July 30, 2003
The Javablogs Impedence Mismatch
So long as Atlassian add filtering and threading features to Javablogs in imitation of the evolution of mail and news clients, the Java blogging community will continue to grow and share good information. I just can't help thinking it will be missing something: that ineffable element that makes weblogging different.read... (981 words. Posted to blogging, java, nerd, stories at 01:35 AM. Trackbacks: 3 Comments: 8)
July 29, 2003
Online Wisdom from the Buddha
He avoids harsh language and abstains from it. He speaks such words as are gentle, soothing to the ear, loving, such words as go to the heart, and are courteous, friendly, and agreeable to many.read... (298 words. Posted to personal at 09:11 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 1)
The (d)Evolution of Online Communities: A Case Study
The reposts were causing the little-known newsgroup to get a lot of attention. Everybody wants to associate with, and become a part of something that is funny and successful, and this inevitably lowers the overall quality of the place being inundated with newcomers.read... (343 words. Posted to nerd at 08:41 AM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 3)
July 28, 2003
Version Numbers and You
Too many Open Source projects treat Version 1.0 as some kind of Holy Grail that can only be reached when the project is perfect. I find that highly annoying, because it makes it really, really difficult to tell a sketchy alpha from production code that is just still in pre-1.0 because the author wants it to do everything.read... (367 words. Posted to nerd at 07:17 PM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 4)
Crimes Against Humanity Currently Committed By This Weblog
Something of a things-to-do list.read... (56 words. Posted to personal at 11:51 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 1)
July 27, 2003
Why I'm Not Afraid of AOL Weblogs
What it is, however, is highly resistant to floods of crap. The network routes around such damage easily. Nobody finds it interesting, nobody links to it, so it may as well not be there. Which isn't to say that AOL weblogs are going to be all crap: they'll just follow the general distribution such services have shown elsewhere. Those that aren't crap will be linked to, and become part of a larger section of the blogosphere.read... (1069 words. Posted to blogging, nerd, stories at 09:44 AM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 2)
July 26, 2003
Corporations Law
What occurred to me, was the well-known fact that the modern corporation exists as a means by which people can get involved in risky ventures, and then be protected from having to pay their debts by the government if the venture fails. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Libertarians.read... (72 words. Posted to personal at 02:38 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
July 25, 2003
Hacking the Legal Code
The law is not code. It is not compiled into an inviolate binary and run by a deterministic system. It is passed through the heads of human beings whose job it is to interpret the intent of the law. Courts generally look with disdain upon ‘clever’ interpretations of the law, unless that interpretation follows the court's conception of justice.read... (418 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 06:57 PM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 3)
July 23, 2003
Dear Vodafone
Since we now have number portability, the net difference in cost and convenience between me staying with Vodafone or switching to a new provider is... zilch. Hence, a certain sale was turned into a vaguely pissed off customer with an incentive to see if he can get a better bargain elsewhere.read... (235 words. Posted to personal at 03:42 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
July 22, 2003
On Convergance.
Q: What can you brush your teeth with, sit on, and telephone people with? A: A toothbrush, a chair and a telephone.read... (150 words. Posted to nerd at 03:55 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 2)
July 21, 2003
The Fifteen Minute Test
Maybe that means I'm not an alpha nerd any more. In twenty years some ten year old kid is going to try to teach me how to use the descendent of Tinderbox because I never caught on at the beginning, and Just Don't Understand...read... (499 words. Posted to apple, nerd, stories at 08:47 PM. Trackbacks: 2 Comments: 3)
Dear Mum
Dear Mum, you will be happy to know that after three weeks of my house-sitting for you, both cats are still very much alive and healthy.read... (38 words. Posted to personal at 08:31 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 5)
July 19, 2003
On Specs and Brown M&Ms
One story from Snopes that I quite like is the story of Van Halen and the Brown M&Ms. The story was that Van Halen's rider contained a clause that required a bowl of M&Ms to be supplied backstage, but with the brown ones removed. If they found any brown M&Ms, they could terminate the contract with the venue without penalty, and not perform. It's true.read... (393 words. Posted to personal at 06:20 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
T2: The Director's Cut
Other Director's Cuts are a marketing exercise designed to sell more copies of a video (or now DVD) by adding those bits of the movie that were filmed, but removed from the final cut because they screwed up the pacing, made the movie drag and generally added nothing to the film itself.read... (285 words. Posted to personal at 12:08 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
July 18, 2003
A moment of reflection
Honest, I used to be able to read legalese. I studied Law for three years. I wasn't doing to badly at it until it started boring me to tears.read... (233 words. Posted to personal at 01:03 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
Er... oops?
