Month: November 2001

Lucky

So as evidenced by the previous news item, I’m pretty lucky as a programmer. I hadn’t bothered testing iTunes2Manila with a streaming audio source as the current item before, and I wasn’t sure it would work. Not sure why it doesn’t have a closing quotation mark, but at least the script doesn’t crash.

Good Morning

I’m a little slow moving this morning. I’ve been getting this wonderful almost-cold for a couple of days now. It hasn’t really blossomed into runny-nosed sneezing fits, but I’ve been lethargic and stuffy and it’s been really difficult to think. That probably explains yesterday’s scripting fit. Ever since I first started writing code–even the good old, bad old days of Excel macros for my physics professors–it’s been easier for me to sit down and write code and fight with it until it works than to do something that requires actually talking to someone….

Seizing the rhetorical high ground

OK, so I feel less bad for having referred to Bush’s speeches about going to war in Afghanistan as ‘The Rhetoric of Failure‘ now that I’ve read Safire’s editorial in the Times today. I’ve talked with a lot of people about the PATRIOT act that got ramrodded through Congress and about the suspension of due process, and I thought I was the only one that was concerned. It’s a bit weird for me to find Safire, a staunch conservative, agreeing with me on this one:

“Misadvised by a frustrated and panic-stricken attorney general, a president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens. Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts…. No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush’s order calls this Soviet-style abomination “a full and fair trial.”

Call your congressman. It’s time to put the brakes on before this creeping abuse of power gets any worse.
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Cold Naked Guys!

More comments from Pam on the Vermonty.com link:

“Those guys were on the Today show yesterday and their site had so many hits afterwards that the site crashed several times, they are on a bigger server now. The calendar is very tasteful, and they use all the proceeds to fix up their community center. They were struggling for ways to pay for the center repairs and one guy jokingly said ‘Well, hell, I just bought a new tractor, i oughtta pose nude on it!’ Months later the calendar was made.”

Why you should buy cases of wine

Got this list in an email from our friends at the Wine Bottega (who still don’t have a Web site; hmm, maybe I should do something about that). It’s excerpted from Wallpaper magazine:

Buying Wine

There’s one golden rule when purchasing wine: buy it by the box. No, we’re not talking about wine in a box but 12 tempting bottles packed into a cardboard container. While this does involve a little planning and is perhaps not as spontaneous as nipping out for an extra bottle of Kent Rasmussen you should remember that:

  1. You will always drink more than you planned
  2. A box demands you try new varieties.
  3. You usually get a discount for buying volume.
  4. For every degree the thermometer drops in winter, the wine shop moves another block away.
  5. It will never go to waste.
  6. You always have something to bring to impromptu dinner parties.
  7. Carrying home a single bottle of wine after work makes you look like an alcoholic.
  8. Walking out with a full case suggests you have your intake under control.
  9. You never know what you are going to cook, so diversity is important.
  10. Boxes usually mean delivery. Delivery means delivery boys (or girls). You fill in the rest.

Good morning and happy blog day

Hi all. Looking back over the last few days, I’m pretty happy with the format change experiment. I’m updating more frequently and it’s easier to go and pull all related stories together (I used to have to update the topic pages by hand, and probably will continue to have to do so a bit longer).

On the downside, my writing style has changed a bit. I used to be a bit better at remembering to write about me as well as whatever random link I happened to be looking at at the time. I think that’ll come back soon. It seems that there’s just an adjustment period to settling into a new writing style before my voice comes out again.

“Simple Guides” are best

A good guide from the developer standpoint about XML-RPC and SOAP, contrasting their differences, is available at masukomi.org. What’s interesting is the section on how the BigCos are approaching this market and on documentation, which addresses the same point. Even if you don’t speak developer, reading these paragraphs illuminates why some companies have good developer relations and others don’t. Don’t get me using a product and then change the spec for how it works without telling me!!!
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