I don't write here often, but I also work on open source projects.

For those of you unfamiliar, Raspberry Pi is an inexpensive computer that can run Linux and is about the size of a credit card. I think it was primarily designed for educational purposes -- to get kids into computers -- though it works well for a lot of other use cases. When I got mine, I started off with Raspbmc, the XBMC install for the Pi. I had a few issues and decided to stick with my existing Boxee Box for now.

I'm not really convinced that sliced bread is that much of an improvement over uncut bread, but Gradle is definitely better. Considering how much I've been using Gradle over the last 2 years, I'm surprised I haven't written anything about it yet.

I heard about If This Then That on Tech News Today a couple weeks ago and just started playing around with it today. It's basically a way for you to automate all kinds of tasks based on different web services (mostly social networks) that you use. Some examples:

After completing 7 Languages in 7 Weeks, I decided to start working on a project to get my feet wet in Scala. For the past couple weeks I've been reading through Programming in Scala, which is seemingly the definitive Scala book and is written by the language author.

I'm all done with the 7 Languages in 7 Weeks book. Overall, I was very happy with it and recommend it to anyone looking to broaden their programming horizons.