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October 29th, 2006
Bring back the people. Tim Berners Lee is planning a new future for HTML, away from XHTML 2.0. It promises to bring HTML back to the people, and bring the people back to HTML. Either way, simple is good. It doesn’t have to be radical, it just needs to work.
The age of the universe is a function of time. And it takes a lot of time to understand what the hell we’re talking about, but our understanding grows exponentially. I could use this law in so many other fields.
Quote of the day. Rachel Cunliffe: “The bigger the organisation, the more complex the homepage.” And yes, Google is the counter example, otherwise we wouldn’t mention them ad nauseum.
The metric system. Elle magazine (don’t ask), in the beautybodyhealth section: “A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but takes up less space”.
Scraping CNN. Benjamin shows how to scrape CNN in a handful of lines. Pretty cool if you ask me.
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October 27th, 2006
The UI is the API. Drew McLellan asks: can your Web site be your API? Let me ask a different question: why is your Web site not your API? Is there a technical reason for that, or are we just conditioned to think that UIs are pretty and APIs are “complex ugly beasts” the need a lot of SOAP?
Yes, UIs serve users first, developers second. But they’re both ways to access the data. And those developers build for users, which could be us, so why not make their job easier? If we put the same care and attention to APIs as we do with UIs, would we get better software out of that?
If PS3, XBox 360, and Wii were people you know. Good one, Andre.
Unfakeable FAQ. RedHat put an “Unfakeable Linux” banner on their site and a FAQ to explain when REHL is not REHL. Still doesn’t answer the only question I have. Who’s getting custody of the kids?
Teenagers and the future work place - the beginning of the end for Microsoft Office?. The title says it all.
In other unrelated news … Google gets offened that people are Googling, Xerox sues Google for copying their business model.
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October 25th, 2006
I can’t believe I did not post for a whole week. But I got tied up in some personal stuff, minor computer woes, and some new project I hacked over the weekend, and that pretty much killed all my blogging time. After all …
You blog or you code. Incidentally, this just showed up in my feed list that I didn’t check for nearly a week.
OpenID rocks. I tried OpenID for the first time, and I love it. I decided I’m going to try it and add OpenID authentication, only if I can run my own server … no point in someone else owning my ID. I ended up struggling with mod_rewrite rules — I want a URL that I can easily remember — and accidentally broke the blog. Took a break and came back to address a configuration problem. Took another break, and went back to fix a mod_php problem.
That one took a lot of source digging, but apparently the PHP OpenID server requires mod_php. So it works nicely on my development machine. TextDrive, my hosting providing, uses FCGI. So I had to fix get_apache_headers() in the source. A five minute fix, but it took a lot of digging to get there.
It could be easier. It should be easier. We deserve it.
Did I just say that? I mostly agree with Nick Carr’s response to Lawrence Lessig’s mishype. There, I said it.
Shame yourself into writing more test cases. In one word: cool.
And always keep in mind. Well designed URLs are beautiful.
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October 25th, 2006
Two jokes for the price of one. “While we do acknowledge the similarity in pronunciation to Hebrew zi-yun, that is not the intended meaning of the name Zune.” You got to hand it to Microsoft, nothing stands in their way. They knew about the double meaning of the name, and still they went with it! Heck, knew about the product, and still they went with it!
Or maybe that’s how they plan to beat Steve Jobs at his own game. (Via Infoworld)
Sometimes less is more. Take this Java code and lose some serious weight by writing it in Ruby.
Warning signs from the future.
H, two … oh! If you flunk chemistry at high-school, at least you’re guaranteed a career selling cars. (Via Daily WTF)
Ruby search for Firefox. One click add to your Firefox search bar. (Kudos Ruby inside)
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October 18th, 2006
Language blindness. A neurological condition affecting the language receptors in the functional cortex, hindering the ability to disambiguate languages. People who suffer from this condition can only preceive different shades of Java and XML. Many people report temporary language blindness under low deadline conditions.
