posts brought to you by the category “cats”
Das eez kaput! Sometime around 2002 I spaced the entire database table that mapped individual entries to categories. Such is life. What follows is a random sampling of entries that were associated with the category. Over time, the entries will be updated and then it will be even more confusing. Wander around, though, it's still a fun way to find stuff.
I don't actually disagree with most of what Steph says,
however I would mention that what with all
the fuss being made over the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA
that it was pointed out that when you think about DNA as a "program" it
is the biggest and baddest piece of spaghetti-code ever written. I am
concerned that the W3C is spending so much of its time defining what
the meaning of the word
isis, although the HTML related activities are nowhere as guilty as some of the others. I have no problem with sitting down and ironing out the semantics needed to do, say, credit card transactions but that is simply not the same thing as describing how a person relates to the world. You could map the former on to the latter, sure. But then you might as climb the mountain and tell the world "I am the One True God. All others are second to Me. Don't even try and look back, motherfucker!". And hey, there are still some people who are seriously into that kind of thing but I like to think that most of us prefer a little moderation even if it is for monks. I would much rather see the W3C keep working on the plumbing rather than, to keep these bad quasi-religious analogies going, spending so much time divining water. A good example is the addition of XInclude to XHTML 2.0. When everyone finally finishes complaining about lines, objects and all the rest of the window-dressing, the ability to do server-side includes on the client-side (this is where the REST people are going to trounce the RPC/SOAP weenies) is what people will embrace in the new spec.
meta
You know, IMP is a very good webmail client.
But you really have to wonder what kind of
ass-backwards rationale made the developers decide that CSS data should
be stored, and configured, as a
PHP associative array
. I'm trying really hard not to see this as somehow representative of
PHP itself but the language just bugs my ass in so many ways and I see
crap like this in so many well-meaning PHP thingies that my resolve is
wavering...
refers to
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Me : date-periodparser-simpledates.diff
Hooks for
Date::PeriodParser
(and by extension,
Mail::Miner
) to allow to get timestamps for dates like
2003
,
january 1999
and
feb fourteenth
. I guess this means I have to teach it to understand stuff last
last march
now, too...
meta
Anil Dash : "I want to be able to query Google's database with a date filter."
You already
can
, but if you throw
Date::PeriodParser
and
Net::Google
in to the mix, you can do it in English!
meta
Can I just cut the fucking ironic humor and ask a simple question?
Dan Brickley : XMP Metadata Extraction Demo
I guess it's time to start working on version 0.3 of Image::Shoehorn::Gallery ... via more like thisThis experimental metadata extractor will retrieve a document ... and look for embedded metadata stored using the Adobe XMP embedding conventions.
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ATSA : Les Murs du Feu
refers to
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Bill Turner : Baby boomer tableware
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : persiflage
Persiflage \Per`si`flage"\, n. [F., fr. persifler to quiz, fr. L. per + siffler to whistle, hiss, L. sibilare, sifilare.] Frivolous or bantering talk; a frivolous manner of treating any subject, whether serious or otherwise; light raillery. --Hannah More. web1913
persiflage n : light teasing wn
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Julian Harris : Towards a new weblog design
In my mind there ought not be any
difference, atleast as far as the datastore is concerned, between a
"post" and a "category". That is, the interface for editing a category
is exactly the same as the one used to create and edit post. Okay,
maybe the standard <link> definition might be autogenerated
to point back to itself. Similarly, the <title> might become
fixed if the other widgets in your weblog chooses not to refer to other
items via UIDs. But the point is that a "category" can have a "post"
body (or an abstract and a body, and an excerpt and an abstract and
body and so on and so on...) and "post" comments and "post" categories.
The list of categories available to a category are exactly the same
(minus itself) as those that a user may assign to a "post". What makes
this interesting, is that the nested associations create
themselves.
meta
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : hotter than a pickle, hotter'n
Extremely hot.
ex. God, it's hotter than a pickle today.
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : {word}**n
{word} repeated n times. E.g., really**4 = really, really, really, really.
ex. I really**6 get tired of typing the same thing over and over again. What we really**2 need is some pseudomathematical shorthand to use here.
meta
5 - 2, baby.
5 - 2
. see also :
It was a beautiful play.
meta
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : fek
Used to show disgust at something, or to describe something disgusting.
ex. "this is some really fek food" "that was the fekest thing i have ever seen"see also : fek dict-ified
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The Connection : Language and the Internet
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is pantheon
| source : web1913 | Pantheon \Pan*the"on\, n.
