posts brought to you by the category “the good consumer”
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.
Ian Davis : RDF Template Language 1.0
RDFT has been designed to parallel XSLT where sensible and anyone familiar with that language and with the principles of the RDF model should find it very easy to learn. RDFT solves a key problem of processing RDF with XSLT since it acts on the underlying graph and therefore has no dependencies on the RDF serialisation syntax.
meta
I wrote a patch for File::Find::Rule::XPath (0.2) that adds support for namespaces.
I don't know if the maintainer will accept
it but, until then, it works for me.
meta
Philip Roche has written an RSS aggregator for Mozilla
which is cool all on its own, but I find it
interesting as a big batch of example code for doing something fun with
eatdrinkfeelgood
recipes.
refers to
meta
Me : ASCOPE::Term.pm 0.2
Apparently, the latest beta of OpenOffice reads and writes DocBook.
Goal is to explore the possibility of using OpenOffice.org as a WYSIWYG editor of XML content. The principle is to edit structured documents using styles. These styles are then transformed to XML tags on export.
meta
Lars Lundgren : PDF::Reuse::Tutorial
Meanwhile, William Gibson cites
Jake and Sarah : A Cat of Many Colors (sic)
Mike Hearn : Using the Mozilla JavaScript interface to XSLT
Daniel Glazman : Small Screen Rendering
via
simon willison
meta
www.emacswiki.org
refers to
meta
Fucker
Daniel Yacob : Convert::Braille.pm
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : factotum
Factotum \Fac*to"tum\, n.; pl. {Factotums} (-t?mz). [L., do everything; facere to do + totus all : cf. F. factotum. See {Fact}, and {Total}.] A person employed to do all kinds of work or business. --B. Jonson. web1913
factotum n : a servant employed to do a variety of jobs wn
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : intractable
Intractable \In*tract"a*ble\, a. [L. intractabilis: cf. F. intraitable, formerly also intractable. See {In-} not, and {Tractable}.] Not tractable; not easily governed, managed, or directed; indisposed to be taught, disciplined, or tamed; violent; stubborn; obstinate; refractory; as, an intractable child. Syn: Stubborn; perverse; obstinate; refractory; cross; unmanageable; unruly; headstrong; violent; ungovernable; unteachable. -- {In*tract"a*ble*ness}, n. -- {In*tract"a*bly}, adv. web1913
intractable adj : not tractable; difficult to manage or mold; "an intractable disposition"; "intractable pain"; "the most intractable issue of our era"; "intractable metal" [ant: {tractable}] wn
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : wonder-tard
1. One who acts exceedingly stupid and surpasses the idiocy for which one might just be called a retard. 2. Someone that has the drooling potentiality of a block of wood (see also: pocket lint).
ex. Yes, Chris's beyond stupid; he's a wonder-tard.
meta
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : cupidity
Cupidity \Cu*pid"i*ty\ (k?-p?d"?-t?), n. [F. cupidite, L. cupiditas, fr. cupidus longing, desiring, fr. cupere to long for, desire. See {Covet}.] 1. A passionate desire; love. [Obs.] 2. Eager or inordinate desire, especially for wealth; greed of gain; avarice; covetousness. With the feelings of political distrust were mingled those of cupidity and envy, as the Spaniard saw the fairest provinces of the south still in the hands of the accursed race of Ishmael. --Prescott. web1913
cupidity n : extreme greed for material wealth [syn: {avarice}, {avariciousness}, {covetousness}] wn
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : hune
1. The possessive form of a third person, singular, gender-neutral pronoun. Used to indicate possession, agency, or reception of an action by a gender-neutral being or person spoken of. Can be used to replace "his or her." 2) the third person singular pronoun in the nominative case, gender-neutral. other forms: huneself (reflexive).
ex. 1. Everyone must bring hune hat. 2. The person presented hune proposal. 3) Each person taught huneself to read.
meta
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : depredation
Depredation \Dep`re*da"tion\, n. [L. depraedatio: cf. F. d['e]pr['e]dation.] The act of depredating, or the state of being depredated; the act of despoiling or making inroads; as, the sea often makes depredation on the land. web1913
depredation n : an act of plundering [syn: {predation}, {preying}] wn
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Everytime you masturbate...
Karl is looking for one or more design-weenies to "relook"-ify
the iconbar in
Amaya
. To my dismay, I've learned today that
relooker
is considered word enough to be included in a French dictionary.
