posts brought to you by the category “docbook”
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.
Mark A. Hershberger : XPath to Elisp
Lin, Yung-Chung : PerlIO::via::Babelfish.pm
You know, in case you needed a reason to
upgrade to 5.8
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Ed Bilodeau : Regarding the lack of RSS.
RDF weenies are probably clutching their
sides in pain but we're gonna make Ed bigger than the bicycle-girl
meme...
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I wonder if this server signature means that TypePad isn't using mod_perl at all...
Apache/2.0.46 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.46 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 Server
at firstpost.typepad.com Port 80
...or just that there are separate hosts for the posting interface and
the static files. I'm not sure how they'll cope with the volume if they
have to start a copy of the Perl interpreter every single time some one
wants to post something, never mind stuff like uploading and scaling
images.
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Andrew Gilligan : "I want to talk to you about my favourite Saddam statues."
refers to
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Ulf Jasper : "Here's a package for importing simple icalendar events into Emacs diary."
Possible weblog-hack for people who are comfortable with the idea that the chronologically ordered posts are fundamental to the Idea of Weblog. I have always thought that this is a crock and that it is more a function (warning: medium is the message citation ahead) of the technical considerations undertaken by any given tool's developer.Please note that this is a pre-alpha snapshot trial demo test version. It should work correctly on ordinary, i.e. non-recurring, events.
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Me : Net::Google.pm 0.60_02
This, save for some changes to the POD, has
already been blessed as version 0.60 in the CVS repository and will be
sent off to the CPAN later today. I guess I have to add
http_proxy
-ing hooks to Net::Blogger now too...
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Maybe someone will write a WSDL file for the Blogger API, now.
That's all you'll hear from me on the
subject until I figure out how to combine
Net::Google
and
Net::Blogger
and create that weird little monster from the
pkd
short story; the one where the guy invents a machine to "preserve" all
the world's classical music as living creatures that can mate and
reproduce. It ends as an experiment in Darwinianism gone bad, with the
Beethoven thingy killing all the other pieces of music. Then
I will
pass it off as Art
and my work will be done.
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Me : ASCOPE::IDP.pm 1.0
The plan was to work on the weblog software
this afternoon but then
Kellan
and I got our signals crossed on the word
boîte
and I eventually rediscovered the
Internet
Dictionary Project
and, well, you know the rest... see also :
docs
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Leon Brocard talks about Data::Pageset.pm
Arundhati Roy : Not Again
Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being defined as "terrorism". Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the war against terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the American way of life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
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Angela Lewis : Hoax E-mails and Bonsai Kittens: Are You E-literate in the Docuverse?
Our social mantra is very much 'is Internet, is good', and our logic is often placed around a misguided belief that if the information was found on the 'Net, then it must be good'.
This paper discusses the importance of not only having the skills of computer literacy, that is defined as being able to use computers and software to navigate the Internet, but also the importance of information literacy, defined as the skill of being critically literate.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : peregrination
Peregrination \Per`e*gri*na"tion\, n. [L. peregrinatio: cf. F. p['e]r['e]grination.] A traveling from one country to another; a wandering; sojourn in foreign countries. ``His peregrination abroad.'' --Bacon. web1913
peregrination n : travel (especially by foot) wn
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : wuppie
The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : ameliorate
Ameliorate \A*mel"io*rate\, v. i. To grow better; to meliorate; as, wine ameliorates by age. web1913
ameliorate v 1: to make better; "The editor improved the manuscript with his changes" [syn: {better}, {improve}, {amend}, {meliorate}] [ant: {worsen}] 2: get better; "The weather improved toward evening." [syn: {better}, {improve}, {meliorate}] [ant: {worsen}] wn
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : rapine
Rapine \Rap"ine\, v. t. To plunder. --Sir G. Buck. web1913
rapine n : the act of despoiling a country in warfare [syn: {rape}] wn
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : wooza
Weird loser--used jokingly around friends.
ex. Stop being a wooza. When you stick cheeze up your nose I fear for your furure.
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : jsssk
Just Kidding. Usually follows an insult made in jest towards a friend or something stupid that one may say.
ex. Ernie: (to Bert) You are such a loser. Jssk.OR Ernie: I am the greatest basketball player ever. Jssk.
