posts brought to you by the category “history”
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.
Ponie is a version of Perl 5 that will run on Parrot.
To the naked eye that sentence is almost as
incomprehensible as an RDF statement...
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Michael Accardo : Win32::Wallpaper.pm
Just yesterday, in the throes of hunger I
was staring at the default OS X screensaver that displays pictures of
planets wondering how hard it would be to write a screensaver that
sucked down random pictures from the
NASA site
(s). Windows weenies, go nuts.
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Kate L. Pugh : OpenGuides
The OpenGuides software provides the framework for a collaboratively-written city guide. It is similar to a wiki but provides somewhat more structured data storage allowing you to annotate wiki pages with information such as category, location, and much more. It provides searching facilities including "find me everything within a certain distance of this place". Every page includes a link to a machine-readable (RDF) version of the page.
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I've been thinking about wearing suits, these days.
But I think it's probably just an
ill-considered coping mechanism to deal with what's been an otherwise
lame month, driving behind a high-end S.U.V. that had a "New York State
Terrorist Hunting Permit" sticker and going to a bookstore with a
karaoke machine in full effect...
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Tim Bray : I want to have my idiomatic regexp cake and eat my well-formed XML goodness too.
I'm not really sure what's going on here
but I think it has something to do with tea
and weblogs and aggregators and, doubtless, some way for Amazon and
eBay to notify you about
stuff like this
. via
themes, dreams and
crazy schemes
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Washington Post : Google Introduces Human-Less News
Did I mention that I was going to Cambodia for three weeks, today?
If my mother has a USB port on her computer
(I never thought to ask) I will post pictures from time to time. Ciao,
you!
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : derflamminloggin
This is my husband's name for those pseudo-logs that you can burn in the fireplace.
ex. Honey, it's kind of cold out. Do you want to burn derflamminloggin in the fireplace tonight?
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : recombobulate
To repair something that is broken or in some other way discombobulated
ex. Our strategy is completely discombobulated.. it's time we recombobulate.
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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.
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : insomnism
The belief that when world leaders give up sleeping, the world will become a peaceful place--because people will spend their time talking and solving problems rather than wasting their time sleeping.
ex. I am a follower of insomnism.
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : the dog's
"The dog's bollocks," meaning the very best. British Slang.
ex. Did you see Dave's new car? It's the dog's.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : lachrymose
Lachrymose \Lach"ry*mose`\, a. [L. lacrymosus, better lacrimosus, fr. lacrima, lacruma (also badly spelt lachryma) a tear, for older dacrima, akin to E. tear. See {Tear} the secretion.] Generating or shedding tears; given to shedding tears; suffused with tears; tearful. You should have seen his lachrymose visnomy. --Lamb. -- {Lach"ry*mose`ly}, adv. web1913
lachrymose adj : showing sorrow [syn: {dolorous}, {dolourous}, {tearful}, {weeping}] wn
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : prolix
Prolix \Pro*lix"\ (?; 277), a. [L. prolixus extended, long, prolix, probably fr. pro before, forward + liqui to flow, akin to liquidus liquid; cf. OL. lixa water: cf. F. prolixe. See {Liquid}.] 1. Extending to a great length; unnecessarily long; minute in narration or argument; excessively particular in detail; -- rarely used except with reference to discourse written or spoken; as, a prolix oration; a prolix poem; a prolix sermon. With wig prolix, down flowing to his waist. --Cowper. 2. Indulging in protracted discourse; tedious; wearisome; -- applied to a speaker or writer. Syn: Long; diffuse; prolonged; protracted; tedious; tiresome; wearisome. Usage: {Prolix}, {Diffuse}. A prolix writer delights in circumlocution, extended detail, and trifling particulars. A diffuse writer is fond of amplifying, and abounds in epithets, figures, and illustrations. Diffuseness often arises from an exuberance of imagination; prolixity is generally connected with a want of it. web1913
prolix adj : tediously prolonged or tending to speak or write at great length; "editing a prolix manuscript"; "a prolix lecturer telling you more than you want to know" [ant: {concise}] wn
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Dave, it's not hard to think about a site that uses "all the latest and greatest technology
but [has] nothing to say" as a kind of
weblog with plenty to say (for the sake of argument, we'll assume that
we're talking about client-side, view-source-able magic) *about* the
latest and greatest technology.
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Mark Hershberger : Myblogger.el
"is based on Simon Kittle's blogger.el, but where
his code calls a Perl program, this code uses xml-rpc.el. As of this
writing, my mods to xml-rpc.el are needed to add support for boolean
types."
mmmm...