Apparently, you can not only use XSLT to
relooker
your documents, but you can also pursue a career in
relookage
. It's just so wrong.
refers to
meta
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : dmy
Short for "Don't Mess Yourself". Used when someone overreacts
ex. ""DMY, Rich. It was an accident.""
meta
Random [RSS] headlines from Syndic8.com
I've toyed with doing something like this
for aaronland. It's a goofy enough feature, though, that it is easily
left behind. Goofy but fun. If I didn't already have enough random
content as it is, I might add a "random headline of the day"
post...
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D.J. Adams : Is Jabber's Chatbot the Command Line of the Future?
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is bombinate
| source : web1913 | Bombinate \Bom"bi*nate\, v.
i. To hum; to boom. | source : wn | bombinate v : make a buzzing sound
[syn: {buzz}, {bombilate}]
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is conflate
| source : web1913 | Conflate \Con*flate"\, v. t.
[imp. & p. p. {Conflated}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Conflating}.] [L.
conflatus, p. p. of conflare to blow together; con- + flare to blow.] To
blow together; to bring together; to collect; to fuse together; to join
or weld; to consolidate. The State-General, created and conflated by the
passionate effort of the whole nation. --Carlyle. | source : wn |
conflate v : mix together different elements; "The colors blend well";
"fuse the clutter of detail into a rich narrative"--A. Schlesinger [syn:
{blend}, {mix}, {commingle}, {immix}, {fuse}, {coalesce}, {meld},
{combine}, {merge}]
meta
Fredric L. Rice : FBI may not appreciate the risks with Carnivore sniffing E-Mail
N.Y. Times : " The court began by observing that a hyperlink is not merely a high-tech footnote
or reference card that conveys information to a
reader concerning the location of additional content. Rather, the court
said, a hyperlink contains a speech component and an additional
"nonspeech" component -- some computer code -- that has the functional
capacity to bring the content of the linked Web page to the user's
computer screen at the click of a mouse. It is this instantaneous,
functional nature of the hyperlink that distinguishes it from its
non-electronic print cousin, said the court, because a hyperlink to
digital material can result in "instantaneous worldwide distribution [of
prohibited material] before any preventative measures can be taken."
Because the D.M.C.A.'s anti-trafficking provision is targeted at the
functional, instantaneous aspect of Corley's hyperlinks, continued the
court, the regulation is "content neutral" and thus is subject to a
relaxed level of judicial scrutiny."
Meanwhile,
the other
Aaron
(permalinks, gentlemen? :-) asks :
I wonder what the court would say if I came out with a browser that
linked every instance of the word "the" to the DeCSS source code?
. Isn't that what we all tied our panties in a knot over when Microsoft
announced
Smart
Tags
?
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Movable Thoughts #14
Probably the single most requested feature
from the
Blogger
API
is the ability to slurp all the posts in one swell foop. If I am
reading the MT Blogger code correctly, MT will do this when you call
the
getRecentPosts method
without a num argument. If no limit is specified then
&MT::ObjectDriver::DBM::load_iter will return all the ids for a
blog. &load_iter calls &_get_ids which returns ids based on the
following test...
# This test will fail because although there are args, the
# args->{'limit'} test will return false since only the
# value of the key[1] is being tested and not the key's
# definedness itself
#
# [1] http://tlc.perlarchive.com/articles/perl/ug0002.shtml
if ($args && $args->{limit}) { ## Lookup with limit
@ids = $driver->_get_ids_limit($DB, $db, $class, $terms, $args);
}
# We have terms, so...
elsif ($terms) { ## Lookup using index or ID
if (ref($terms) eq 'HASH') {
@ids = %$terms ?
# We have keys so we'll munge the index and since none
# of the "terms" are array references we 1) don't have
# to worry about range arguments and 2) munge the @ids
# listed in the index for $blogid.
$driver->_get_ids_from_index($class, $terms, $args) :
keys %$db;
} else {
@ids = $terms;
}
}
meta
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is enunciate
| source : web1913 | Enunciate \E*nun"ci*ate\, v.
t. [imp. & p. p. {Enunciated}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Enunciating}.]
[L. enuntiatus, -ciatus, p. p. of enuntiare, -ciare. See {Enounce}.] 1.
