Inducing sleep into an infant without making you hate yourself

This is the first post in a new category, fatherhood. While, I’m just as sick of reading weird daddy-ness blog posts as the next guy, I’ve got a couple things to share without being obnoxious (I hope).

First of all is my sleep-inducing playlist for my daughter with songs in it that I actually like. I’m looking for suggestions of stuff to add to this list…

  1. Good Night Good Night – Spiritualized
  2. Lullaby – Tom Waits
  3. Cradle Song – Shriekback
  4. Johnsburg, Illinois – Tom Waits
  5. I’m Still Here – Tom Waits
  6. Waltz For A Drunken Angel – Gregory Page
  7. Comptine D’un Autre Été: L’après Midi – Yann Tiersen
  8. L’anniversaire d’Irvin – Angelo Badalamenti
  9. Passenger Seat – Death Cab For Cutie
  10. Sleep (Instrumental) – Kimya Dawson
  11. Fish And Bird – Tom Waits
  12. Jitterbug Boy – Tom Waits
  13. Such Great Heights – Iron and Wine
  14. Two Step – Low

I also have the Rockabye Baby! Cure record in there, but honestly it is starting to bug me. This list is also very heavily weighted in the Tom Waits direction, but that was just because of how well I know his songs, I guess. I’d love some suggestions for other tunes…

This playlist is pretty much a guaranteed sleep inducer for my daughter so far though…

[Update August 6, 2013]
It turns out that I don’t like to blog that much about fatherhood. Maybe since I don’t feel like I have much to say that hasn’t already been said. This was really a music post, so I moved it to that category and I’m putting the fatherhood category on ice for the moment.

wonderful music film

I was browsing around the blogotheque site, and I came across this wonderful film they did of the MusicNow festival. It reminds me greatly of the wonderful Russian Ark film in both character and style, but the performances are simply wonderful and unique. It’s about a half hour, and you should watch it through in one go…

Nice discussion of white box and developer-driven testing in Google Chrome comic book

I debated copying the scans from blogoscoped.com or referencing the images here, but I decided instead to refer you to the appropriate pages to be a good blog citizen.

Getting Scott McCloud to write a comic book announcing your product is a great idea. He did a great job distilling some complicated stuff into a very accessible piece. Tons of people will talk about the Google Chrome announcement and what it means for Microsoft and about using multiple processes for tabs.

One of the things that struck me though, was the nice discussion of white box automated testing. Also, a very simple and concise description of developer-driven testing. I am a huge proponent of these principles since I first worked on an XP project 8 years ago and became an XP coach. Every project I’ve worked on since has had a large test-driven development component and hard-core whitebox QEs (when I’ve had the resources). Doing automated stress testing on a browser is a no-brainer. Internet Explorer has been doing it forever. Google isn’t doing anything new or different here: fuzzing inputs isn’t new, and neither is reducing the test space to make automation run faster and results relevant for users. However, McCloud’s comic does a great job of explaining these ideas in a very simple manner. It’s a great tool for developers, QEs or engineering managers trying to explain why these things are important to others in their organization.

Check it out on pages 9, 10, and 11 of the Google Chrome comic book.

Palin’s Teen Daughter Is Pregnant; New G.O.P. Tumult – NYTimes.com

To be sure, Palin is sticking to her guns. She opposes abortion in any circumstances. So, her daughter is going to have a child and get married instead of going to college. Too bad she also stuck by her guns in her opposition to sex education and contraception, otherwise this might not have happened in the first place. I love the hypocrisy on the republican side about this. Rather than admit that these events might call in to question the party’s stance on “family values,” they claim that this is ok and that it happens all the time. If Chelsea was pregnant in high school, you don’t think that the right wing wouldn’t have been twenty-four-hours-a-day slamming the Clintons? You know they would.

Palin’s Teen Daughter Is Pregnant; New G.O.P. Tumult – NYTimes.com

ST. PAUL — The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, is five months pregnant, Ms. Palin announced today, adding a new element of tumult to a Republican convention that had already been disrupted by Hurricane Gustav.

The daughter, Bristol, plans to marry the father, the statement issued by Governor Palin and her husband said.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned” Ms. Palin’s statement said. “As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support.”

The announcement was intended to counter rumors by liberal bloggers that Ms. Palin had claimed to have given birth to her fifth child in April when, according to the rumors, the child was her daughter’s.

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

I wonder if we’ll see a press release that she needs to “spend more time with her grandson son” soon…

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

The Governor of Alaska gave a misleading version of events over a controversial bridge project in her home state when she made her maiden speech as the presumptive nominee.

Mrs Palin told a cheering audience in Ohio that she had turned down an offer from the US Congress to build the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere”, which would have connected Gravina Island with Ketchikan International, an airport in Alaska’s southeast serving just 200,000 passengers a year. Mr McCain routinely cites the £100 million project as a symbol of wasteful central government spending.

As she introduced herself to Republicans and the American public on Friday, the virtually unknown Mrs Palin said: “I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress … ‘thanks, but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.”

However it emerged that in a 2006 interview with the Anchorage Daily News during her gubernatorial campaign, Mrs Palin had a different view of the bridge.

Asked “would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?” she replied: “Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now – while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

When Congressional funding was withdrawn because of an uproar in Washington about the expense of the project, she cancelled it, but in a regretful tone.

“Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.”

Yow! Who is in charge of the Republican presidential campaign?

Choosing Sarah Palin seemed like a serious hail mary play when it was first announced. An attempt to out-history-make the democrats. Choosing the Alaskan govenor gains John McCain nothing in the regionally-balancing-the-ticket game. She is so incredibly right-wing that she makes him seem like a socialist. Maybe the idea is that she could bring the evangelicals and super conservatives back to the table. Especially since the chances aren’t small that she would end up finishing his first term if she won. However, she is so radically right that there is a big chance that she’ll scare away any of the moderates that might have voted for McCain. At least any of the moderates that bothered to read a newspaper.

Now it seems like this was a real hail mary play since it looks like no one bothered to vett their VP choice. She fundamentally disagrees with most of McCain’s positions on the environment, abortion and Iraq. She is in the midst of an ethics scandal, troopergate. It looks like she may have lied about her fifth child, that it was actually her daughters’. Even if she didn’t lie, she showed some serious lack of judgment in how she handled the birth. Then there is Dairygate.

All this is just in the first few days after the announcement. Sarah Palin has spent a tiny amount of time in government, but it looks like she is out-scandaling the pros already.

I’d love to gloat over this and laugh about how the republican’s are prepping for an electoral loss that will make Dukakis look like George Washington, but we all know that the democrats can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory like nobody’s business. Lets just hope that the American people see through the right wing propaganda this time.

Although if they still think off-shore drilling is going to lower the price of gas anytime soon, I doubt it.