HTTPS
. What's especially cool about this, for me, is that the code will
probably be enough of an example/guide/bootstrap to do all kinds of fun
stuff in Emacs! via
scripting news
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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}]
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Steve Ball : The XSLT Standard Library 1.0
"provides the XSLT developer with a set of XSLT
templates for commonly used functions. These are implemented purely in
XSLT, that is they do not use any extensions."
I didn't know that there were
DocBook
Extensions For XSLT Stylesheet Documentation
. How cool is that? <!-- tags, begone! -->
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Dubya : "You know, if you find a person that you've never seen before
getting in a crop-duster that doesn't belong to
you, report it. ... I mean, people need to be logical."
Words to live by.
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Philip Hunter : The Management of Content - Universities and the Electronic Publishing Revolution.
"In other words, whatever publishing model
underlies the development and maintenance of large scalable Web services
in the Higher Education sector, it isn't fully realised in the technology
used to deliver the services. Much of what is delivered via the Web still
involves a good deal of manual activity. This half-way house position
isn't a place where Web Managers and Editors want to be. So it is quite
odd that this is where we are, among a community which has been so
intimately involved in the early development of the Web."
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is clerisy
| source : web1913 | Clerisy \Cler"i*sy\, n. [LL.
clericia. See {Clergy}.] 1. The literati, or well educated class. 2. The
clergy, or their opinions, as opposed to the laity. | source : wn |
clerisy n : an educated and intellectual elite [syn: {intelligentsia}]
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is grandiloquent
| source : web1913 | Grandiloquent
\Gran*dil"o*quent\, a. [L. grandis grand + logui to speak.] Speaking in a
lofty style; pompous; bombastic. | source : wn | grandiloquent adj 1:
lofty in style; "he engages in so much tall talk, one never really
realizes what he is saying" [syn: {magniloquent}, {tall}] 2: puffed up
with vanity; "a grandiloquent and boastful manner"; "overblown oratory";
"a pompous speech"; "pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical
hooey"- Newsweek [syn: {overblown}, {pompous}, {pontifical},
{portentous}]
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is filial
| source : web1913 | Filial \Fil"ial\, a. [L.
filialis, fr. filius son, filia daughter; akin to e. female, feminine.
Cf. {Fitz}.] 1. Of or pertaining to a son or daughter; becoming to a
child in relation to his parents; as, filial obedience. 2. Bearing the
relation of a child. And thus the filial Godhead answering spoke.
--Milton. | source : wn | filial adj 1: (genetics) designating the
generation or the sequence of generations following the parental
generation [ant: {parental}] 2: relating to or characteristic of or
befitting an offspring; "filial respect" [ant: {parental}]
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is oblation
| source : web1913 | Oblation \Ob*la"tion\, n.
[L. oblatio: cf. F. oblation. See {Oblate}.] 1. The act of offering, or
of making an offering. --Locke. 2. Anything offered or presented in
worship or sacred service; an offering; a sacrifice. A peculiar . . .
oblation given to God. --Jer. Taylor. A pin was the usual oblation.
--Sir. W. Scott. 3. A gift or contribution made to a church, as for the
expenses of the eucharist, or for the support of the clergy and the poor.
| source : wn | oblation n 1: the act of contributing to the funds of a
church or charity; "oblations for aid to the poor" [syn: {offering}] 2:
the act of offering the bread and wine of the Eucharist [syn: {Oblation},
{religious offering}]
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is bucolic
| source : web1913 | Bucolic \Bu*col"ic\, n. [L.
Bucolic[^o]n po["e]ma.] A pastoral poem, representing rural affairs, and
the life, manners, and occupation of shepherds; as, the Bucolics of
Theocritus and Virgil. --Dryden. | source : web1913 | Bucolic
\Bu*col"ic\, a. [L. bucolicus, Gr. ?, fr. ? cowherd, herdsman; ? ox +
(perh.) ? race horse; cf. Skr. kal to drive: cf. F. bucolique. See {Cow}
the animal.] Of or pertaining to the life and occupation of a shepherd;
pastoral; rustic. | source : wn | bucolic adj 1: used of idealized
country life; "a country life of arcadian contentment"; "a pleasant
bucolic scene"; "charming in its pastoral setting"; "rustic tranquility"
[syn: {arcadian}, {pastoral}, {rustic}] 2: relating to shepherds or
herdsmen or devoted to raising sheep or cattle; "pastoral seminomadic
people"; "pastoral land"; "a pastoral economy" [syn: {pastoral}] n 1: a
country person [syn: {peasant}, {provincial}] 2: a short descriptive poem
of rural or pastoral life [syn: {eclogue}, {idyll}]
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Would you buy food from this guy?
The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is bevy
| source : web1913 | Bevy \Bev"y\, n.; pl.