To make a formal statement of; to announce; to proclaim; to declare, as a
truth. The terms in which he enunciates the great doctrines of the
gospel. --Coleridge. 2. To make distinctly audible; to utter
articulately; to pronounce; as, to enunciate a word distinctly. | source
: web1913 | Enunciate \E*nun"ci*ate\, v. i. To utter words or syllables
articulately. | source : wn | enunciate v 1: speak, pronounce, or utter
in a certain way; "She pronounces French words in a funny way"; "I cannot
say `zip wire'" [syn: {pronounce}, {articulate}, {enounce}, {say}] 2:
express or state clearly [syn: {articulate}, {vocalize}]
meta
I received a nice note from Ronald Bourret in response to this post.
He pointed out that there is no evil plan
afoot, that O'Reilly is not the shameless corporation may have painted
them to be and that re-packaging articles is common practice.
"Freelance writing pays so poorly that, if you researched every article
from scratch, you'd literally make a dollar or two an hour." So, I
stand corrected and offer my apologies.
meta
Tamara Munzner and Paul Burchard : Visualizing the Structure of the World Wide Web in 3D Hyperbolic Space
"We visualize the structure of sections of the
World Wide Web by constructing graphical representations in 3D hyperbolic
space. The felicitous property that hyperbolic space has ``more room''
than Euclidean space allows more information to be seen amid less
clutter, and motion by hyperbolic isometries provides for mathematically
elegant navigation."
meta
Simon Kittles : Text::Outline.pm
"...converts one outline format into another. It
can currently read in OPML files, Tabbed text files, and Think data files
(Think is a GNOME outliner). It can currently output to OPML, Tabbed
text, Think files, and Emacs outline files."
refers to
meta
N.Y. Times : Interview with Stefan Fatsis,
author of "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph,
Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players."
Warning : this guy is not only a bit annoying
to listen to, but will also shatter any illusions you might have had
about Scrabble being a nice, quiet game for word-nerds. see also :
Confessions of a Scrabble Junkie
.
(real evil g2)
meta
Poppy::UncleDick : "I would hope the American people would,
in effect, stick their thumb in the eye of the
terrorists and say they've got great confidence in the country, great
confidence in our economy, and not let what's happened here in any way
throw off their normal level of economic activity."
Perhaps the reason they've been hiding Uncle
Dick for so long is that he is an even worse public speaker than Dubya...
see also :
Questions for the Citizen-Shareholder
meta
Bertrand Badie : "Et surtout, nous ne devons pas oublier cette règle d'or,
qui va devenir l'aune des relations
internationales: l'aspiration à l'égalité. Un homme vaut un autre homme.
Je n'ai pas vu beaucoup de réactions, cette semaine, devant la mort de
plusieurs Palestiniens... Et lorsque nous saurons réagir au génocide de
500 000 Rwandais comme nous avons réagi au sort tragique des victimes
emportées à New York, nous aurons fait un progrès dans la régulation de
la vie internationale. Or nous sommes encore dans un monde où un homme ne
vaut pas un autre homme; c'est en ces termes que le Sud réagit à la
catastrophe de New York. La mondialisation aggrave les inégalités mais
suscite une aspiration à l'égalité comme il n'y en a jamais eu. Parce que
chacun a désormais les moyens de se comparer aux autres."
meta
Two years ago, I was reading "Jihad vs. McWorld"
and I am loathe to admit I never finished
it. The memory came back to me just a moment, or so, before seeing
this
photograph
.
refers to
meta
Fabrice Desré : XSLTDoc
"This tool is itself an XSLT stylesheet that
analyzes another stylesheet and builds a clean documentation on it."
refers to
meta
N.Y. Times : "Beck and his ilk try to emulate Gainsbourg
- get bad haircuts, strike ridiculous lothario
poses - but they can't resist winking at the audience: "Don't worry, I
get the joke." Gainsbourg never flinched; he was authentically cool, and
he reveled in tackiness with gusto and confidence. Listening to his
tuneful, obscene, witty records, we encounter an original: a musician
with the nerve, and the chops, to make great art out of bad taste."