[L. pantheon, pantheum, Gr. ? (sc. ?), fr. ? of all gods; ?, ?, all + ? a
god: cf. F. panth['e]on. See {Pan-}, and {Theism}.] 1. A temple dedicated
to all the gods; especially, the building so called at Rome. 2. The
collective gods of a people, or a work treating of them; as, a divinity
of the Greek pantheon. | source : wn | pantheon n 1: all the gods of a
religion 2: a monument commemorating a nation's dead heroes 3: (ancient
Greece or Rome) a temple to all the gods
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Me : render-changes-rss.js
I wrote a tool that takes the [weblogs.com
changes.xml] RSS file and munges it into a JavaScript variable that you
can then slurp, parse and render. There really isn't any reason why I
couldn't have done this with the original changes.xml file other than I
only figured it out for RSS files yesterday. All of which suggests the
need to write a generic
to_javascript($xml,$outfile)
method. It also suggests the possibility of writing a generic RSS
parser but I just don't know if I have the energy to write hooks for
all the various flavours, in JavaScript of all things...
meta
<il codice categoria della portata = "pithy-comment">
Okay. Aside from finally getting the daily
archive widgets working properly, I have added preliminary babelfish
translation support for the archive, daily and (recent) category views.
Not surprisingly, the URI scheme for daily archives is
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/daily/YYYY/MM/DD
The URI scheme for translating a page is
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/( (archive/UID) | (daily/YYYY/MM/DD) )/LANGUAGE
and
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/category/CATEGORY/LANGUAGE/recent
And if you want the translation for a category listing as an RSS feed, just tack a
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/daily/YYYY/MM/DD
The URI scheme for translating a page is
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/( (archive/UID) | (daily/YYYY/MM/DD) )/LANGUAGE
and
http://www.aaronland .info /weblog/category/CATEGORY/LANGUAGE/recent
And if you want the translation for a category listing as an RSS feed, just tack a
/rss
on to the end of that. I haven't decided about the others yet.
Valid languages are : Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. I will add suitable links,
where appropriate, in the days to come. Needless to say, there are
still some
bugs
to work out, but you get the idea...
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is interregnum
| source : web1913 | Interregnum
\In`ter*reg"num\, n.; pl. {Interregnums}. [L., fr. inter between + regnum
dominion, reign. See {Reign}, and cf. {Interreign}.] 1. The time during
which a throne is vacant between the death or abdication of a sovereign
and the accession of his successor. 2. Any period during which, for any
cause, the executive branch of a government is suspended or interrupted.
| source : wn | interregnum n : the time between two reigns, governments,
etc. | source : devils | INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a
monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the
throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been
attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to
make it warm again.
The word of the day is not really
interregnum, but dictionary.com is spewing compound words again, and I
came across my word, today, in the book I am reading.
meta
Chris Cobb : Perl Tools Architecture (PTools)
"was created after attempting to move two
web-based applications consisting of many related pieces and over 100,000
lines of Perl each. After wrestling again and again with hard-coded file
paths, duplicated data file locations and other fundamental problems and
inconsistencies, a cleaner approach was clearly needed." via
gnat
refers to
meta
We spoke of the intersection
between calculus and the game of 5-second
character assasination.
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is fallible
| source : web1913 | Fallible \Fal"li*ble\, a.
[LL. fallibilis, fr. L. fallere to deceive: cf. F. faillible. See
{Fail}.] Liable to fail, mistake, or err; liable to deceive or to be
deceived; as, all men are fallible; our opinions and hopes are fallible.
| source : wn | fallible adj 1: likely to fail or be inaccurate;
"everyone is fallible to some degree" [ant: {infallible}] 2: having the
attributes of man as opposed to e.g. divine beings; "I'm only human";
"frail humanity" [syn: {frail}, {imperfect}, {weak}]
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is languor
| source : web1913 | Languor \Lan"guor\, n. [OE.