Self-help is not a four-letter word. It’s the way you get things done. Phil Windley: “Anytime you’ve got to do the same thing more than once, consider building a tool. And when you pick tools, be sure to pick tools that allow you to build your own tools and can be customized to meet your needs. If you get into the habit now, you’ll be more productive down the road–guaranteed.”
Blame the man with the Zune. It’s very rare that I’ll be on Microsoft’s side, but come on Apple.
Signs you have too much process.
Google Reader subscriber. Another cool Greasemonkey trick from persistent.info.
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October 18th, 2006
Eat work better. Adrian over at Lifehack: “We are suffering from an epidemic of Hamburger Management: styles of leadership that focus on what is cheap, quick, and generates most short-term profit.” The alternative: Slow leadership.
Pleasent surprise. Cheat is one of my favorite apps. It’s brilliant on two levels. Like any self-respecting Wiki, it’s useful, simple and takes all of ten seconds to figure out. Like any great social software, it has immediate value to you, and more value the more people use it. But Chris is doing one better and added two killer features: tab completion and local editing. Can your souped up Wiki do this?
First degree clueless. John Eberly: “Last night, I noticed www.seattle911.com was suddenly broken. After 30 seconds of investigation, I found out that they swithced their data feed from text to a jpeg.” Their justification: “We don’t want to make it easy for the “bad guysâ€.” Like any useful-thwarting DRM ambition, this one is broken in one line of code (check update 4 at the bottom of the post).
12 step program. Ryan Tomayko on the constant abuse of HTTP: “Why are we having such a hard time showing correct use of HTTP and URIs? Because our tools suck.”
People friendly. Raymond Chen: “Help text is not the place to put logic puzzles.” Guilty as charged; one more thing to work on. (Via Alex Barnett)
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October 17th, 2006
“A call for a return to craft and experience.”
… and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. The MPAA is still looking for a DRM solution that doesn’t inconvenience people into piracy. “‘I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content,’ he said.” How about you find ways to respect the consumer?
Apropos lawyer-funding industries: “Ashley Morgan, 13, has used her ‘sonymusicexec‘ MySpace profile to lure several bands to her Los Angeles home. Ashley was grounded so she couldn’t talk to us on the phone for this report.”
Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You. And all along I thought it was my ability to attract brilliant, funny and talented friends.
The broken Magic 8 ball. From an article that BusinessWeek published next week (check the date): “The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is that no one knows exactly who is going where on the Web.” Heck, if no one can define success, does that mean we’re all rich now?
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October 17th, 2006
Facts of life. Tobi on embracing constraints: “At various points since my return I tried to bring up the point about gender equality in storage space but I suspect most of you know how well these things usually work…”
Halloween special! Cobol: The Undead Language.
Speaking of masquerade balls … Let’s dress it up in XML, paint Open on our foreheads, and show up at the next standards body bash, and see how many people we can fool into thinking you can take our data out of our product. Bob Sutor rightfully calls OpenXML “a one way specification”.
How do you park this baby? Sun’s new ‘Puter In A Box. *Drool*
To scale. I love the new Sun container, but sometimes you’ve got to start small. Media Temple is offering pay-as-you-need hosting by clustering your server on a Grid. $20/month buys you 100GB storage, 1TB bandwidth, and 64 MB Ruby/Mongrel container. Worth checking out for the next project. (Via TechCrunch)
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October 16th, 2006
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October 15th, 2006
Open (to some) source. Those “some†happen to stand in the same line to the bathroom. According to this research presented at EuroOSCON, women are not well received in the open source community. I’m guessing for the very same reason we don’t see many women in startups. An interesting read, but I’m still missing a clue: how do we change it? (Thanks Tara for the link)
5 Principles for Programming. Duh. But you knew that already, otherwise, go read it again.
Fighting on three fronts. BEA has an ace up their sleeve, a big sunk cost they need to recover, and no love for open source.
Seriously impressed. Congrats to Joyent for picking Best of Suite.
YouTube Copyright Detection. Nic proves that sometimes the simplest algorithms are the best.
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