posts brought to you by the category “getting the
web”
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.
This was the day that I started thinking, longingly, about
snow.
Colosseo, Roma, August 2003
Doron Rosenberg : The XSLT/JavaScript Interface In Gecko
The perlblog sticks it's head up and asks if it's spring...
The Connection : Extra Chairs at the Table
The General Assembly has long talked about Security Council
reform, and now voices around the world are joining the call for
change. Germany and Japan have long been considered the most likely
pledges to join the fraternity, but now India, the world's largest
democracy, is looking like a top contender. However, Russia, China,
France, Britain, and the US still wield the real muscle; the veto,
and anyone looking to sit with the grown-ups needs their unanimous
sanction.
Me : rels-to-unordered-lists.xsl 1.0
This stylesheet defines a single public template named ListAllRels
which will create one, or more, unordered lists based on the
<link> element in the source document.
Dispatches on an amazing project to set computers free and see what
happens
Cyberspace comes to the last place on earth you'd expect to find it.
In the slums of New Delhi, computers bolted into holes in the wall
enable children to teach themselves.
real audio
From the "But, designers *want* you to judge a book by its cover"
Department :
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : tortuous
Tortuous \Tor"tu*ous\, a. [OE. tortuos, L. tortuosus, fr.
tortus a twisting, winding, fr. torquere, tortum, to twist: cf. F.
tortueux. See Torture.] 1. Bent in different directions; wreathed;
twisted; winding; as, a tortuous train; a tortuous train; a tortuous
leaf or corolla. The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side
of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. --Macaulay. 2. Fig.:
Deviating from rectitude; indirect; erroneous; deceitful. That course
became somewhat lesstortuous, when the battle of the Boyne had cowed
the spirit of the Jakobites. --Macaulay. 3. Injurious: tortious. [Obs.]
4. (Astrol.) Oblique; -- applied to the six signs of the zodiac (from
Capricorn to Gemini) which ascend most rapidly and obliquely. [Obs.]
--Skeat. Infortunate ascendent tortuous. --Chaucer. --{Tor"tu*ous*ly},
adv. -- {Tor"tu*ous*ness}, n.
web1913
tortuous adj 1: highly involved or intricate; "the
Byzantine tax structure"; "convoluted legal language"; "convoluted
reasoning"; "intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined
phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty problem"; "got his
way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh, what a tangled web we weave"-
Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations
lasting for months" [syn: {Byzantine}, {convoluted}, {intricate},
{involved}, {knotty}, {labyrinthine}, {tangled}] 2: marked by repeated
turns and bends; "a tortuous road up the mountain"; "winding roads are
full of surprises"; "had to steer the car down a twisty track" [syn:
{twisting}, {twisty}, {winding}] 3: not straightforward; "his tortuous
reasoning"
wn
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : schwaked
chair
A chair with uneven legs. When you sit in one, you rock
from side to side
ex. "I really hate this schwaked chair!"
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : abscond
Abscond \Ab*scond"\, v. t. To hide; to conceal. [Obs.]
--Bentley.
web1913
abscond v : run away; usually includes taking something or
somebody along [syn: {bolt}, {absquatulate}, {decamp}, {run off}, {go
off}]
wn
ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with
the property of another. Spring beckons! All things to the call
respond; The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond. Phela Orm
devils
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : arrogate
Arrogate \Ar"ro*gate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Arrogated};
p. pr. & vb. n. {Arrogating}.] [L. arrogatus, p. p. of adrogare,
arrogare, to ask, appropriate to one's self; ad + rogare to ask. See
{Rogation}.] To assume, or claim as one's own, unduly, proudly, or
presumptuously; to make undue claims to, from vanity or baseless
pretensions to right or merit; as, the pope arrogated dominion over
kings. He arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what
was orthodox doctrine. --Macaulay.
web1913
arrogate v 1: demand as being one's due or property; assert
one's right or title to: "He claimed his suitcases at the airline
counter"; "Mr. Smith claims special tax exemptions because he is a
foreign resident" [syn: {claim}, {lay claim}] [ant: {forfeit}] 2: make
undue claims to having [syn: {ascribe}, {assign}] 3: take control of;
take as one's right or possession; "He assumed to himself the right to
fill all positions in the town"; "he usurped my rights" [syn: {assume},
{usurp}, {take over}]
wn
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa : PHP::Session.pm
"provides a way to read / write PHP4 session
files, with which you can make your Perl applicatiion session shared with
PHP4."