We took our friends from New York to
C'est
Extra!
last night, so this article was helpful to explain --in their own
language-- what, exactly, is was they had just seen.
meta
Peter G. Neumann : [W]hen there is no security in place, the alleged culprit cannot have exceeded authority
when no authority is implied. As long-time RISKS
readers will recall, this issue came up relating to the trial of Robert
Tappan Morris: in 1988, the Internet worm never exceeded authority,
because no authority was required to use the sendmail debug option, to
use the .rhosts mechanism, to execute the finger daemon, or to read an
unprotected encrypted password file. I wonder how if prosecutors will
ever figure this out! As long as we attempt to shoot the messenger and
hide lame security behind overly broad laws, weak security will prevail,
and whistleblowers will be much rarer than glassblowers. (For example,
DMCA is among other things an attempt to outlaw whistleblowers.)"
meta
Mario A. Torres : Developing Scalable Distributed Applications
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is hinterland
| source : web1913 | Hinterland \Hin"ter*land`\,
n. [G.; hinter behind + land land.] The land or region lying behind the
coast district. The term is used esp. with reference to the so-called
{doctrine of the hinterland}, sometimes advanced, that occupation of the
coast supports a claim to an exclusive right to occupy, from time to
time, the territory lying inland of the coast. | source : wn | hinterland
n : a remote and undeveloped area [syn: {backwoods}, {back country},
{boondocks}]
meta
I confess I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do
with the fact that
SOAP::Lite.pm
now supports the Jabber protocol
but it sure is cool , all the same.
meta
Ladies and gentlemen, cell-phone art...
perl-abook
"is a collection of perl library modules which
provide a unified interface for accessing addressbook entries stored in
various types of databases."
refers to
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Ronald Bourret : Mapping DTDs tp Databases
Mr. Bourret is the clever guy who wrote the
XML-DBMS
package. This article, however, appears to be part of a growing trend
at the Oreilynet collective to simply repackage
existing
documentation or presentations
and sell them as capital-A articles. Maybe it's always been this way
and I've only just caught up with the practice. I'm not even sure I
think it's a bad thing since you could make a reasonable argument that
it provides and effective vehicle for people to learn about cool stuff.
Still, it just seems a bit cheap. Anyway, I love DTDs...
meta
Greg Fitzpatrick : SKI, the Swedish Calendar Initiative
"Since Why is to be free text; Who is itemized
free text; and When, Where, and Who are already well provided for with
standards, our main attention turned to the problem of What. We looked
enviously at the museum sector with their SPECTRE but we found no
existing thesaurus for the categorization of our events. We had the
choice of creating our own thesaurus, which we knew would be a
tremendously time-consuming and wearying struggle, or come up with an
alternative. The alternative was to create a living register of the
naming conventions used by each SKI compliant site, open to all. This
causes a bit of confusion for our target groups: The distinction between
being a centralized database of all events and merely a registry of
naming conventions takes some time to sink in."
Hark, a
living register
of naming conventions?
meta
Jeff Covey thinks he can win the browser wars
by "[simplifying] the Web. We need to lower the
entry costs for the people writing alternative browsers. Web sites need
to loose the Flash, the Javascript links, and the font tags. That too is
hard work. If you have a Web page, resist the temptation to add clever
stuff to it. Disable Javascript, Java, and remote fonts in your browser.
Ignore sites which rely on these things. If you visit pages which do,
drop the author a line and tell him about it. Email is best. If you can't
be bothered with email, try the approach I use: I request links such as
http:// www.somecommercesite.com/using/
javascript/has/just/lost/you/a/customer/ or http://
www.someidiot.com/lose/ the/flash/or/lose/this/viewer in the hope that
somebody reads the error logs. ... Focus on content, not looks."
Personally, I think this guy is living in a
fantasy world but it takes all kinds.
meta
Perlmonks : Perl Soap
"Imagine a web site that keeps it’s viewers
ensconced with same style of drivel that funds your daytime television
time:
“Oh bob. I’ m sorry. I just can’t go through with this fake marriage to your recently discovered twin brother’s half sister. Maybe it’s the fact I’m carrying the police chef’s baby. Maybe it’s because I’m in love with a part time game show host who enjoys painting and rather nasty bouts of homicide.”
