Shoot Things.com. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Via The Ultimate Insult.

A couple of Eclipse items today.

Eclipse unveils modeling framework - I'm not sure what the EMF will actually do. Will it provide functionality out of the box, or is it infrastructure for plug-in builders? Ah well, time will tell. It's not out yet - www.eclipse.org/ems is still 404 compliant.

IBM to shine light on new Eclipse - Eclipse, which released a test version of the new framework in June, will release a final version on Sept. 18. Huh? I didn't realise that I was using a test version. Am I? Again, time will tell...

Update: The SolarEclipse plug-in features, amongst other things, HTML and JSP syntax highlighting. JSP code assist/completion planned. Cool.

Further update: the EMF URL was wrong - it's www.eclipse.org/emf. Found via the Eclipse Wiki page. It's a framework rather than usable product (hence 'modeling' - doh!), and will be available (looks at watch) any time now.

UML modeling is already available, but hooo, it's expensive.

In A Culture of Candor, Phil Windley talks about the problem of a culture where being gentle to people's feelings is more important than the truth.

This is not the case where I am working at the moment, not really, but the right balance can be hard to find. I can be rather, uh, blunt at times, and when I first joined my company it seems that this was interpreted as arrogance. Now people know me, and they are aware that I'm not really arrogant, and that I know what I am talking about at least some of the time, the problem has gone away.

In my current team, discussions can be robust at times. That's OK, I think - we are all opinionated, and need to put our points across, but we all respect one another's abilities.

Our manager Paul finds it all very disturbing, though, worrying that all this ranting meant that we weren't getting anywhere. (Mark and I are particularly amenable to a good rant.) Now he tries to leave us alone to get on with it, and no longer tries to 'facilitate' our meetings. He's still unhappy, though, and I can see why - throw the wrong personality into our team, and it could turn into a real problem.