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : spoonerism
spoonerism n : transposition of initial consonants in a pair of words wn
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Taegan Goddard : " Amazon.com is now offering XML feeds for their associates to use."
Philip A. Mansfield :Using XSLT to Generate SVG
Following the resources listed, I also
found :J.M. Vanel's
XSLT transforms library
, Oliver Becker's
XML to HTML Verbatim Formatter
and Muhammad Athar Parvez's
Calendar
stylesheets.
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Me : Blogger.pm 0.6
see also :
Why do I need an engine?
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The dictified dictionary.com word of the day is : philomath
Philomath, GA Zip code(s): 30660 Philomath, OR (city, FIPS 57450) Location: 44.54050 N, 123.35708 W Population (1990): 2983 (1145 housing units) Area: 2.5 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water) Zip code(s): 97370 gazetteer
Philomath \Phil"o*math\, n. [Gr. ?; fi`los loving, a friend + ma`qh learning, fr. ?, ?, to learn.] A lover of learning; a scholar. --Chesterfield. web1913
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The random pseudodictionary.com word of the day is : cheerk
Highly dangerous cross-bred animal with the head of a shark and the body of a cheetah. (Collective is "couch.")
ex. Look out! There's a couch of cheerks coming this way.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is bilious
| source : web1913 | Bilious \Bil"ious\
(b[i^]l"y[u^]s), a. [L. biliosus, fr. bilis bile.] 1. Of or pertaining to
the bile. 2. Disordered in respect to the bile; troubled with an excess
of bile; as, a bilious patient; dependent on, or characterized by, an
excess of bile; as, bilious symptoms. 3. Choleric; passionate; ill
tempered. ``A bilious old nabob.'' --Macaulay. {Bilious temperament}. See
{Temperament}. | source : wn | bilious adj 1: relating to or containing
bile [syn: {biliary}] 2: suffering from or suggesting a liver disorder or
gastric distress [syn: {liverish}, {livery}] 3: irritable as if suffering
from indigestion [syn: {atrabilious}, {dyspeptic}, {liverish}]
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is punctilious
| source : web1913 | Punctilious \Punc*til"ious\
(-y[u^]s), a. [Cf. It. puntiglioso, Sp. puntilloso.] Attentive to
punctilio; very nice or exact in the forms of behavior, etiquette, or
mutual intercourse; precise; exact in the smallest particulars. ``A
punctilious observance of divine laws.'' --Rogers. ``Very punctilious
copies of any letters.'' --The Nation. Punctilious in the simple and
intelligible instances of common life. --I. Taylor. --
{Punc*til"ious*ly}, adv. -- {Punc*til"ious*ness}, n. | source : wn |
punctilious adj : marked by precise accordance with details; "was
worryingly meticulous about trivial details"; "punctilious in his
attention to rules of etiquette" [syn: {meticulous}]
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Matt Sergeant on the differences between PHP and XSP (AxKit)
Maybe not the most unbiased analysis, but
interesting all the same.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is redoubtable
| source : web1913 | Redoubtable \Re*doubt"a*ble\
(-?*b'l), a. [F. redoutable, formerly also spelt redoubtable.]
Formidable; dread; terrible to foes; as, a redoubtable hero; hence,
valiant; -- often in contempt or burlesque. [Written also {redoutable}.]
| source : wn | redoubtable adj 1: inspiring fear; "the formidable
prospect of major surgery"; "a tougher and more redoubtable adversary
than the heel-clicking, jackbooted fanatic"- G.H.Johnston; "something
unnerving and prisonlike about high gray wall" [syn: {formidable},
{unnerving}] 2: having or worthy of pride; "redoubtable scholar of the
Renaissance"; "born of a redoubtable family" [syn: {glorious},
{illustrious}, {respected}]
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Eatdrinkfeelgood
I have uploaded new versions of the
DTD
(which is almost finalized, I think), the
XSL
stylesheet
as well as
XML
and
HTML
examples. There is also a suite of Perl modules for querying the
documents and generating foofy index-card sized PDF files that I will
try to get out in the next day or two (bugs).
refers to
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Me : Userland::weblogUpdates.pm
This is not a time for shooting first and asking questions later.