My apologies to anyone I may have just slashdotted (except for Andy, who deserves it for calling me Fishkopf all the time). They've never accepted any of my stories before...read... (317 words. Posted to nerd at 10:39 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
July 17, 2003
Meet Melvin
This is Melvin the Money-box. He belongs to my mother.read... (46 words. Posted to personal at 11:56 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 2)
It's Time to Fork the LGPL
The problem is that this runs totally counter to the expectations of the people who are actually using the licence. It's stupid that the legal weasel words of the licence itself allow it to apply to C programs but not to Java programs, merely because they have different compilation models.read... (542 words. Posted to nerd at 09:17 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 4)
Stack Overflow
The maximum number of significant tasks I can work on concurrently is two.read... (195 words. Posted to personal at 07:49 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
July 16, 2003
The Battle Of Who Could Care Less...
If you could care less about something, you are implying that there the thing in question has some measureable degree of importance, however slim, in that it is possible for that degree of importance to lessen.read... (83 words. Posted to personal at 06:56 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 6)
July 15, 2003
Running an IRC Channel
In a roundabout way, I came across a page about an IRC Channel discussing whether the channel should have a clear set of defined rules. As an IRC user for eight years, here's the formula I have found to be the only one that actually works:read... (375 words. Posted to nerd at 12:02 AM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 0)
July 14, 2003
Error Handling vs Error Recovery
So, the moral of today's story. Don't just think about how to handle an error, also put thought into how you might recover from it.read... (758 words. Posted to nerd at 12:34 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 2)
July 13, 2003
Disk quotas: impose hard limits with care.
Hard limits, on the other hand, impose a strict cap on the disk space a particular user can be assigned. Attempts to exceed that usage are met with a reaction similar to the disk being full. Very few programs can cope with running out of disk space.read... (292 words. Posted to nerd at 06:23 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
July 12, 2003
Sample it, Loop it...
Not in the mood to nerd out with programming this weekend, I instead played around with the neat things you can do with drum loops.read... (59 words. Posted to personal at 08:03 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)
July 11, 2003
False Advertising
When it says "24/7 Technical Support" on the box, I explicitly do not expect that to mean "you can email us any time of the week, but we'll only respond the next business day."read... (88 words. Posted to nerd at 08:51 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
July 10, 2003
Working...
This is just a test. Ignore it.read... (0 words. Posted to personal at 02:35 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
The Internet is Not Shit
I wanted to write a response to the circulating The Internet is Shit meme, but all I really kept coming back to was this piece of Usenet history from Russ Allberyread... (276 words. Posted to blogging, nerd, personal at 10:17 AM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 1)
July 08, 2003
RSS, nEcho and me.
I've been watching the RSS vs nEcho debate rage back and forth, back and forth for a week or so now. For those who came in late, don't worry what Echo is, go home.read... (367 words. Posted to nerd at 07:54 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 5)
Run while you still can
An architectslobby headline on Javablogs pointed out by a co-worker reads: "XML Beans: The Best of Both Worlds". While I haven't read the article it points to, I'm sure I could think up some better headline...read... (74 words. Posted to java, nerd at 12:33 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 3)
Where are the Writers?
Joseph Ottinger asks Where are the Writers? ...It seems like everyone wants to write very focused, pigeon-holed articles about this tiny behaviour. Nobody writes anything sweeping, nothing is submitted that actually shows a lot of organized thought. I'm impressed (occasionally)...read... (835 words. Posted to java, nerd, stories at 12:03 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 2)
July 03, 2003
The Importance of Dogfood
I'm not making a particularly controversial (or new) statement when I say that when developing some project, having the development team "eat their own dogfood" is a very useful technique. This is an advantage Open Source can have: what you get is some very well-chewed dogfood.read... (597 words. Posted to nerd, stories at 12:47 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 1)
July 02, 2003
A Social Hack for Online Polls
Personally, I think such polls are a blight on society. If I had a lot of spare time and absolutely no morals, I'd fight back.read... (436 words. Posted to blogging, personal, security at 03:41 PM. Trackbacks: 1 Comments: 3)
July 01, 2003
The Curse of '
Dear Roller maintainers. "apos" is NOT a valid HTML entity reference.read... (239 words. Posted to nerd, web design at 06:04 PM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 5)
From the Hyperbole to the Ridiculous
Any idiot can sit down and spend four or seven years of his life writing out his "masterpiece." You do some research, you do some hard work, you get a little help from friends and family, and you get it done. But, it takes a true writing genius (or geniuses, in this case) to create something as original as...read... (98 words. Posted to personal at 11:01 AM. Trackbacks: 0 Comments: 0)