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It’s important to remember that we already have one US state who offers a version of the health care system that President Obama is trying to pass for the entire country – Massachusetts. Today the New York Times runs an editorial on how their health care program is doing. In short, it has done an excellent job of expanding coverage, and has not yet made much progress in terms of controlling costs. However, the state is trying to create an arrangement where they will move away from the fee for service model, which could have a huge impact down the line. ...

Before reading this, you may want to read the first two posts I wrote about speaking at Ignite Raleigh: How I prepared Show night The most important thing I learned is that my biggest public speaking challenge is in overcoming nerves and compensating for the effects of being nervous. Going in, I really didn’t understand very well what happens to you when you try to give a talk and you’re incredibly nervous. I’d be better prepared for that next time. Here are a few specific things I learned that I think would help out: ...

When I was preparing for Ignite Raleigh, I had a hard time figuring out setting up Keynote to run my presentation. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any instructions online, either. I did eventually find the instructions in the help for Keynote itself, but only after some digging. (I believe the problem was that I was searching for “automatically advancing slides” and Apple calls them “self-playing presentations”.) Anyway, here’s how you do it. ...

This is Part II in my series of posts about Ignite Raleigh. Part I, which covered preparation, is here. First let me say that Ignite Raleigh was really fun – the speakers were great, the event was incredibly well run, and the crowd was awesome. I don’t think the event could have gone off any better than it did. I was presenter number twelve. I was scheduled to speak at around 8:30, and I got there around 5:30. The speakers milled around for awhile, then we got the rundown on how things were going to work. I was in the third set of speakers, and was told to go backstage during the second intermission and wait for my turn. One small hitch was that the screen was at the front of the stage, so it was impossible to look at what was on the screen and at the crowd at the same time. ...

My initial reaction upon reading about Google Wave is that while it was catnip for geeks, it had a funny smell about it. I love the idea of code smells and I think the concept is applicable to just about everything. What I didn’t do was sit down and really think out why I was skeptical about it. Fortunately, Anil did. Go read his post.

Apple is already starting to up the transparency. I’m not surprised.

Last night I gave a talk at Ignite Raleigh. Public speaking is not something I’m particularly comfortable with, but I thought I’d give a shot. I’m writing up a few blog posts to go back and read next time I have a public speaking gig, and that might help other Ignite presenters as well. First, a word about the Ignite format. Ignite features a number of speakers, all of whom are given five minutes to speak. They also prepare a slide show of 20 slides, which advance automatically every 15 seconds. When you’re slide show’s over, you’re done. Last night we had 15 speakers, and none went over. ...

The Rudimentary Art of Programming & Development, a programming blog, has done a detailed comparison of Ruby and Python and declared them interchangeable. In my far less systematic comparison, that’s how it has seemed to me as well. Glad that’s settled.

You’d think that given that Senators from small states represent so few constituents, they’d be more responsive to those constituents. At least you’d think that if you didn’t know how they raise funds. As fivethirtyeight.com reports, Senators from small states depend on corporate contributions to a much greater degree than Senators from larger states. Is it any surprise that they are almost always reliable votes for corporate interests, regardless of their party affiliation? ...

Go read Anil Dash’s letter to Apple explaining why the company must abandon its obsession with secrecy. It’s brilliantly written and compellingly argued, and I wish that Apple would take heed and change their practices tomorrow. Anil argues that Apple’s current practices are unethical, and I could not agree more. Apple’s relationship with iPhone developers is completely dysfunctional. The ground rules for what sorts of applications will be accepted are secret and are subject to change at any time, without notice. To be honest, I don’t see how Apple’s treatment of iPhone developers is even legal. ...