Now I’m just talking about the usual array of Chomsky based sentence generators. Lets finally put some of those funky technologies like neural networks, b-spline trees and the word antepenultimate to use and produce a fully functional, living, breathing soup bowl of pixilated drama. Who could miss the heart warming production of a brand new bouncy Soap::Person->Baby. Be there when it says its first pre-generated ‘Goos and Gaas’ from the Soap::Speak archives to it’s proud Soap::Person->Parent." see also : dict antepenultmeta
Rich Robinson : DigitaScript, A Scripting Language for Digital Cameras
"Although DigitaScript can set simple camera
parameters such as shutter speed and flash settings, it can also manage
databases of information, tell photographers which picture to take next,
build web pages, extend the user interface, and communicate with external
devices such as barcode readers. It does this with simple text files that
are no more difficult to understand than HTML. And it does everything
right inside the camera."
meta
John R. MacArthur : I'll take print over e-info anyday
"It must be that holding paper in your hands
satisfies a fundamental human need for permanence -- a record of
existence, if you will. So when I hear such luminaries as Jacob Weisberg
-- a senior-editor salesman for Microsoft-owned Slate Magazine -- prattle
on about how infantile it is to cling to wood pulp, I detect an assault
on history and psychological continuity itself, a gratuitous upsetting of
the apple cart that is deeply childish in its own right. (The sterile
Bauhaus school of architecture militated much the same way for minimalist
design against traditional ornament.) Indeed, with its phony promise of
limitless, easily acquired knowledge, the Internet appeals to the child's
fantasy of omnipotence -- the world at your fingertips, unmediated,
unsupervised by adults."
meta
Frontier weenies will chuckle knowingly to themselves
when they see this.
meta
My friend Mary got her book published.
There's a pretty funny story about the book cover
but I don't know if it's my place to tell it in public...
meta
Disturbing Search Requests
"This website serves the purpose to reflect upon
the process of finding web sites by using search machines. If you write a
weblog on a regular basis, chances are you're going to post quotes from
other sites, opinions from other people etc. But since weblogs are highly
linked to and from, they get indexed very well by search engines. So,
even if you only once wrote about your hamster, and on the same day
mentioned you were wearing a three piece suit, google just might list you
as No.1 for 'hamster suit'. Now just imagine that you check your referer
logs and you find a query from a search engine, looking for 'hamster
suit'. This is where this site kicks in." via
metafilter
refers to
meta
Ultimus : 150 Essential Features of Workflow Automation
What the hell is a donut muffin?
anonymous
"It was a good way to make the comment that the
work we were seeing wasn't as original, and also to credit Neal
Stephenson because he's directly inspired so many developers."
meta
Dahlia Lithwick : Waltzing Miranda
"Being tapped by the Supremes to defend a statute
that neither party to the case wants any part of is like being appointed
hall monitor-ratting out your buddies for extra credit." via
q
meta
Mary Anne DeMonte-Whelan on the bidding war for Videotron
"This is a politically motivated counterbid.
Quebecor and the Caisse [ de dépôt et placement du Québec ] want to keep
a strong presence in the new economy based in Quebec."
meta
Meanwhile, in France
Garry Trudeau
"While the public at large regards 'Peanuts' as a
cherished part of our shared popular culture, cartoonists also see it as
an irreplaceable source of purpose and pride, our gold standard for work
that is both illuminating and aesthetically sublime. We can hardly
imagine its absence." via
robot wisdom
meta
Peter Gzosky talks with Samuel Hollander
"Samuel Hollander is an internationally respected
intellectual economic historian. He says that a close reading of the
works of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill reveal them to be closet
socialists. And further, that they would be alarmed by our modern day
love affair with unfettered capitalism and depleted social safety nets."
real audio.
meta
Jean Drapeau : 1916 - 1999
"Mr. Drapeau was a democratically-elected mayor
but he governed as an emperor, bluntly declaring himself in favour of
"disciplined democracy." ... Montrealers apparently agreed with him or
didn't care. Montreal was, to most of them at least, the jewel among
Canadian cities and it was Mr. Drapeau who made it so." - <a href
=
"http://globeandmail.com/gam/National/19990813/UDRAPM.html">g&m</a>
meta
ooooooooh
iCab 1.6 supports HTTPS
"iCab (only the PPC version) now uses the [MacOS
8.6] system extension 'URL Access' to support HTTPS (SSL)." Yay!
refers to
meta
Peter Wheeland : From anglophone to vibraphone
"Vibraphone: a person who speaks two or more
languages and who believes each language provides significant social,
cultural and intellectual enrichment. When vibraphones see a public sign
in their second or third or fourth language, if they can't understand it,
they rejoice in the opportunity to add the new words or phrases to their
vocabulary. They are incapable of seeing other languages as threats, only
as opportunities to expand their understanding of their neighbours and
the world around them."
refers to
meta
The House on Bubbles Galore
Art, sex and government funding. real audio,
starts at 34:13.
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.
-
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