Astronomy Picture of the Day

One of my favourite daily websites is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). Everyday a new astronomy related picture with description is posted. One gets to see some really stunning pictures.

You can also look at past post from the APOD archive.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a free disc encryption tool. It has a lot of features and support a number of major ciphers, such as AES, BlowFish, TwoFish, etc.

Steve Yegge's Blog

I enjoy Steve Yegge's blog posts quite a bit. Steve works for Google and talks about many things. Including Lisp, Emacs and Agile, but the posts I enjoy most are the ones where he talk about improving yourself.

He also has an older blog of material he wrote while still at Amazon.

CxOne Basic

CxOne is Construx's (Steve McConnell's company) agile framework of templates, checklists, patterns and other tools for software development. A free, for limited use, version called CxOne Basic is available.

It covers configuration management, requirements, design, construction, management, process and testing. It looks interesting enough to evaluate.

Construx also has info regarding professional development for individuals, organisations and industry.

Dilbert Board Game, Happy Hour is 9 to 5.

All the Dilbert fans should take note that there is now a Dilbert Board Game available. You can buy it online from ThinkGeek.

Alexander Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer, just release his first book, Happy Hour is 9 to 5. You can get in either paper or electronic format. You can even read it online for free.

Google Web Toolkit

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.3 Release Candidate is now open source.

GWT is a Java software development kit to develop dynamic web applications using AJAX.

Microsoft SDKs for Robotics and Games.

Microsoft has the following free SDKs available for student and hobby programmers:

• Visual Studio 2005 Express
• XNA Game Studio Express
• Robotics Studio
  

Colour Theory and Fast Thoughts, better mood.

GUI developers need to know how not to abuse colour in their applications. DevSource has a good article on Colour Theory for Developers.


An intriguing blog entry about how faster thinking may improve your mood.

Dilbert Fix

Now for your Dilbert fix. You can see the last month's Dilbert cartoons online. The site also has some media (games, wallpaper) and other funny things like the yearly weasel polls (2006 results).

Scott Adams also has a highly entertaining blog that he updates daily. He rips off everything, while also providing lots of though provoking ideas.

Computing at the movies and EE vs CS.

Some humorous links today.

Computing in the movies:

• What code DOESN'T do in real life (that it does in the movies)

• Top 20 Hackers in Film History

• Servers in the Movies - Our Top Ten

• Ten Servers that Changed the World (Not humorous, but still cool)
  

From Philip Greenspuns site:

• Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science
  

Thanks to Andre for pointing these out.

The Chief Happiness Officer

Alexander Kjerulf calles himself The Chief Happiness Officer. His mission is to make people happy at work. He has an active blog that discusses the topic and provide practical tips to make yourself and your company happier.

He just posted the first draft of his Happy at Work Manifesto. It is well worth the read.

Welcome to PshyMorphic's Assorted Links blog.

I have felt the urge to have a place where I can share links to web pages that I found interesting. It will sort of have a dual purpose: sharing and archiving. I didn't want to pollute my main blog, so here is a new one.

This blog is best enjoyed with your favourite RSS reader. One can subscribe to the main feed or to one of the categories.

Enjoy!