The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is :
wwwzipitdotcom!
Shut your mouth!
ex. Hey! Wwwzipitdotcom! You are being rude!
The Art of Eating Quarterly
chromatic : Slash's Wiki Plugin
"In theory, any Web application could be
reimplemented as a Slash plugin. In practice, it's not terribly difficult
to write something useful."
Libby Miller : A walk through an RSS 1.0 calendar
"My feeling is that for iCalendar in RDF to be
usable, a huge file describing every aspect of it is not what's needed.
Instead I've started to split it up into smallers parts, starting with
the properties and classes I've used most often when trying to describe
meetings, conferences and so on - I've called this the 'core' set."
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is paean
| source : web1913 | Paean \P[ae]"an\ (p[=e]`an),
n. [L. paean, Gr. paia`n, fr. Paia`n the physician of the gods, later,
Apollo. Cf. {P[ae]on}, {Peony}.] [Written also {pean}.] 1. An ancient
Greek hymn in honor of Apollo as a healing deity, and, later, a song
addressed to other deities. 2. Any loud and joyous song; a song of
triumph. --Dryden. ``Public p[ae]ans of congratulation.'' --De Quincey.
3. See {P[ae]on}. | source : web1913 | Paeon \P[ae]"on\ (p[=e]"[o^]n), n.
[L. paeon, Gr. paiw`n a solemn song, also, a p[ae]on, equiv. to paia`n.
See {P[ae]an}.] (Anc. Poet.) A foot of four syllables, one long and three
short, admitting of four combinations, according to the place of the long
syllable. [Written also, less correctly, {p[ae]an}.] | source : wn |
paean n 1: a formal expression of praise [syn: {encomium}, {eulogy},
{panegyric}, {pean}] 2: a hymn of praise (especially one sung in ancient
Greece to invoke or thank a deity) [syn: {pean}]
Matt Sergeant : 50-second XPath Primer
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is wiseacre
| source : web1913 | Wiseacre \Wise"a*cre\, n.
[OD. wijssegger or G. weissager a foreteller, prophet, from weissagen to
foretell, to prophesy, OHG. w[=i]ssag?n, corrupted (as if compounded of
the words for wise and say) fr. w[=i]zzag?n, fr. w[=i]zzag? a prophet,
akin to AS. w[=i]tiga, w[=i]tga, from the root of E. wit. See {Wit}, v.]
1. A learned or wise man. [Obs.] Pythagoras learned much . . . becoming a
mighty wiseacre. --Leland. 2. One who makes undue pretensions to wisdom;
a would-be-wise person; hence, in contempt, a simpleton; a dunce. |
source : wn | wiseacre n : an upstart who makes conceited, sardonic,
insolent comments [syn: {wise guy}, {smart aleck}, {wisenheimer},
{weisenheimer}]
Gerald Richter : Overview of mod_perl 2.0
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is agon
| source : web1913 | Agon \Ag"on\, n.; pl.
{Agones}. [Gr. ?, fr. ? to lead.] (Gr. Antiq.) A contest for a prize at
the public games.
Jamie Zawinski : DNA Lounge Source Code
"Since we're running a rather high-tech club
here, I've written a bunch of software to keep it all running. And we're
giving it away: here it is! Perhaps you'll find it useful."
