October 2002
How not to run a company
- personal
Every incoming mail was being silently redirected to the director's inbox. By the next staff meeting, he had a list of all the distribution- and mailing-lists we were to get off now. Needless to say, that's about when I started looking for a new job. →
So 2001...
- apple
- nerd
If you look really closely at the icon for Omni Outliner files, it's a rendition of ‘All Your Base’ →
Personal Space
- personal
One of the surest ways to get on my nerves very, very quickly, is to touch me. I have this very strong sense of personal space, and strangers touching me just makes me cringe. →
favicon.ico
- personal
Just to show off my complete lack of artistic skill, both The Fishbowl and my livejournal have a k-rad favicon.ico. →
HTTP Conditional Get for RSS Hackers
- nerd
- stories
The people who invented HTTP came up with something even better. HTTP allows you to say to a server in a single query: “If this document has changed since I last looked at it, give me the new version. If it hasn't just tell me it hasn't changed and give me nothing.&rdquo →
An Empirical Comparison of Programming Languages
- nerd
Lutz Prechelt, An Empirical Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl. →
Golden Rule of Open Source
- nerd
The number one rule for starting an Open Source project. Never, ever, ever start the project without having working code that people can compile, run and play with. If you don't, you'll never develop anything. →
Password Recovery Practices
- nerd
- security
- stories
After a thread on the webappsec mailing list, I spent some of yesterday coming up with a guide to password recovery techniques for public web applications. Available as a PDF. →
The Manual
- personal
The Manual (How to have a number one the easy way) by the KLF: "Other than achieving a number one hit single we offer you nothing else. There will be no endless wealth. fame will flicker and fade and sex will still be a problem." →
The Problem with HTML
- nerd
- stories
- web design
This really sums up the situation with HTML as far as the W3C is concerned. HTML4 is dead. XHTML1 was just a transition from a monolithic SGML format to a modular XML format. The as-yet-unfinished XHTML2 is the only way forward for the standardized web. Thus, any improvements we might want to make to the specification must end up in, and conform to the goals of, XHTML2. But how long do we have to wait for XHTML2, and what if we don't want to use it when it gets here? →
The Mixerman Diaries
- personal
In The Daily Adventures of Mixerman, a sound engineer keeps a diary of his life making an album, the names being changed to protect the guilty. →
Links for Hire
- blogging
- java
- nerd
Dear Sun. I also have no scruples. If you pay for me to fly to San Francisco, I will blog whatever the hell you want me to. →
Writing: The Best of The Worst
- personal
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory if not the reputation of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night." →
What were you doing in 1993?
- personal
I spent most of the year hanging around with people who I knew from school but didn't particularly like, because at least it avoided the hassle of trying to meet new people. Big mistake. Other interesting things that happened that year mostly involved me being thrown out of the University tavern for being underage, and having my eyebrow shaved off at someone else's 18th birthday party. →
Meat. They're made out of meat.
- nerd
- personal
I expect most of you have read this before, but Terry Bisson's <a href="http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html">They're Made out of Meat</a> is always worth a read. →
Book Idea
- agile development
- nerd
Handwriting Recognition
- personal
Why I'm not hanging out for handwriting recognition any time soon. With image. →
UML Uses
- agile development
- nerd
Strained Tag Soup
- nerd
- stories
- web design
The tools aren't there yet, of course. The standards don't support everything we want to do, and the browsers don't support all the standards that do exist. We've got years to go yet, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be moving in the direction of semantically correct web-pages. →
The Price Curve
- nerd
- stories
Dave Johnson asks what's wrong with the price/quality curve of software. I reply that most expensive software requires expensive customisation, so a few hours extra installation time isn't really a serious business issue. →
The problem with monopoly
- nerd
- stories
- web design
I recently discovered a bug in Internet Explorer version 6 that causes random type in my weblog's sidebar to disappear. In a competetive environment, this would be IE's problem. In the real world, it's mine. →
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference
- nerd
Joel Spolsky notes the release of the second edition of Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference. This is the only HTML book I've found more useful than the original specifications. →
Too many notes?
- personal
A quote from the programme of the opera, <cite>The Turn of the Screw</cite> that I went to see tonight. →
Slashdot gets trolled
- nerd
“I have come up with a new form of encryption that's better than a one-time pad. Should I patent it?” Or, “Dear Slashdot editors. April 1 was six months ago.” →
The Parable of the Languages
- nerd
Shelley Powers' <a href="http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000581.php">the Parable of the Languages</a> is a nifty morning read. →
The Option List from Hell
- nerd
<p>Exhibit A, your honour. An options list from a website's registration form containing <em>341</em> different salutations, including “Honourable Judge”, “Senator”, “Dpty. Commissioner”, “Kepala” and “YB Dato' Paduka Bijaya Di Raja”, but shamefully missing ‘Mademoiselle’.</p> →
YKYBHTLW...
- java
- nerd
You know you've been hacking too long when somebody says “Axis of evil”, and you think “Hey, <a href="http://xml.apache.org/axis/">SOAP</a> isn't that bad...” →
The Joy of HTML
- nerd
I just looked at my weblog homepage in Netscape 4.78 for Linux. If you get the chance, you should try it, it's really funky. It looks like William Burroughs cut my page up and pasted it together in random blocks. →
Worse is Evolvable?
- nerd
Clay Shirky and Mark Pilgrim revisit the territory of Richard Gabriel's classic essay; <cite>The rise of “Worse is Better”</cite> →
Two important things...
- personal
Snippet
- personal
Monty Python's Flying Fish
- personal
There are four lights
- personal
Design Advice
- personal
Why do J2EE Appservers Cost So Much?
- java
- nerd
- stories
From Bryan Dollery on the Extreme Programming mailing list: “If business leaders were interested in money then they'd use JBoss overWebSphere or WebLogic. The three products are, for most uses, identical -but JBoss is free while Web* can cost around $50,000 per processor. If money is that important, why do these products sell?” →