langour, OF. langour, F. langueur, L. languor. See Languish.] 1. A state
of the body or mind which is caused by exhaustion of strength and
characterized by a languid feeling; feebleness; lassitude; laxity. 2. Any
enfeebling disease. [Obs.] Sick men with divers languors. --Wyclif (Luke
iv. 40). 3. Listless indolence; dreaminess. Pope. `` German dreams,
Italian languors.'' --The Century. Syn: Feebleness; weakness; faintness;
weariness; dullness; heaviness; lassitude; listlessness. | source : wn |
languor n 1: a relaxed comfortable feeling [syn: {dreaminess}] 2: a
feeling of lack of interest or energy [syn: {lassitude}, {listlessness}]
3: an unusual lack of energy [syn: {lethargy}, {sluggishness}]
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is coprolalia
| source : wn | coprolalia n : an uncontrollable
use of obscene language; often accompanied by mental disorders
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Diane Hillman : Using Dublin Core
Guido van Rossum and Larry Wall : Programming Parrot
"covers the basic features and syntax of this
powerful new hybrid language, and provides reference material for many of
its most important interfaces and tools, including Internet scripting,
systems programming, ParroTk, C integration, Jarrot, Active Scripting and
COM extensions, Gnope (GNU/Zope), PSP server pages, restricted execution
mode, the Comprehensive Parrot Archive Network (a.k.a. the Vaults of
Madagascar), the HTMLgen and SWIG code generators, thread support,
Unicode, EBCDIC and Baudot support, JAPHs, and more."
refers to
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Pierre Audet : "Canada is a cow where the milk of democracy leaks,
and we must admit that it's in Quebec where we
find the cream of freedom of expression."
There is a provincial bi-election in
my riding
next month and Mr. Audet is the Bloc Pot candidate. Montreal's current
mayor ran on a platform of little more than pledging to plant lots of
flowers -- we got the flowers but we also got bi-laws legislating the
size of our garbage bags -- so it is little surprise that Mr. Audet would
offer up a plan to build lots of rooftop greenhouses so that "Montreal
will look like a garden from the sky." On the other hand, he claims to
want to cut funding for public-transportation in half which pretty much
guarantees he won't get my vote and make me think he's been smoking some
pretty skanky bud. Meanwhile, will someone please buy the
Mirror
a proper CMS or atleast tell the web-weenies to start giving the pages on
their website unique addresses. You know, something simple like a
uniform
resource identifier
. "news7.html", indeed...
meta
Honour, my arse. It's called data-mining
and just-in-time niche marketing. This is The
Man speaking and he is telling you that you are a number : 0.0002 cents,
to be precise.
"In order to cooperate with governmental requests, to protect our systems
and customers, or to ensure the integrity and operation of our business
and systems, we may access and disclose any information we consider
necessary or appropriate, including, without limitation, user contact
details, transaction data, IP addressing and traffic information, usage
history, and posted content." see also :
Is
Amazon's Honor Plan Honorable?
meta
I almost never remember dreams, but last night
I dreamt I went to the beach in San Francisco. I
have only ever been to the city once, when I was a small boy, so it all
looked strangely New England-ish. I stood at the edge of the water trying
to wrap my mind around the idea that the Atlantic ocean was behind me
wondering why the beach was overrun with dwarf squirrels.
meta
WBOSS (Web Based Open Source SpellChecker)
"is designed to work with any text input form on
any web page. It is called from a second form, opens a pop-up window,
allows the user to check the text, then inserts the text back in the main
window's form field."
I've written a web-based spell-checker and
seen a few others out there and this one is definitely the
sweetest.
meta
Why do people feel the need to override the UNIVERSAL::can method?
Must .... bang ... head
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Paul Tough : "[A]s of this morning, if you have one of those handheld personal digital assistants,
you can automatically download each day's open
letter into its memory, and then read it later, while you pretend to be
looking up stock quotes." Yay! see also
This
Morning : The PDA Divide
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Michal Wallace : Socratic methods
"The idea is you figure out the cause-effect
relationships that lead to a current undesireable situation, and work
your way back to the core issues ... Once you understand the current
system, you can map out a future reality tree that shows in precise
logical steps what you want to happen. Then you build a transition tree
to connect the two." I'm not sure I necessarily agree with Michal about
all of this but it is interesting and the chart he points to will delight
diagram-weenies everywhere.
meta
Sightings
Andrew Ó Baoill : Slashdot and the Public Sphere
"Jurgen Habermas's theory of the public sphere
provides a model of idealised democratic debate. Three major features of
this model can be identified - universal access, rational debate, and a
disregard for rank. I analyse the model, and use it to examine Slashdot,
a popular Web site, as an actualisation of public space."
meta
Palm Open Source
International Panel of Eminent Personalities : Report on the 1994 Rwanda Genocide
"But when it came to trying to understand the
actual act of killing, we confess our total failure. We acknowledge from
the outset this failure. We have grasped the insidious process by which
people were stirred up. We understand how they were manipulated and how
they came to accept the demonization and dehumanization of others.
