Unlike the cryptically mysterious origin(s) of Wife Appreciation Day (which some people are alleging doesn’t actually exist (seemingly mostly from menfolk, as far as we can tell)), Talk Like a Pirate Day not only has a more definitive history but an “official” site dedicated to it.

Quite a festive, yet seemingly-but-not-quite-random-kind-of-holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day is essentially just that: try talking like a pirate.

Easy ‘nuf, right? … Arrr!

At sunset tonight (September 18, 2009), the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah begins, indicating the Jewish New Year. It is the first of the Jewish high holidays and ends at sunset on September 20, 2009. The rest of the Ten Days of Repentance continue until Yom Kippur, its last day.

This may affect some of our Jewish brethren who otherwise enjoy engaging in a series of zombie killings, a la Call of Duty: World at War zombie maps (either solo or multi-player), and I certainly do not advocate distracting them from their religious duties.

Additional Reading

• Rosh Hashanah (Wikipedia entry)
• Yom Kippur (another Wikipedia entry)

“Is it true? Can I finally use Skype on my [iPhone|iPod touch]?”

After several months, the answer is finally: yes. The official Skype app for iPhone and iPod touch is now available at the iTunes App Store. That’s the good news…

… But if the comments for the app are to be believed, the bad news is that the new iPhone OS app is fairly unstable, crashing in some cases even before finishing the initial loading.

If you are able to get past the supposed instability, you should be exposed to the typical Skype functionality (including the Skype flavor of IM) over Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, you cannot use the cell network to conduct your VoIP calls. Still, this is a great new capability, to be able to add VoIP calls to your iPhone or iPod touch after all this time. Especially for iPod touch owners who happen to have the microphone headphones or external microphone!

As several of you know, we were following the Starbucks [SBUX] iTunes Pick of the Week hiccup over Dido’s “Quiet Times” song.

It seems that now even the Sony [SNE] Music Dido site has picked up on the story, announcing that the Pick of the Week for the “Quiet Times” song is available. Which is good, but I hope that music lovers do not stay restricted to only this week’s selection…

N.B.

Other related Javamancy posts (in reverse chronological order):

• Switcherback on Dido Song
• Starting 2009’s Starbucks Picks List
• Switcheroo on Dido Song

Yes, that’s correct: Pi Day. Some folks call it “π Approximation Day”, but close enough, right– although there actually is another day that is considered Pi Approximation Day as well.

This day is set for March 14, 2009, according to a US Congressional resolution to that effect.

N.B.

For more reading:

• Pi Day (Wikipedia)

The excitement for Xbox 360 gamers that has been building about the expected Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3 culminated  with an announcement seen on Xbox LIVE that the map pack will be released shortly: first, as a bonus for the people buying Bungie’s Halo Wars Limited Edition on March 3, 2009, and then a few days later, as a Xbox LIVE DLC.

So now, while you’re waiting for the Halo 3 ODST to show up, you can be marshaling your armies around in Halo Wars and taking a few breathers with the new maps from the Mythic Map Pack… and racking up more Achievement Points.

Remember when you last saw mention of Python as a supported language in NetBeans 6.5? At that time, it was available as a separate NetBeans installation, much in the same way that PHP was initially available.

Now, you can get the early access Python support as a downloadable plugin module for your current NetBeans installation.

From the menu bar, go to Tools > Plugins, and then from the Available Plugins panel, you should be able to find the Python plugin in the Beta source. If you do not see the plugin, you should reload your catalog, just in case.

Coming Soon…?

It seems as if the Python module may be included in NetBeans 6.7 when that is officially released. But if not, it should still be available as a downloadable plugin.

As I fired up my NetBeans 6.5 IDE today, I noticed something curious in the dashboard: a how-to wiki entry on how to start using Python in NetBeans.

Now, like many other architects, I’m keen on ensuring that developers have all of the tools that they need in a unified manner. And in selecting NetBeans 6.5 for DevPal and Javamancy, I am committed to simplifying the development loop as much as possible. So when I read that Python is supposedly available in NetBeans, I was very interested…

So, while you can certainly fetch a (relatively) recent NetBeans dev build, and then fetch the EA version of the Python module, it won’t be ready until the next release of NetBeans, at the earliest.

A Little Bit:

Mentioned on Mashable yesterday, Six Apart bought up Pownce, but announced yesterday that the service is being shut down and the staff sucked into the rest of Six Apart to work on other projects. If you’ve been using Pownce, you may be considering Twitter more than ever…

In their company blog post about the imminent closure, the service is expected to be lights-out on December 15, 2008. Time to get a-hopping (and a-shopping), Pownced-folks.