It is 3 AM, and I’m on the upstairs couch at work, trying to relax and eventually get some sleep. My app has (finally) been online for 30 minutes, and I feel like a nervous father watching his kid ride a bike for the first time. In traffic. At the Indy 500. (!)
March 2002 Archives
As I post this we are flipping the switch on the app I’ve been working on for 4 months. Here goes nothing…!
Dave started a weblog directory. He doesn’t have the biggest one though.
WARNING: The Rice and Bean burrito from Rito’s in suburban Phoenix (it’s the kind of dive that sells one thing, and does it better than anyone else!) maintains a microwave-induced internal temperature that is substantially higher than mere physics can explain. Consider yourself warned.
Ok, this is not going to happen often, so all you left-wingers out there listen up! -) Rafe over at rc3.org is right. Er, left. Er, correct:
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold has won me over to his way of thinking. … Feingold argued that Ashcroft should be confirmed because the President has the right to get the cabinet he wants. If we give the President free rein to choose his cabinet, then we’re free to judge his administration on the actions undertaken by that cabinet.
The same goes for a lot of government officials. If Congress would stop making it their business to choose the rest of the Government, we might have a chance to see what works and what doesn’t. What I mean: an incoming administration claims it stands for X,Y, and Z, and gets elected. Then Congress says “We don’t like X and Y - we won’t let you pick/appoint people who believe X and Y.” Therefore the administration becomes a mix of ideologies and lowest-common-denominator politics, followed by lots misinformation and mixed messages.
When the messages and results can be clearly attributed to the foundational beliefs of the [particular branch of government] then the people will be better able to select the government they want.
I’ll add this: this goes for politicos on both sides of the aisle. I’m sick of all of ‘em.
I’ve been up to my ears recently trying to get an app out the door for my employer. This has adversely affected my blogging frequency. I’ll try and do better. -)
Damien is going to be in my neck of the woods April 5 - he and I and hopefully some other AZ bloggers are going to have an AZ-NY blogger get-together. I feel so “in”.
A great resource for any web designer, Interaction Design Patterns.
[5:19] <redmonk> for instruction of future generations: [5:20] <redmonk> always cd to the directory of the files you are listing, [5:20] <redmonk> or you will delete the contents of your build scripts directory instead
As seen on #swhack:
[4:33] * Morbus runs away. [4:33] * Morbus throws handfuls of ferrets in redmonk's general direction. [4:34] * redmonk targets railgun on Morbus [4:34] * redmonk ducks ferrets [4:34] * redmonk pulls trigger [4:34] * Morbus starts pounding on the jump button like a lamer. [4:34] <redmonk> *whang*!! [4:34] * Morbus respawns. [4:34] <redmonk> *splutch* [4:34] * Morbus respawns again. [4:34] <redmonk> now this is the way to play quake [4:34] <Morbus> heh. [4:35] <Morbus> ircuake.
I’m only one or two steps from being able to realize a dream I’ve had for the last 5 or 6 years. I’ve been developing web applications since 1996, and like all geeks I’ve longed for a server of my own. ;-)
Well, a month or so ago we finally got real, two-way Cox cable access at home, which means I finally have always-on internet and a relatively stable ip address. My hosting provider has graciously agreed to set up a dns entry for me that points to my home network. I’ll finally be able to run my own server from home. I cannot say how happy I am to be so close to seeing this happpen.
Now, if I can only get my router and cable modem to agree on an ip address…
My good buddy Nate got his LEGO motion-tracking robot working! The best quote: “the most important thing I’ve learned is that the physical world is still not perfect. Bummer.”
Congrats to Dave and Userland on releasing Radio Community Server 1.0. In my alternate universe, I’m going to replicate RCS in Python. Next millenium.
I came into work today, checked my app’s status, and found 3600+ deaths in the app monitor. I checked the logs files and found over 8000 (empty) log files. D’oh! I’ve got my work cut out for me today. :-(
I was lucky. Jodi works at Mac retailer and Apple Specialist Re-Mac. So Charles the tech was kind enough to spend 4 hours completely disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling my beloved TiBook. Pictures coming.
The Guardian reports on a possible EU reaction to the steel tariff Bush imposed. They’re likely to impose tariffs only on states and districts that are key to the Republicans this next election.
I’ve never thought that the steel tariffs were a good idea, but I would like to see a side-by-side comparison of European trade practices vs. US trade practices. I confess to large ignorance, so I won’t lambaste anyone yet.
So… lots going on lately, haven’t blogged a bit if it. What’s interesting? Userland and others have been building a new weblog API (xml-rpc and soap), and Userland released a new driver-based architecture for Radio Userland. Sounds interesting, but I don’t have RU, and my organization is too invested in First Class to look at other information distribution solutions.