{Bevies}. [Perhaps orig. a drinking company, fr. OF. bev['e]e (cf. It.
beva) a drink, beverage; then, perh., a company in general, esp. of
ladies; and last applied by sportsmen to larks, quails, etc. See
{Beverage}.] 1. A company; an assembly or collection of persons,
especially of ladies. What a bevy of beaten slaves have we here ! --Beau.
& Fl. 2. A flock of birds, especially quails or larks; also, a herd
of roes. | source : wn | bevy n 1: a group of girls or young women 2: a
flock of quail
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is ignoble
| source : web1913 | Ignoble \Ig*no"ble\, v. t.
To make ignoble. [Obs.] --Bacon. | source : web1913 | Ignoble
\Ig*no"ble\, a. [L. ignobilis; pref. in- not + nobilis noble: cf. F.
ignoble. See {In-} not, and {Noble}, a.] 1. Of low birth or family; not
noble; not illustrious; plebeian; common; humble. I was not ignoble of
descent. --Shak. Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants. --Shak. 2.
Not honorable, elevated, or generous; base. 'T but a base, ignoble mind,
That mounts no higher than a bird can soar. --Shak. Far from the madding
crowd's ignoble strife. --Gray. 3. (Zo["o]l.) Not a true or noble falcon;
-- said of certain hawks, as the goshawk. Syn: Degenerate; degraded;
mean; base; dishonorable; reproachful; disgraceful; shameful; scandalous;
infamous. | source : wn | ignoble adj 1: completely lacking nobility in
character or quality or purpose; "something cowardly and ignoble in his
attitude"; "I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than
that the government should play an ignoble part"- Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr. [ant: {noble}] 2: not of the nobility; "of ignoble (or ungentle)
birth"; "untitled civilians" [syn: {ungentle}, {untitled}]
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Peter Swanson : Maus Culture
"As I survey the new landscape of adult
comics—and much as I admire the achievements of Spiegelman, Sacco,
and the rest—I nevertheless hope there is still room for comic
books about mutant vigilantes."
With the possible exception of
Cerebus
, superhero comics always have the best sound effects. Chud!
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A bit of unsolicited advice to all those who are keen on billing for online content.
I'd better not have to read it on a
computer if you want me to pay for it. Do yourself a favour and make
sure that everything you publish comes in three flavours : whatever
koolaid the design weirdos happen to be drinking, plain old text for
plain old printing and plain old xml for me to custom roll a morning
paper to take to it a cafe. We've had three to five years, depending on
how you're counting, to spin the idea of self as a crack-addled
speed-freak doing everything on a shiny, beeping, glowing piece of
plastic and no one but the gadget-whores really bought it. If we're all
suddenly going to have to pay for everything we read online, you can be
pretty sure we're also going to want to be able to read it offline and
at our leisure too. Just remember that all bets are off when you start
charging people money for stuff.
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Elizabeth Hayt : Modern Art as Spectacle - That's Entertainment!
"Ambitious art wants to have the same impact as
Tom Ford's Gucci ads and Steven Meisel's Versace ads. Glamour was once
regarded as a superficial aesthetic, but now it's a powerful aesthetic.
Almost 35 years ago, the French theorist Guy Debord described our age as
the 'society of the spectacle.' Now spectacles have become the art of our
society."
<sigh />
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Paul Kulchenko : Quick Start with SOAP::Lite
The Meerkat Product
"gives access to the Meerkat's XML-RPC API and
allows the placement of news items in any Zope document."
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Adbusters : Chris Woods Art Gallery
I had no idea you could do that with french
fries. Beautiful!
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Marc St-Maurice, leader of the Marijuana Party :
"I'm just waiting for Jean Chrétien to drop the
writ and call a by-election, then I'm off to Okanagan-Coquihalla to go
mano a mano with Stockwell Day. We're putting marijuana on top of the
agenda and I'm itching for a debate."
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Robert J. Lurtsema : 1931 - 2000
Python for the PalmOS
Cool! Watch as Perl weenies, the world over,
gnash their teeth in silent simmering respect. via
inessential
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Things I learned during The Big Move 1.5
Coloured-coded boxes are definitely in order for
The Big Move 2.0
monday morning
: Put the coffee grinder in its own box and cover it with gold stars.
<ack! />
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mmmm....Wozzle
Can someone tell me
The free BeOS Personal Edition
is supposed to avaliable for downloading today!
The
information
and download page
says it will be available at 11h00 EST.
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Apparently this is
a sign in botany for plants with life cycles of many years, which are
not bush-like.
but I just keep seeing a telephone pole and sickle.
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Last night
I had drinks with some of the
Montreal Perl Mongers
and started learning how to speak Perl in French.
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Lydia Lee : Friends don't let friends use AOL
The last line says it all, but AOL still sucks.
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Ethernet question
Can anyone recommend a good ethernet card with
drivers for the Mac, Windows *and* xBSD?
send me mail
.