The Pseudodictionary, Dict-ified
Jon Udell : A Zope Spreadsheet Generator
"Perl, Python, And DTML Working Together"
W3C : Common User Agent Problems
"explains some common mistakes in user agents due
to incorrect or incomplete implementation of specifications, and suggests
remedies. It also suggests some "good behavior" where specifications
themselves do not specify any particular behavior (e.g., in the face of
error conditions). This document is not a complete set of guidelines for
good user agent behavior."
Scott McLemee : I Am a Camera
"Whatever its implications for the study of
celebrity (or narcissism, for that matter), Webcam broadcasting defies
the usual categories applied to the media. Cinematic theory has dealt
exhaustively with the question of how the "gaze" operates in film. And in
television studies, researchers refer to the "glance," in keeping with
Raymond Williams's observation that television often serves as the
background to ordinary life (something you leave on and look at while
doing other things). Alluding to these notions but tweaking them a bit,
Senft suggests that the relevant term for Webcam watching is "grab": The
bored viewer will "grab" a quick look at another individual's
no-longer-private life. With its aggressive and almost tactile
connotations, the "grab," according to Senft, carries suggestive
overtones of life under late phallocentric capitalism. After all, "grab"
is something a sexual harasser does to an ass. But "grab" is also what a
hurried consumer does to the Extreme Taco Meal Deal at a fast-food
restaurant."
Oliver Travers : Recently I backed up my online bookmarks...
Wherein the author cautions ASPs that they really
ought to offer one-click backups for their customers. I got here via a
link to
Favorites::Convert
in my referer logs. The combination of navel-gazing and the topic at hand
made me think that bookmark-ish files would make an interesting
distribution format for weblogs. If I were
the
prototypical neurosurgeon
that Cameron wrote about a thousand years ago, I think it would be pretty
cool to download a neurosurgery archive and simply add it to my bookmarks
collection and get on with the day. It is, I think, the only time I've
ever seen the merit in Microsoft's decision to use filesystem based
bookmarks, rather than a single text file, because I can add and remove
items in discreet actions without doing anything programatically and/or
offering up my bookmarks for third-party viewing. On the other hand,
since there is an
XML-RPC client for Mozilla
you could conceivably offer a similar service, using XUL(?), a la
Meerkat
. Eeen-teresting....
Peter Y. Sussman : How stupid can an e-mail program be?
"Words become offensive by the nature of the
attention that is paid to them. When a corporation tacks a chili onto
this or that word in an e-mail message or builds a software barrier
around a word on a Web site, it invites writers and readers to consider
the word one-dimensionally, with only the meaning and intent that the
corporation has interpreted as offensive."
bibelot.pl
"is a Perl script that formats and converts text
documents into compressed PalmDoc .pdb files, suitable for reading on a
Palm or Handspring device with any standard PalmDoc reader. It was
written primarily for formatting book files from the Project Gutenberg,
but works well for most text files."
Jacob Weisberg : The Complete Bushisms
"When I'm talking about—when I'm talking
about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking
about me." Updated weekly, in case you're looking for a reason to laugh
or cry....
Rex Jakobovits : WIRM, A Perl-Based Application Server
"Perhaps the people who make application servers
consider Perl's lack of strict type-checking a liability for large
applications. Perl is "just a scripting language," they say, best used
for quick-and-dirty programming. But experience shows that Web
information systems are best built using such small, freestanding
components, each of which encapsulates a limited chunk of user
interaction. Clearly, Perl fits the bill in this regard." Meanwhile,
Randal Schwartz has
rewritten png2html in Perl
which is cool since I could never get
the
original C program
to do anything but dump core....
PHPBuilder : Browser Detection and Appropriate CSS Generation
"Whoever said CSS would solve all your
cross-platform browser display issues needs to lay off the pipe a
little."
Guy Gilbert
"Isolée dans son geste, la Sûreté du Québec a
pris sur elle-même de résoudre la question sociale qui se posait à Oka,
une confrontation entre autochtones et une municipalité, une situation
juridique complexe, un dossier d'un cadre historique de plus de 250 ans.