For now this paragraph is linkless - don’t hate me, it will do you good to look it all up. -)
I posted yesterday a response to some comments by Doc Searls at SXSW. Jim responded, which prompted me to respond again. I think my response was one of my better explanations of my political leanings, so I’ve formalized it here. Seth also had some comments worth checking out.
For the time being it remains No Title, as I have no label for my own brand of neo-conservatism.
via /. - Cory Doctorow at SXSW:
There’s an amazing story about the day someone sent the first hotmail message with ‘Get your free email account at hotmail.com’ at the bottom to India. The traffic statistics the next morning, they quintupled overnight, on the strength of one email.
This makes me think of a very interesting discussion I had with a close Indian friend one day: she said that letters and correspondence are very important in Indian culture, especially in the language used and the visual formality. She said a truly relevant email interface for Indians would provide ways to send emails of varying visual and structural complexity, with digital signatures so that the sender could be instantly verified. There is a rich history of letter-writing there, and how formal or informal your letter is depends on who it’s for, your relationship to them, and many other factors.
Don’t know exactly how that ties in, but it was interesting.
Andrew Grove responds to Hollywood:
“Is it the responsibility of the world at large to protect an industry whose business model is facing a strategic challenge?” […] “Or is it up to the entertainment industry to adapt to a new technical reality and a new set of consumers who want to take advantage of it?”
Preach it brother. Remember, Jack Valenti: The customer is always right.
Peter Chernin of News Corp (same link):
“We may be stupid but we’re not idiotic. We’re not going to offer ways for people to go and loot our content.”
So don’t. Take your content and go home, and watch it be replaced overnight. Let’s see how fast you go down. You know what, Peter? I got my own news corp right here.
More from Cam at SXSW:
1:52 PM: Doc asks the audience how many have political opinions that are left of center. Most of the audience raises their hands. He then asks how many people are afraid to talk about it on their weblogs.
This is interesting to me. I would have guessed the result of Doc’s poll; the idea of being afraid because of it did not cross my mind. I would have liked to know the result of his second question. Personally, I find myself just right-of-the-middle (on most non-technology-related issues), but do not talk about it here in general. Why? Several reasons, not the least of which is getting skinned alive by the other 90% of webloggers. -)
From SXSW, Cam reports:
1:38 PM: The weblogger community will route around hate speech and bigotry online.
I wonder if that’s true. We’ve seen the Google effect when webloggers start linking to something. Someone spouts some bile - can the weblog community resist linking it? That’s my idea of routing around it. If we link it, it is soon rising in Google’s ranks, the internet equivalent of a PR victory. So yes, maybe we can route around it, but I’m not certain.
Via Dan Brickley’s RDFWeb (dev page), I found a link to this most-amazing tool for creating RDF files. RDFAuthor is a Mac OS X application that loads RDF vocabularies and lets you graphically create instances of those schema. I used it to create my new FOAF-enabled about page.
NewForge is reporting that AOL is going to switch users from IE (or their own woefully behind browser) to a browser based on Gecko, the core browser engine in Mozilla. (Mozilla being the open source browser project quasi-funded by AOL/Netscape). From the article on the switch:
“With Gecko, we have control over the client software and don’t have to worry about Microsoft screwing up our streaming [audio and video],” says one AOL sysadmin
And later:
A browser shift by AOL is going to leave an awful lot of companies that assume their Web sites only need to work with Explorer scrambling to rewrite their code so that they don’t lose AOL’s 30 million-plus subscribers…
Tinderbox is a Mac OS (Classic only for now) application that lets you manage information in a multiview graphical way; including an outline view and a very cool-looking map view. Tinderbox is also a sort of content-management system and can be used to generate HTML, XML, and syndication files (RSS feeds), as well as consume RSS feeds. As soon as the Mac OS X version comes out I’m gonna seriously check this out.
For those that need it.
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I was wondering whether Python had the concept of interfaces, like Java does, when it hit me - what I want is a search engine that will let me search using formal analogies, they way they do in the SATs back in high school. “a is to b, as c is to ?” I was really good at those, probably because I think in the abstract very well (and was destined to be a programmer -)). Anyway, I want to ask Google “Show me anything that has the same relationship to Python that Interfaces do to Java”.
Now with Google right now that might take me 7, 8, or more queries to find the right keyword to describe the relationship between Java and Interfaces, then find a page that describes something with that same keyword in proximity to Python.
Well, it just hit me - the technology already exists - I’m using it in my spare time these days. It’s called RDF, and what RDF gives me is a vocabulary to say “something SUBJECT has a relationship PREDICATE to something OBJECT”. If I have a store of information encoded this way (there are already various formats that all do the same thing more or less) I can then query that information like this:
"Java" ?x "Interfaces": Finds all the values for x.
AND "Python" ?x ?y: Finds all the values for y that are the OBJECT of a relationship x.
