Apollo Books

A new book called "Digital Apollo" by David Mindell looks at the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). Listings of the AGC code may be found @ (http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/public/archive/1701.pdf)

For more on that see Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer by Eldon C. Hall. This book also provides a fascinating look at the human side of engineering, and how pilot demands (think "customer demands"), both reasonable and not, effect how we build systems.

The Creation Simulation

More on the Spores game from the Seed Magazine:
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/09/the_creation_simulation.php

All Streets

Check out Ben Fry's (of "Data Visualization" book fame) www.benfry.com/allstreets which is a compilation of more than 26 million road segments in US. What is interesting about it that there are no outlines or geographic features specifically added to the images; they emerge by themselves.

Code_swarm

Code_swarm is a series of videos created by Michael Ogawa about the development of an open-source software. Using dancing lights, rings of color, and snappy music, Code_swarm shows the history of commits in software projects such as Python, Eclipse, PostageSQL, and Apache.

Check it out @ http://vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm

The code is available @ http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm

Processing

Check out Processing, an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions @ http://processing.org/.

Data visualization using Processing is discussed in Ben Fry's book, "Visualizing Information".

3 Free Science Games

http://www.fold.it/ This is a free online game where players compete for the most stable protein folding solution.

www.fas.org/immuneattack is an educational game in which the players guide a nano-robot (nanobot) through blood vessels and human tissue of a person with a malfunctioning immune system.

http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html is a 3D virtual creature evolution game created by Lee Graham.

Microsoft ESP

Microsoft ESP is a visual simulation platform that enables developers to create simulations using 3D modeling tools, .Net, C++, and XML-based training missions. Learn more about it @ http://www.microsoft.com/esp/default.htm and http://msdn.microsoft.com/esp.

From the Indian Ocean

A Few Test Automation Tools

Here is a good website with a broad list of QA test tools; many are open source:
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatweba%20.html

TestComplete Enterprise ($2k per seat, not open, but COM based and extensible) is an automated test manager, with support for unit, functional, regression, distributed and HTTP performance testing at the project level. Find it @ http://www.automatedqa.com/products/.

pywinauto is a set of python modules to automate the Microsoft Windows GUI. At it's simplest it allows you to send mouse and keyboard actions to windows dialogs and controls. Find it @ http://pywinauto.openqa.org/


AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys). Find it @ http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/

A Few Testing Tools

These are several tools both commercial and free that are great for implementing the testing for .Net applications. Some are specific to .Net and some are not.

RegMon for Windows v7.04 by Microsoft [SysInternals]
www.technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896652.aspx
RegMon is a free and very useful discovery tool that monitors all registry interaction from any and all running applications, and allows users to quickly jump to Regedt32 to manipulate registry values.

FileMon for Windows v7.04 by Microsoft [SysInternals]
www.technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896642.aspx
FileMon is a free and very useful discovery tool that monitors all file activity for any and all running applications, and allows users to quickly jump to files in Explorer for management.

Peach Fuzzing Platform 2.0
www.peachfuzzer.com
Peach is a free and comprehensive fuzzing platform that allows on-the-wire fuzzing of network I/O and files of almost any type.

Defensics 2.0 by Codenomicon
www.codenomicon.com/defensics
Defensics is a powerful commercial fuzz testing platform for on the wire fuzzing of most
all protocols.

Wireshark 1.0.0
www.wireshark.org/about.html
Wireshark, formally known as Ethereal, is a free and powerful tool for real-time monitoring and analysis of network traffic.

WhatsUp Gold by Ipswitch
www.whatsupgold.com
WhatsUp Gold is an inexpensive professional-grade network discovery and management
tool that provides real-time server and service monitoring.

Event Analyst
www.eventanalyst.com/index.htm
Event Analyst is an inexpensive tool that allows the consolidation and correlation of server log files.

Holodeck Enterprise Edition v2.8 by Security Innovation Inc.
www.securityinnovation.com/holodeck
Holodeck is a professional-grade discovery and fault injection tool that virtualizes an
application’s runtime environment and allows testers to completely control its resources.

Salary Survey

The 2008 Redmond Channel Partner's Salary Survey may be found @ http://rcpmag.com/features/article.aspx?editorialsid=2485

Blueprint

Take a look at Blueprint's Requirements Center 2009 for requirements elicitation @ http://www.blueprintsys.com/product_rc_features.php.

Spores

Spores is a new computer game created by those who gave SimCity and its derivatives. Read about engineering the computer game Spore @ http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep08/6594. You can also check out

Free Requirements Analysis Tool

Check out NASA's Automated Requirements Measurement tool which is free for download @ http://satc.gsfc.nasa.gov/tools/download/.

Please be advised however that I could not get this tool to work on Windows XP SP2.

Simulationg Star Formation

Naoki Yoshida (Department of Physics, Nagoya University) Kazuyuki Omukai (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) and Lars Hernquist ((Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) have developed an ab initio computer simulation of the formation of primordial stars that follows the relevant atomic and molecular processes in a primordial gas in an expanding universe.

Learn more about this huge effort (8 years to date - running on 70 linked computer processors) @ http://www.a.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~nyoshida/protostar.html

Robots in Pittsburgh

Check-out the Robot250, a city-wide community art and technology program @ http://robot250.org/index.php

Carlos Aguilar Mares Home Page

Carlos Aguilar Mares Home Page @ http://www.carlosag.net/ which contains many interesting applications for .Net.

Animals

.Net Reflector

.NET Reflector enables you to easily view, navigate, and search through the class hierarchies of .NET assemblies even if you don't have the code for them. With it, you can decompile and analyze .NET assemblies in C#, Visual Basic and IL. Find it @ http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/

2008 Top 100 Government IT Contractors

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/top-100/2008/