kellegous.com

No, we don't do synchronous

2007-02-12T00:00:00-08:00

There are a few questions I see repeatedly on the GWT developers list, and one of the most common seems to be why in the world we were so clueless as to forget to support synchronous XMLHttpRequest. Ok, most of the people asking don't call us clueless; they simply ask why the feature is excluded. But the question has been asked so often that I feel inclined to answer it somewhere easily linkable, namely here.

In the open

2006-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

Another month, another release candidate for GWT. We've been a pretty fast moving team; I've already worked on two releases and I started Google in September. This release is a little different though. There are no new features. In fact, we actually tried really hard not to make changes. Yet, we edited almost every file in the source tree. Oh good, a riddle, could it be … open source.

Released.

2006-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

Relaxation Scheme

2006-10-30T00:00:00-08:00

I'm still decompressing after last week; I had forgotten how much I love the mad scramble to put the finishing touches on a release. The successive waves of frustration and triumph have always played to one of my strengths, stubbornness. And trust me when I say, it took much stubbornness to mark this issue “fixed but not released”. Now it's time to blow off some steam …

Welcome to Atlanta

2006-09-29T00:00:00-07:00

For those who last heard from us when I was extolling the virtues of puckless homes who are wondering if we are currently living either on the streets of Atlanta or perhaps with Ludacris, I can assure you that we are under our own, very new, and very non-leaky roof. In fact we've been here for a month already, unpacking, arguing with Comcast, flying to the West Coast … you know, the usual.

Home is where the puck is

2006-08-17T00:00:00-07:00

We're two weeks out from our grand farewell to the Northeast, and still Steph and I don't have a place to live in Atlanta. This might come as a shock to many of you with whom we have exchanged emails describing a picture perfect little classic Atlanta home in the heart of emerging East Atlanta Village, but sadly we had to pass on that one when it became known that it was being held up by a hockey puck …

Spectral Clustering

2006-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

About a year ago, I was interested in mining RSS content. At the same time, I was taking a mathematical modeling class and opted to spend my final project playing with Spectral Clustering. Which is just a colorful name for taking some data and breaking it up into groups. With summer raging outdoors, I took the opportunity last night to revisit that concept in a more flippant way.

And for my next act …

2006-07-13T00:00:00-07:00

I will be playing the part of a Googler. Today, I officially accepted a position at Google working with the Web Toolkit team. As you can imagine, I'm extremely excited to be working for a company with a reputation for doing cool things in an elegant and ethical manner. The other good news in this deal is we're headed back to Atlanta (no, not Mountain View).

Pascal's Triangle in Ruby

2006-06-28T00:00:00-07:00

My friend Brent posted a solution to the most recent ruby quiz today. When I saw it, I tried to put it out of my mind. But curiosity, coupled with the fact that I seldom get to write any ruby these days, finally proved too much. As an act of rebellion against the overwhelming curiosity, I committed to do it in the most hideously unreadable form imaginable, a single expression…

1 in 329,373

2006-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

Today marked the end of my second week down at IBM. So far things are going very well. The work is interesting, the people are intelligent and friendly and the coffee is offered in the cafeteria for a reasonable price (free). But while I settle into my little work community in the Advanced Technology Group, I can't help but think about the rest of the 330,000 IBM badge holders around the world.

What Next?

2006-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

Now that the thesis is finished, “how is the thesis going?” has given way to a new question: “what next?” Personally, I wasn't planning anything except a little Guinness and maybe some trips to the local skatepark with Trey. But alas, I guess it is true what they say. I am almost a grown man, so I have to start thinking responsibly. I guess I should try something I haven't tried before. Maybe I'll get a real job.

Thesis Done.

2006-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

The thesis is done. I would say more about how satisfying it is to have a lump of 90 pages sitting in front of you all bearing your mark of authorship. Or, how shocking it seems to have just fulfilled the final requirement for an MIT degree. But alas, I am far to tired of the thing to give it another thought for at least two weeks. For those who are curious what my thesis would look like from above …

Zoe Miranda Norton

2006-05-14T00:00:00-07:00

Death by Thesis

2006-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

My appraisal of the thesis effort with two weeks remaining.

Digging Democracy

2006-04-21T00:00:00-07:00

Lately, my fondness for Pierre Levy's Collective Intelligence ideas have kicked in again. This is partly due to some writing we did a few weeks ago about OPENSTUDIO and partly because a lot of goings on seem to be constantly reflecting those ideas. The most recent reflection comes by way of yesterday's Digg corruption scandal, which left me wondering about the trustworthiness of a collective trust.

Bouncing Ball

2006-02-19T00:00:00-08:00

This is something from the pile of assignments that I'm always promising myself I'll write about. Actually, in this case, it's less of an assignment and more of a warm-up exercise. As if the Internet didn't have enough bouncing ball physics simulations already, I present yet another one with just a little bit of a different spin. cha-cha.

On Rails

2006-02-05T00:00:00-08:00

Over a long weekend a few weeks back, I rearranged some things in the site and converted (almost) everything over to Ruby on Rails. I was tired of the complexities of the MoveableType/PHP setup that I've used (reluctantly) for several years. It's a welcome change. In fact, for reasons described within, I'm doing a lot more of my work in Ruby these days.

Happy New Year

2006-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

I'm sizing up 2006; it looks like it has all the making of a memorable year. Unlike last year when I was pretty certain I was staying in Boston, I truly have no idea where I'll be or what I'll be doing a year from now. So before I charge off the end of that cliff, let me take this time to jettison some end-of-year thoughts and imagine a future of all-you-can-drink free coffee.

Save Your Design

2005-12-20T00:00:00-08:00

The thesis proposal is still awaiting the final signatory blessing of readers, but the final project for my user interface class is, as the little woman at the bakery in Metz says, complet. Our little group, put considerably behind after we all went to Japan for the better part of a week, were able to pull it together at the end by registering some incredibly long coding sessions.

Tokyo

2005-11-26T00:00:00-08:00