We studied the literature, some of it highly controversial, that attempts
to account for collective human breakdowns in which ordinary citizens
turn into monsters. We have arrived at a certain comprehension of
the complex series of factors at work. But we do not pretend for a
moment that we have reached any understanding of the act of one neighbour
or one Christian or one teacher actually hacking another to death.
Perhaps, some day, answers will emerge. But for now, we are able to
offer little illumination on the first questions that so many people
reasonably ask."
meta
From the
Bob Hunter on Thermageddon
"It has been said that the hardest thing to see
is what is most obvious."
meta
www.priss.org
"After a long day of communicating via words,
caffeine and nicotine, I am ready to go home and be welcomed by more wild
animals." Not to be confused with
The
Portable RT[S]P Internet Streaming Server
.
refers to
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I remember thinking
that the forces of moral purity would likely
recommend
this
as fine upstarting art,
but some people are never satisfied
.
meta
Voir : Cris et chuchotements
"Les webabillards: foire aux rumeurs ou véritable
petite révolution dans le monde de l'information? Rencontre avec
Carl-Frédéric De Celles, cofondateur de pssst, un weblog qui n'épargne
personne." Remember kids, there will be a test next week on how you spell
weblog in French.
meta
Bill Humphries : Using a Glossary to Unwind Comments from Links
"Automating WebLogs that are more than a list of
links presents a challenge when representing them in XML. One way to
solve the problem is to unentangle links from narrative in the XML
representation."
meta
It was a dark and stormy evening
when
Ted Rall
wrote an editorial piece about
The King of
Comix
and boiled the blood of the faithful. The readers rose up and answered
en-Maus
[sic] until finally
Danny
Hellman
decided the time had come
to take
matters into his own hands
.
meta
This American Life comic book
Beautifully illustrated by
Jessica Abel
. Someone remind me why I work with computers all day...
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United States Patent # 5,819,241
"More particularly, the invention relates to an
interactive process in which a database of demographic and other relevant
information is used to selectively apply specific, targeted information,
such as advertisements, coupons, or messages onto a letter or parcel, if
there is a match between the sender and/or recipient information on the
letter or parcel and the information in the database. The database is
constantly updated as letters or parcels pass through the system." This
has privacy violation written all over it. Consider the implications of a
database that knows everyone you've written to or received a letter from.
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Mark Stevens on the MOMA's "Fame after Photography"
"As fame yields to celebrity, so does art to
artist, character to personality, and memory to nostalgia."
meta
ViewSource : Writing a VRML Modeler in DHTML JavaScript
"In this article I'll tell you how to combine
VRML and DHTML JavaScript in an application that enables users to model
scenes interactively in a 3D drawing environment." ooh!
refers to
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nextmonet.com
"Research then confirmed that Claude Monet is the
most recognized artist in the world – his name synonymous with
"art" even to a novice." I'm going to reserve judgement on this one for a
while.
refers to
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My car just broke down (again)
I can't stand that my life so is dependant on the
stupid thing!
refers to
meta
wtf?
-
dude, where's my car
This document uses CSS kung-fu and a small amount of JavaScript for rendering its contents. Efforts have been made to separate the form from the content so if you are viewing this in a text-based browser it shouldn't be an issue.
On the other hand it may look funny if you are viewing it in a browser with incomplete CSS and/or JavaScript implementations. Internet Explorer 6 comes to mind.
It's not that I don't love you. However, my time is limited and I no longer feel very good about spending it working around any one browser's inconsistencies with little, or no, confidence that they will ever be fixed or otherwise made more inconsistent at some later date.
On the other hand, if something is down-right unreadable please let me know and I will endeavour to fix it.
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yes, we have no bananas
This page may not validate. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I'm not aware of it yet. Part of the reason that I rewrote the entire back-end for managing this site is that the old stuff made it too easy for these kinds of mistakes to slip through the cracks.
See also : W3C::LogValidator.pm
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it's the software, stupid