JWZ dislikes GNOME, Charles dislikes kuro5hin, users and Sun Microsystems. →
October 2002
29
Oct
2002
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. →
28
Oct
2002
If you look really closely at the icon for Omni Outliner files, it's a rendition of ‘All Your Base’ →
28
Oct
2002
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. →
22
Oct
2002
Just to show off my complete lack of artistic skill, both The Fishbowl and my livejournal have a k-rad favicon.ico. →
21
Oct
2002
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 →
21
Oct
2002
Lutz Prechelt, An Empirical Comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl. →
20
Oct
2002
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. →
20
Oct
2002
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. →
19
Oct
2002
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." →
18
Oct
2002
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? →
17
Oct
2002
The found something I'd forgotten about. Once upon a time, back in 1998 or so, I had a list of things that I wanted on my homepage. On it was “A life. Preferably in a metallic blue, or maybe dark green.” Soon after, Lonita sent me this. →
17
Oct
2002
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. →
17
Oct
2002
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. →
16
Oct
2002
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." →
15
Oct
2002
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. →
15
Oct
2002
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. →
14
Oct
2002
Why I'm not hanging out for handwriting recognition any time soon. With image. →
13
Oct
2002
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. →
11
Oct
2002
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. →
11
Oct
2002
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. →
11
Oct
2002
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. →
11
Oct
2002
A quote from the programme of the opera, <cite>The Turn of the Screw</cite> that I went to see tonight. →
10
Oct
2002
“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.” →
10
Oct
2002
Shelley Powers' <a href="http://weblog.burningbird.net/archives/000581.php">the Parable of the Languages</a> is a nifty morning read. →
9
Oct
2002
<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> →
9
Oct
2002
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...” →
9
Oct
2002
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. →
9
Oct
2002
Clay Shirky and Mark Pilgrim revisit the territory of Richard Gabriel's classic essay; <cite>The rise of “Worse is Better”</cite> →
7
Oct
2002
Charles sacrifices his Google prestige in order to get a more distinctive domain name, and better weblogging software. →
1
Oct
2002
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?” →