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NY Times
"Such is life in the liver wars. At a time when
human organs, particularly livers, are in short supply, the skirmish in
Iowa provides a window into a national feud over the Clinton
administration's plan to require that donated hearts, lungs, livers,
kidneys and pancreases go to the sickest patients first, rather than
those who live closest to the organ donors. The debate polarized Congress
at the end of its last session and is expected to resume when the
lawmakers return in January." I took a philosophy class on reason ( I
quickly dubbed it "Teaching artists to be reasonable") where we read a
couple of pieces by John Harris. He is a master as making perfectly
reasonable and compelling arguments for things that would otherwise never
agree to. Specifically, the idea of killing one healthly person to
service two in need to life-saving organ transplants. It was enlightening
and terrifying to see where people's arguments against the practice would
break down in to sputters of "yeah...but...but..."
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CineRoute
"The National Film Board of Canada is proud to
present CineRoute, a pilot project to make a vast selection of the films
in its collection available by request over the Internet. ...students and
instructors at the college level, students and professors at the
university level, and those working at Canadian research centres
connected to the Ca*Net 2 Internet network can now view full-screen
versions of a selection of 800 NFB films, on-line and free of charge."
Cool!
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Jeffrey Zeldman : The Day the Browser Died 2, The Resurrection?
"Say that pizza is tasty, that Doctor Pepper is
refreshing, that salad is healthy, and that a misty day can be romantic
and lovely. Say that each of these things, on its own, brings joy to
life. Now imagine that if you eat pizza and salad on a misty day, and
wash it down with a glass of Doctor Pepper, you will die." These are
things I wonder about, every morning, as I sit down to face the
Information Revolution.
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Happy belated birthday to Bump
(and thanks)
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Globe and Mail : Chrétien considering gamble on referendum law
Let me tell you a story: During the last
referendum campaign, I was studying in
Toronto
. At the start of the debate, I had no questions about voting No. Because
I was living out of province, I had to vote 2 weeks early and I wish that
I hadn't because by the day of the vote I wasn't so sure of my decision.
Okay, it's unlikely that I would ever vote for a pig as insolent and
arrogant as Jacques Parizeau, but after two months of listening the The
Rest of Canada's take on the sovereignty debate I had real questions
about who I wanted to live with. Two months of moaning about "my" country
being destroyed and, mean-spirited discussion of sticking it to Quebec
and finally the brain-dead, self congratulatory
love-in
without a word towards any of the legitimate greivances led to the
sovereignty movement. It was like trying to talk to a child in the middle
of a temper tantrum. I would still have voted no --I like to think Canada
mostly works, most of the time, for most of the people-- but I went home
on the night of the vote and, like many others, I will stay in Montreal
if Quebec chooses to secede.
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Globe & Mail : UVic refuses to honour Bill Gates
"[Other] senators took issue with a 1998
Microsoft deal that offered professors $200 if they mentioned -- or used
-- Microsoft programming tools in a scholarly presentation." One of the
arguments that keeps coming up in conversations like this is : Well, how
else are we supposed to pay for education? It's called taxation, folks.
Of the people, by the people, for the people. The practice may be broken,
for sure, but I would argue the premise remains sound.
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Richard Martineau : La barbarie à visage humain
"...[Lafond] interroge le rôle des médias à l'ère
des génocides organisés. À quoi sert un réseau comme CNN s'il ne peut
stopper les massacres? Vaut-il mieux fermer notre télé? L'aide
humanitaire est-elle en train de devenir un spectacle?"
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HOWTO : Inflate the value of your art collection
What is surfmenu?
"A few people said they wanted something that
married the floating-window aspect of peterme's
peterme surf list
with the ability to add or remove logs that you get with
my userland
." see also :
Where's the damn weblog list?
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Grappa
Friends are great, but friends are better when
they enjoy drinking grappa with you. A word of advice to those who still
play drinking games: grappa should never ever be your weapon of choice
unless you are supremely confident of victory. (I speak from experience,
having weathered a particularly ugly and painful defeat at the hands of a
backgammon wizard.) It does, however, make for <a href =
"http://aaronland.net/weblog/grappa_cake.shtml">excellent
chocolate cake</a>.
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How to submit words to the Oxford English Dictionary
"We need readers' help to find printed evidence
of new words from magazines, newspapers, books, song lyrics, practical
manuals - indeed from any published source. Slang and dialect words are
also collected."
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MOSR on MacOS X Developer Preview 1
Bless them for their enthusiasm, but take it with
a grain of salt.
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Professor Rusi Taleyarkhan
"I've always been a huge fan of Star Trek and
wanted to see if the knowledge I have of energy systems could make a gun
that a police officer could set to stun, just like Captain Kirk does."
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wtf?
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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