The attacks on the World Trade Center, and
the Pentagon, may turn out be the work of a well-financed,
well-organized and well-informed international terrorist group. The
U.S. may find itself at war, yet. It is important to remember, though,
that either statement may also prove to be untrue. Despite the fact
that the media keeps yammering on about a modern-day SMERSH stalking
the planet, it doesn't sound like these attacks required a whole lot of
sophistication beyond the ability to fly an airplane. How complicated
can it be to plan this sort of attack? Even before the advent of the
Internet, and on-tap information, you could have ballparked this with a
map, dead-tree airline schedules and the most pedestrian of specifics
concerning an airplane. I couldn't tell you how to sneak a matte knife
past airport scanners but given the fact that Western news programs
have been doing the same with actual guns, for years now, it can't be
very complicated. Where you learn to fly a passenger jet low enough to
hit a six-story building, without bailing in the process, is something
that continues to escapes me. That, and the willingness to fly a plane
full of people into a building full of people. And if the U.S. is "at
war", as people are saying then they are at war with a shadow. Ask
yourself, how you can be at war with everyone and no one at the same
time. Ask yourself what the consequences are of living your life that
way. Ask yourself if you really want to live in "Fortress America". Ask
yourself, as Americans, how you are going to go to "war", or mete out
justice, if it turns out that this was the work of other Americans. I
am not trying to minimize what has happened. I may well be wrong on
both counts. Either way, the whole situation just plain sucks beyond
comprehension. There is little question that retribution will be
visited on those responsible, and it will be awful -- small consolation
-- but lashing out in blind anger and panic accomplishes nothing. I
guess my point is that, while extraordinary, it is not outside the
realm of the possible that this could have been carried out by "a few
guys". And I'm really not sure how you fight against that which makes
it all the more terrifying. Dubya's plan to wage a long and expensive
war against an unseen enemy is little more than smoke and mirrors or,
if you're inclined to believe that sort of thing, a slippery slope like
you've never seen before. see also :
How Good Were the [WTC] Pilots?
via
rebecca's
pocket
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Artforum has a weblog.
It's over, folks. You might as well take up
needle-point, or something. That said, they did point to
Is this you?
, which is kind of neat.
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The dict-ified dictionary.com word of the day is supplant
| source : web1913 | Supplant \Sup*plant"\, v. t.
[imp. & p. p. {Supplanted}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Supplanting}.] [F.
supplanter, L. supplantare to trip up one's heels, to throw down; sub
under + planta the sole of the foot, also, a sucker, slip, sprout. Cf.
{Plant}, n.] 1. To trip up. [Obs.] ``Supplanted, down he fell.''
--Milton. 2. To remove or displace by stratagem; to displace and take the
place of; to supersede; as, a rival supplants another in the favor of a
mistress or a prince. Suspecting that the courtier had supplanted the
friend. --Bp. Fell. 3. To overthrow, undermine, or force away, in order
to get a substitute in place of. You never will supplant the received
ideas of God. --Landor. Syn: To remove; displace; overpower; undermine;
overthrow; supersede. | source : wn | supplant v : take the place of
[syn: {replace}, {supersede}, {supervene upon}]
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Me : Apache::SOAP::Jabber.pm
This is a quick and dirty mod_perl/SOAP
handler that acts as a gateway for sending IM messages via a Jabber
server. I wrote it after reading the
following
... Needless to say, someone else is already
providing the service
. This is proof of concept stuff, folks. It works but there are
bugs.
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It doesn't get much better
than sitting on the roof eating dinner, watching game seven, with the
mountain in the background, and seeing Ray Bourque win the Stanley Cup
after 22 years in the league. Well, maybe finding an English announcer
who can pronounce Patrick Roy's name correctly --
Oh, it's another great save by Errrr-waaaaaa-aaaaaaaaah!
-- but just think of the party they'll have in Boston when Ray brings
the Cup home! see also :
Bran Van
3000, Montreal
and
The
Quebec Nordiques Preservation Society
.
refers to
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Dave Winer : "To say that open source created today's Internet
is to ignore... About all you can say is that
today's Internet was developed by developers."
About all you can say about today's art is
that it is made by modern artists. This is a spurious argument at best.