This is a simple (if powerful) example of what will be possible once networks like The Semplesh come online.
Jargon file, under clue-by-four:
…your editor once heard a hacker say “I smite you with the great sword Cluebringer!”
Macrobyte has released one of the core components to Conversant (which runs redmonk.net), the Attribute Search Engine. If you’re a Frontier developer, check this out. Seth has been a Frontier developer since like, the stone ages, and is Smart3.
Working on Mac OS X for the last year and a half, I’ve come to the following conclusion, again: writers of unix utilities have an interesting idea of “usability” - “Fail Hard, Fail Fast, and Fail Painfully. That way the User more quickly gains the ability to do it right.”
Has anyone worked out embedding the mozilla html editor component in a webpage, in place of the usual “textarea”? This would make a lot of webapps/webloggers wery wery happy.
Wil Wheaton in this article:
“I picked dot-net because in the original creation of the Internet, dot-com meant a commercial venture, and dot-net meant a network of people, or a personal thing or organization…”
I picked .net because .com was was taken. Hehe.
I’d never used MPW, so when I (almost accidentally) opened up one of BBEdit’s new Shell Worksheets, I was a bit perplexed as to what I was looking at. It looked like a lot of text - a document - but there were commands in there as well - and the type of document I was looking at suggested that you could do something with them. Indeed, say the instructions - put the cursor at the end of one of the lines containing a shell command, and BBEdit AutoMagically behind the scenes runs the command in a shell, and dumps the output right into your document. OMG. This is… amazing. Hm. Combine this with a command-line xmlrpc client, and strange (and frightening?) things could happen… Muahahaha -)
#I can put anything in here, notes, comments, whatever,
then put my cursor at the end of the next line and hit “enter”…
uptime
7:49PM up 2 days, 23:13, 5 users, load averages: 1.30, 1.17, 1.06
Over on John Robb’s site I made a couple quick comments regarding P2p, personal publishing, and trust among users. Read it there (toward the end of the page - no permalink sorry)
More fun with Photoshop, and a digital camera:
John Robb wants a P2P photo app:
Sharing photos is still too hard. I can send photos via e-mail or post a couple to the Web, but I can’t easily share whole albums with friends and family. What I want is a desktop content management system that lets me organize my photos into albums using a browser interface. I then would like to share these albums with friends and family using P2P.
John wants a browser app, instead I think I would want something more like iPhoto. Why have a desktop app without a desktop interface, especially with something as WYSIWYG as working with digital photography? iPhoto already has several ways to “share” your pictures - a plugin could be written for iPhoto that would P2P-enable the app. Now, that would be cool.
Jeff Archer has started a community weblog/site for Phoenix’s East Valley area (including Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Scotsdale). If you live in the East valley, check it out!
Anita Rowland linked to a page of anagrams of her name. It’s LONG. My list is very short, and the only non-nonsensical result is my actual name. If I add in the seldom used (for me) ‘n’ in Steven, I at least get “Seventy IV” and “Seventy VI”, which is kinda cool.
… but then everything will be ok. Yes, I’ve changed the L+F again on redmonk.net - I’ve been playing with a new CSS-based layout over here, and decided that I was never going to get the whole site changed over until I put it out where people would see it, therefore bugging me into fixing any bugs and making templates for the rest of the site.
So… sorry if this just trashed your view of redmonk.net. If it did, please send me a screenshot and let me know what borwser and version you are using. I apologise for not having all the support necessary for the various browsers, yet. Give me time. -)
Me and Jim on AIM, wondering why Omni’s mailing list archives never show up in Google results:
Steve: I’ve noticed google never find’s omni stuff
Steve: how do you hide from GOOGLE?
Jim:robots.txt
Jim: it sucks, but, they don’t want Google hammering their server.
Peter Merholz reviews Emergence:
As we begin to tackle woollier projects like employee-contributed intranets or peer-to-peer systems, notions of control are pretty much thrown out the window.
Note to Self: Find and read this book.
From Mark: this I want to remember.
…The monk replies, “Painting a beautiful picture is easy. First, become a beautiful person; then paint naturally.”
On the Script Meridian list, Brent expounds on his future:
Some of you have been around long enough to remember that before I worked for UserLand I was an independent developer who was active in the Frontier community. That’s the role to which I’ll return. So I’m not disappearing or anything like that. In fact, my plan is to participate more in the ScriptMeridian community and help turn it into a great resource for developers, users, and for UserLand. I totally dig the energy on this list lately, and I want to help organize it and keep it going. -Brent
Awesome! Thanks Brent!
Scripting News: Brent Simmons is leaving Userland, for parts unknown. Thanks Brent for years of awesome software, and for being a great guy! (that part’s not going to change. ;-)) Look forward to seeing you around the ‘net!