À elle seule, la Sûreté du Québec ne disposait pas de tout l'éclairage
nécessaire pour une décision sage en de telles circonstances. Seule
aurait pu suppléer à une telle carence une réflexion collégiale et
polyvalente."
Jonas Liljegren : CGI::Debug.pm
"will catch (almost) all compilation and runtime
errors and warnings and will display them in the browser." Nice.
Kudos to the Deepleap gang
for saying things like "Unix is the platform that
Deepleap runs the best on. Bet you've never heard anyone say that
before!"
NY Times : Nuclear Anxieties in a New World
I remember very clearly listening to
Ideas
one night during the year that the Berlin Wall came down. The narrator
was reflecting on the fact that suddenly he could imagine living beyond
the short-term; that the possibility of a life fulfilled was real and
possible. This struck me because, much like the speaker, I had spent most
of the 80's listening to loud music, smoking bad hash and waiting for
some butthead to push the button. see also :
Ideas :
Berlin, Memories and Memorials
(real audio)
The Triumph of Narrative : Storytelling in the Age of Mass
Culture
by Robert Fulford, as part of the 1999 Massey
Lecture series. Webcast tonight at 20h00 EDT or
22h00
EDT depending on which webpage you're looking at.
Dan Shafer : The Truth About XML
William Safire : Manichaean Madness
"If public museums win in Federal court the right
to offend egregiously without being punished by losing their subsidies,
they will lose their subsidies beforehand. The art world is thoughtlessly
flirting with a democratic public's pre-emptive censorship." Well, that's
about as telling a comment on the idea of publicly funding the arts as
you can get these days, isn't it?
Jason Kottke : Silkscreen
"I'm a big fan of small, bitmappy fonts. I've
been using a font called Sevenet (derived from Joe Gillespie's excellent
Mini7) for a while now, but I didn't quite like the look of it...too
wide. I wanted a font that was narrower and included a bold version."
mmmmm...fonts.
What is the panic encyclopedia?
"It's a frenzied scene of post-facts for the
fin-de-millenium. Here, even the alphabet implodes under the twin
pressures of the ecstasy of catastrophe and the anxiety of fear. From
panic art, panic astronomy, panic babies and panic (shopping) malls to
panic sex, panic perfect faces and panic victims, that is the post-modern
alphabet. Not then an alphabetic listing of empirical facts about the
modern condition, but a post-alphabetic description of the actual
dissolution of facts into the flash of thermonuclear cultural "events" in
the postmodern situation." Courtesy the
Way New
Leftists
.
Dave Winer
"The message that Microsoft hears: 'We have no
say in what you do, so we thought we'd show you many of us there are.' "
Well...yeah. And if Microsoft would stop dicking around and release the
standards compliant browser they're obviously capable of writing, all
those people would stand up and cheer.
If Mr. Bill were French
Larry Wall
"These days it's popular to demonize Microsoft,
but I think of Microsoft more as a spoiled child with a tendency to be a
bully. Yes, they need to be disciplined, but they also need to be praised
when they do something right. That might be more important in the long
run than any amount of spanking."
The World on Djelem
"Bienvenue a Montreal." real audio.
Department of Discretionary Data
"Another in our occasional series of fascinating
data that washes up off the Internet."
Voix d'extinction?
The imperiled anglophone community in Quebec.
Yeah...that's a good one. The article points out that most people leave
the province largely because they're too freaked out to learn how to
write French properly.
Comics 1 - Fine Arts 0
The blurb at
memepool
read "...this site questions the value society places upon fine art vs.
comics in a very persuasive manner..." and I didn't know whether to
expect
The Comics Journal
or the arts vs. craft debate. Far from either, it goes a long way towards
supporting the claim that both comic books and Old Master paintings are
nothing more than vehicles for the oft talked about "male voyeuristic
gaze." Please, comics deserve better.
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
-
it's the software, stupid
Use the source, Luke.
