weekend (nothing serious, just have to stay off my feet for a few days, doctors orders), so I decided it would be a good time to work on some GWT/AppEngine hacking. Enter my need for a good portable computer (don't want to sit at the desk).

Since I am back to blogging, somewhat, I just want to note what Pam Gay from Astronomy Cast explained to me.

So, there are two big lies in common science literature about The Big Bang (or inflation) and Dark Energy. I always knew they were bullshit, but I never knew what the real problem was. Pam cleared me up.