It suggests that somehow the Internet would not exist without said list
of software that should not be ignored when in fact it is just a list of
software that people ended up using. Is the Internet a better place
because websites were written with BBEdit? Please. True, the web might
not have evolved as quickly as it did if we'd all kept using Mosaic, but
would Netscape have ever happened without it? Sorry buddy, but today's
Internet --commercial or otherwise-- was created with *BSD, Linux,
Apache, Sendmail, BIND and Perl and, notwithstanding a pretty cool
outliner that more people use for websites when it's free than when it's
not, you know it.
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Angus Madden : Fundamentals of Web Application Development
Itamar Shtull-Trauring : A Developer's Guide to Learning Zope
Suwon City : Vision on Restroom Culture in the 21st Century
"Several problems centering a restroom which has
obtained a major status as the third living space have started to be
emerged as a critical element deciding the quality of a modern life.
Studies on restrooms, therefore, should be made seriously that much."
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This Morning : Bob Rae on "The Good Citizen"
Bill Adler : "Disgusted as I am with two-party politics,
I thought it was crucially important to support
Nader, who has long been a hero of mine and who represents a
soul-stirring alternative to the big-money candidates. It was very
gratifying to reach out to some of my musician pals and discover that
they felt the same way. These recordings put some modern beats to the
best of Ralph in bite-sized pieces. I thought he could use the rhythm."
via
robot wisdom
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Why is it that people in the website business
feel the need to communicate in every conceivable
format except the web? Tangentially, has anyone written an XSLT
StyleSheet for converting Microsoft Word/MSXML documents into HTML?
Please say
yes....
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I wish I wish I wish
that
The Joy of Cooking
would be released as a Visor module.
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This American Life considers the practice of character assination
in American politics. I've always wanted to do a
cable-access / net-show called "5 Second Character Assination" which is
more commonly refered to, in polite society, as "people watching". (real
evil g2)
refers to
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www.toiletology.com
refers to
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I Love You
The only remarkable thing about all this is how
effective the social engineering was. See also
Julia
McKinnell : What does it say about you if you opened it?
"I was even feeling sorry for Malvolio because he got tossed into the
dark house -- the mad house -- on account of his self-delusion, but now,
I'm more feeling sorry for myself. What does it all mean?" Meanwhile, I
don't know squat about Microsoft email servers but isn't there a config
file where you can tell it delete messages with attachments named
foo.bar? I know you can hack Unix systems to that effect and it does a
pretty good job of preventing, or atleast slowing down, the kind of death
spiral that happened yesterday.
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TreeDoc
"Why not read a document in its native form, as a
tree? Directory trees, for example, are best viewed and navigated with
"tree controls" (like the Windows Explorer): you see a vertical list of
top-level directories, and opening one inserts its contents below and
indented. Items there can themselves be clicked to open their contents in
place, and so on all the way down, without ever hiding the top-level
stuff you started with. Everything appears in place, and nothing gets
erased." Ooooooooooooh. This looks exciting and, more importantly,
brain-dead easy to use.
refers to
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A word about Amazon
I have so far refrained from signing any of
the
growing number of boycott Amazon petitions
circulating on the net. Not because I like Amazon, but rather because I
have *never* liked Amazon and make a point of only buying stuff from them
when there is no other alternative. Adding my name to the list of former
customers would be sort of moot. I have never thought that that Amazon
was looking out for anyone but themselves. I find their software and
data-mining invasive and the friendly spam they've sent me annoying and
saccharine. To those who are suddenly surprised that Amazon is acting
like a big greedy company, I can can only say this : Duh. Meanwhile, the
Public Radio Music Source
finally has an (not very elegant) online ordering system in place.
refers to
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Paul Callahan : Almost nothing to do with grapefruit
"Cheese, by contrast, encompasses the entire
range of human experience: birth and sexuality, the fecundity of nature
from the sweetness of a wildflower meadow to the musk of a doe in estrus
to the wriggling of mosquito larvae in a stagnant pool, death, decay,
vomit, oozing pustules, mystic visions, war atrocities. Well, maybe it's
not the whole range of experience. For example, I cannot think of a
cheese that makes me feel the way I felt when I first saw the proof that
a certain length of rope, hung in a certain way, takes the shape of the
very same catenary arc, regardless of its weight. No, if cheese is unlike
grapefruit, it is far far less like mathematics. Mathematics and cheese
are in a very precise, dare I say mathematical sense, antonyms. And as
you can see, cheese is a bit biased toward one side of the spectrum of
experience, particularly when you get to what I think of as the
"advanced" cheeses. As for me, I'm a rank beginner, but I have a theory
about cheese."
