Lajos Egri’s book has some good content, but it’s hard to read. I mean, physically difficult. I don’t have the necessary copyright law ninja skills to be sure, but I think this 1946 book might be in the public domain, judging by the many editions available on Amazon. But stay away from this one, published…
Without question, the #1 most important success factor in being a Sith Lord is making sure your apprentice cannot kill you. More collected Geek Thoughts at https://dubinko.info/blog/tags/geekthoughts/.
I have a new mobile phone number now. If you need it ask. Don’t call the old one, it’s gone… -m
Next time you drive on a freeway, look up to see how many power lines you pass under. Most people never notice these, even on common commuter routes. But once you perceive one, you’ll be seeing them all over the place. What else works this way? More collected Geek Thoughts at https://dubinko.info/blog/tags/geekthoughts/.
A great mead tasting event at Rabbit’s Foot tonight. There are a few new commercial meads since my last visit, an excellent raspberry mead and a saison-style braggot. And lots of homebrew mead flowing freely as well. Say, if anyone in the South Bay is interested in a study group for Mead Judge Certification (likely…
To be a Certified Beer Judge, a GeekDrinker needs to score 70/100 on a written test as well as gain 5 experience points, half of that from judging. Talk about leveling up! More collected Geek Thoughts at https://dubinko.info/blog/tags/geekthoughts/.
Or maybe a certain wireless carrier is getting more incompetent. Sigh. It’s going to be a long two years. I hope the iPhone is worth it. -m
Geek Thoughts? It’s like a web comic, minus the stick figures. Occasionally funny, often random, always geeky. While the Yahoo! board was furiously debating the merits of a Microsoft takeover offer, a heated dispute arose about one PowerPoint slide showing sales figures over a recent quarter. To resolve the dispute, they had to call in…
My traditional mead, the one that took years to make took the gold in the 24B (Traditional, semi-sweet) category at the mead-only Arizona Mead Cup. (results) This one goes back before the Great Hard Drive Crash, where (combined with a freak that-directory-didn’t-get-backed-up-bug) my early meadmaking records were lost. But there are a few hints left…
It would be awesome of someone made a site that catalogued all the common mis-encodings. Even in 2008, I see these things all over the web–mangled quotation marks, apostrophes, em-dashes. I’d love to see a pictoral guide. curly apostrophe looks like ?’ – original encoding=_________ mislabeled as __________ . That sort of thing. Surely somebody…
On the eRDF discussion posting, Toby Inkster, an implementer of eRDF, talks about why it’s bad to steal the id attribute, and why RDFa is better suited for general purpose metadata. Worth a read. -m
It’s been 0x40 years since the dedication of the Mark I. Wired has some great photos and background information. Less than a year later, Vannevar Bush would advance the state of the art with his article As We May Think. A year-and-a-half later, ENIAC unveiled, and with it Turing-completeness. And things have been speeding up…
Without the bike commute, I’m back to barefoot running for exercise. I can now do a stretch of 2 miles on asphalt with no problems (other than sore calves). Why barefoot? Because it feels better, and it’s ultimately easier on the joints. The human biomechanical system does excellent work if you let it, and is…
Through the weekend I put most of the final touches on an implementation of RDFa in XQuery. The implementation is based on the functional specification of RDFa, an offshoot of the excellent work coming out of the W3C task force. The spec contains a procedural description of the parsing algorithm, and several have successfully followed…
From the observing-the-human-condition department. Seems I have a hard to pronounce name. For the record my first name has a long I; it’s MY-ka, not MEE-ka. When someone gets it wrong, I don’t hold anything against them. Afterall, how to pronounce any given name is pretty arbitrary. But there are a few names that are…
The W3C RDFa specification is now in Candidate Recommendation phase, with an explicit call for implementations (of which there are several). Momentum for RDFa is steadily building. What about eRDF, which favors the existing HTML syntax over new attributes? There’s still a place for a simpler syntactic approach to embedding RDF in HTML, as evidenced…
In C, if you find yourself writing large switch statements (or rafts of if statements), you should consider using pointers to functions instead. In C++, if you find yourself writing large switch statements (or rafts of if statements), you should consider using objects and polymorphism instead. In XQuery, If you find yourself writing large typeswitch…
This one’s internal. If you’re a Mark Logic employee, look me up. If not, well, expect things to be slow around here for a couple of days. -m
Actually, instead of a review, let me quote the opening testimonial from the inside-front cover. Competing globally with dynamic capabilities is the top priority of multinational executives and managers everywhere. Rethinking strategy in a highly networked world is the big challenge. How can your company navigate successfully in this turbulent, highly networked and socially connected…
At least at the Burlingame Apple Store. Lines wrapped all the way around the corner and to the back. They were turning folks away within 20 minutes of opening Friday. Some had been there since 7 am. No iPhone for me. Yet. -m
Andy King’s Website Optimization is now in print from O’Reilly. This book covers it all: performance, SEO, conversion rates, analytics, you name it. If you run a web site, you’ll find this useful. I tech edited and contributed a small portion, about the growing trend of metadata as site advantage. Go check it out. -m
Looks like a reasonably-sized revision. The first public working draft seems downright thin, in fact, relative to all the SHOULDs and MAYs in the requirements document. In particular, I’d like to see progress on 2.3.16 Higher order functions. (Then do we get a book XQuery: The Good Parts? …kidding..) -m
This article made my day. Very similar approach to what I did in WebPath, but even cleaner. Great explanation and performance numbers. -m P.S. Thanks to Crock for pointing this out.
Someone overseas, whom I consider trustworthy but haven’t actually met, wants to buy one of my domains. Great! There’s not huge sums involved, though it’s a hassle to move the money and coordinate the transfer. Readers: Any advice on how to complete the transaction? Escrow service? Anything lighter-weight? Comment below. -m
My next Meade Classe will be on Saturday, August 2nd, which happens to be Mead Day. Come learn…and taste. Full details: Mead brewing and appreciation class Mead, honey wine, “the nectar of the godsâ€. Whatever you call it MoreFlavor Los Altos is sponsoring a class to help you learn more about this wonderful fermented beverage…
That’s my game idea. Unfortunately I won’t have time to develop the idea, so somebody else go for it–just mention my name in the credits ;) My 7-year-old has just discovered Oregon Trail, or more accurately Westward Trail, a respectable online clone. -m
Traffic ain’t what it used to be there. But since I’m at a core xml technology company, it makes sense to participate again. Now, are there any topics left that haven’t been hashed to death? (hint: yes) -m
Today Google announced Protocol Buffers, described as “think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler“. Language bindings for C++, Java, and Python. Oddly not even a whisper about JSON, which is a much more apt comparison. And along with that, no JavaScript implementation. So why the omission? My guess is that it wouldn’t compare that favorably…
Nope, not spam. You can now order electronic components from Amazon, advertised right on the front page for me. What can’t you get on Amazon? -m
The old rule: only even-numbered Star Trek movies are any good. The new rule: only odd-numbered Indiana Jones movies are any good. -m