Almost all well-known object oriented languages (Java, C#, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, ...) have single dispatch: Methods are chosen depending on the (single) receiver of a message. On the other hand, there is multiple dispatch which is an interesting mix of functional method selection with mutable state. It is used in less-known object-oriented languages such as Common Lisp.

In this article, we'll first look at Java's single dispatch and Java's overloading and then use what we have learned to understand multiple dispatch and how it solves some design dilemmas that can't be solved with single dispatch.

Time Machine was always a bit troublesome for me on Mac OS X, so I did some research about how to do incremental backups with open source software. The result is the script presented in this post.

Copied from one of the comments of "Fasting may fix jet lag":

The procedure suggested by the researchers is:

1. Start with the day you will arrive in your final time zone.
2. Count back 16 hours from your normal breakfast time on that day, and stop eating from that point.
3. At your normal breakfast time on the final day, eat a substantial, nutritious, meal

Note that this means you may have to eat your breakfast on a plane or in an airport, and it may not be your normal breakfast time in the local timezone when you eat breakfast. You are supposed to eat substantial real food, not coffee and a pastry, so you may have to expend some effort and foresight to ensure that such food is available when you are supposed to eat it.

Let's review: What kinds of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) do we currently have? On the one hand, there are Desktop GUIs whose development has been a bit stagnant for a while (I have written about some new ideas, older, but not yet widely used, include lifestreams, zoomable user interfaces, and 3D GUIs). On the other hand, there are smartphone interfaces that have recently enjoyed a resurgence via multi-touch.