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Maps of the Debates about the Turing Test
The actual charts are 3' x 4', so the images
don't quite do them justice but it's still neat. On a tangential note,
now that the
SVG
buzz-machine is starting up, please note that there is an open source
vector program, written in Python, called
Sketch
which can create SVG files. It may not be Illustrator, but then I've
never forgotten
my
computer animation professor
joking with another student that : If you didn't already know how to use
Illustrator ... it was too late.
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David Ronfeldt : Social Science at 190MPH on NASCAR's Biggest Superspeedways
"In aerodynamically intense stock-car races like
the Daytona 500, the drivers form into multi-car draft lines to gain
extra speed. A driver who does not enter a draft line (slipstream) will
lose. Once in a line, a driver must attract a drafting partner in order
to break out and try to get further ahead. Thus the effort to win leads
to ever-shifting patterns of cooperation and competition among rivals.
This provides a curious laboratory for several social science theories:
(1) complexity theory, since the racers self-organize into structures
that oscillate between order and chaos; (2) social network analysis,
since draft lines are line networks whose organization depends on a
driver's social capital as well as his human capital; and (3) game
theory, since racers face a "prisoner's dilemma" in seeking drafting
partners who will not defect and leave them stranded. Perhaps draft lines
and related "bump and run" tactics amount to a little-recognized dynamic
of everyday life, including in structures evolving on the Internet."
meta
Magnus Lie Hetland : Instant Python
Mike the Headless Chicken
"When Olsen found Mike the next morning, sleeping
with his "head" under his wing, he decided that if Mike had that much
will to live, he would figure out a way to feed and water him."
refers to
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LA Weekly : Down the Tubes
"[WEEE] would put the burden of cleaning up the
electronic-waste stream, and cleaning up electronic products themselves,
squarely on manufacturers. They would be obliged to take back all their
electronic and electric products (from mainframes and note pads, to
toasters, toys and stoves) when those products are kaput, and to provide
and pay for home collection. Distributors would have to offer to take
back, free of charge, a worn-out item for every new item they sell."
meta
Mmmmm...scrambled eggs on a stick
"Macaroni & Cheese and Scrambled Eggs are
two of America’s best-loved meals – but, until now, both were
unavailable in a portable form." You have no idea how much I wish I was
making this up.
refers to
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The search engine
at
TAL
is up and running, and this morning I was able to find
Sarah Vowell's most
excellent piece on making mix tapes
and, in Nick Hornsby's words, "the emotional complexity of the ritual." I
like mix tapes almost as much as I like radio. real audio (starts 28:42)
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Scott McGregor on covering your ceiling in Linoleum
The First Virtual Meter
How do you measure space when you can just change
the resolution? via
calamondin
.
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More bunnies!
mmmmm...stripey bunnies.
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The Times : The New American Gold Rush
Oh great, it's the eighties all over again.
Happy, happy. Joy, joy.
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Do you hate this website?
Go ahead then,
fork me in the head
.
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Takashi Murakami
""We have our traditional arts, whose rules are
strict, but in a contemporary context there is no fine art anymore.
Pop-culture imagery has become the dominant language, so through it I try
to create a fine art for our times."
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Art at the Edge, panel discussion
"An argument about contemporary art and its
disappointed public." In art school, popular opinion holds that people
just need to be "educated". real audio
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Handhelds Beaming Up a Coke
"But one outspoken privacy critic said that
advertising has just gone too far. Jason Catlett wondered if the machine
requires intrusive caller ID and if TeleVend would keep a database of
purchases and locations that could be used to track a consumer's
movements. " Duh.
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Charles Taylor: De la nation culturelle à la nation politique
"Au lieu de chercher une sécurité illusoire dans
la belle totalité d'une législation définitive, nous ferions mieux
d'admettre que notre situation nous posera une série de dilemmes sans
fin, que nous devrions affronter avec la plus grande créativité. "
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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