June 30, 2002
Callisto CMS is an XML / XSL Web-based content management system built using Perl and AxKit. Includes WYSIWYG editor. This looks very promising. Matt Sergeant mentioned it a few months ago and I meant to discuss it in a follow-up to my XML & CMS essay, which I still plan to write someday. Callisto may help solve some of the problems I raise there.
I also want to keep an eye on Xopus, a browser-based WYSIWYG XML editor. At least one Good Thing has already come out of that project, and an open source release is scheduled for mid-summer.
June 30, 2002
I've never been much of a sports fan. There are only a couple I'll pay attention to: tennis and soccer. I'd follow fencing if it were shown on television, but it's not.
Since I was nine years old, I've watched Wimbledon every year, and that is still the only tennis tournament I follow. Not so religiously as I once did, but I still watch it.
I saw my first World Cup when I was in high school -- until then it wasn't broadcast in the US, although it might have been available on cable. The announcers were atrocious: the network apparently couldn't be bothered to hire people who actually knew anything about soccer, so they got regular ol' American football announcers who no only knew nothing about the game but also had the audacity to insult the players' athleticism. Yeah. Guys who sprint non-stop for an hour and a half. Wimps. Whatever.
Things since then have got better, and I'm sure that the performance of the US team at the World Cup this year can only help. I'm rather impressed by the announcers this year, truth be told, especially whoever did the final. It was good enough for radio: I could close my eyes and still follow the game.
Now that the World Cup's over, I can turn to Wimbledon; when that's over, I can go watch the USA Cup, a youth soccer tournament that takes place just a little bit north of where I live. In years past it seems to me that they had a lot more international participation, but this year it seems to be almost entirely teams from the US Midwest. Nonetheless, there are teams from Costa Rica, Ecuador, England...
I wonder if the weather's had anything to do with it. The last few years, the tournament's been held during what felt like the hottest week of the year. Temperatures in the 90s and maybe even over 100F.
The fields are built on what used to be a peat bog, I think, so they're really springy. I can remember the first time I went, being surprised by these huge English kids thundering past a few feet away, causing the ground beneath my feet to swell and rise just a bit. This effect hasn't been so pronounced recently, but with all the rain we've been getting this year, you never know.
If you live in the area, I encourage you to go. It's good fun. And Schwan's sponsors it, so there's decent ice cream, too. :)
And when it's over, I can go back to ignoring sports.
June 28, 2002
I don't think I need to say more about the Pledge of Allegiance uproar than what Leonard Lin has to say. I mean, c'mon, just remove "under God" from the Pledge, fer chrissakes. It bothered me even as a child when I was forced to say it every day.
June 28, 2002
I've been receiving a bunch of bounced messages that indicate that someone is writing spam that looks like it's coming from fake email addresses at afongen.com. Either that or it's spam ingeniously forged to make it look like it's a bunch of bounced messages. Bastards. Gotta dig into this.
June 28, 2002
I've been receiving a bunch of bounced messages that indicate that someone is writing spam that looks like it's coming from fake email addresses at afongen.com. Either that or it's spam ingeniously forged to make it look like it's a bunch of bounced messages. Bastards. Gotta dig into this.
June 28, 2002
One: Rob Flickenger's comments about installing IE 5.2 for Mac OS X have convinced me not to bother with the upgrade. I'll stick with Mozilla, Chimera, and maybe give OmniWeb another shot. In the occasional instance where I need to use a site that refuses access to Mozilla, I'll use IE 5.1. Then fire off an email to the webmaster of the offending site.
Two: Digest authentication in Mozilla has been giving me a headache. It seems to work just fine for GET requests, but Mozilla asks me to re-enter my credentials for every POST. That gets to be damn annoying. Maybe I'm missing something in the preferences somewhere, but as a user I expect the browser to act like it does with Basic Authentication: remember my username and password throughout the session. Not sure what's going on here, have to do some digging through Bugzilla and maybe set up some tests so I can observe the transaction. Perhaps it's a server setup thing.
June 27, 2002
Exams are over and Mr. Paul Sowden has reared his head again, although I suppose he was never too far gone. Then again, one can become lost in exams. Anyway. I look forward to seeing what he will do with his site this time 'round. He's already doing something rather interesting, serving up both HTML and XHTML versions. Take a peek under the hood.
And yes! he has started using GPG. Another convert to the wonders of strong encryption.
June 27, 2002
The OWASP Guide to Building Secure Web Applications and Web Services has been released. Version 1.0 is downloadable from the OWASP home page. At this point it is a rather large PDF.
June 26, 2002
A coworker sent me a link to John Dvorak's recent Apple-bashing. No, scratch that, this has gone beyond Apple-bashing to attacking the people in Apple's "switch" campaign. For their appearance. Give me a frelling break. Thing is, the coworker who sent this did so because he agrees with Dvorak's sentiment.
This is the same guy who regularly quips, "Simple computers for simple minds," as if making a computer easy to use is a bad thing.
Sigh.
Whatever. I've been wondering how to respond appropriately, because I don't really want to rise to the bait, but this "article" is such a worthless piece of tripe that I can't let it pass. Fortunately, Crazy Apple Rumors has the perfect response: Dvorak Implodes From Unintentional Irony.
Anyway, here's the thing. I am sick to death of mindless bashing of fill-in-the-blank. Not criticism, but attacks without substance. In the circles I run in, usually Microsoft is the one being attacked. I'll gladly be among the first to criticize them for the failings in their technology or business practices, but I will not run screaming from All Things Microsoft because they're from the devil. Sheesh, people, get a grip. Face it, they write some good software. Sure, it could often be improved (what can't?) and made more secure (what can't?). So take them to task for that. Not because they are Evil Incarnate.
Similarly, if you have problems with Apple because you don't like the Mac, come up with some decent reasons. And in my book, "I don't like how it looks" is a valid reason. As is "I don't think that computers should be easy to use." Good for you. Fine. Whatever. I do have some problems with "I haven't used Macs in years and have certainly never used OS X, but I didn't much care for the user interface or instability of the MacOS back then so I'm gonna complain as if Apple were still mired in those dark days." That's no more valid than my complaining about Windows 2000 Professional because Windows 95 was buggy, unstable, insecure, and a pain in the ass (although a huge improvement over 3.1). Go try OS X on a new Mac and then come talk to me. We'll probably share some complaints.
And if you're, say, a tech columnist or contributing editor of a leading computer magazine, you should be able to come up with something better than bashing geeky-looking users.
Some of those people, by the way, have put together a little weblog tracking their switch. I have learned much, including that it's possible to get Ximian Evolution working on OS X.
June 25, 2002
"The goal of VerisignOff is to help people understand that there are alternatives to Verisign/Network Solutions and that by patronizing these registrars, we help send an important message; consumers expect the companies that they patronize to treat them ethically and respectfully."
June 21, 2002
An article in the New York Times about cartoonists' weblogs (mentioning my favorite comic strip, The Norm). It's interesting to see more and more articles mention weblogs without defining what the word means. (Never mind the ongoing and often pointless debate about how to define weblogs.) Not quite as interesting, though, as seeing how these artists use their comics' weblogs. And comments like this:
"People somehow do not seem to comprehend that some marginal level of competency as a writer is necessary to the creation of my cartoon. When they see my words without graphics, they are frequently surprised that I am able to form a coherent sentence."
June 19, 2002
The past couple days there's been a thread on the TCPHP mailing list about text editors. Thankfully the discussion steered clear of zealotry. Started out as a discussion of Komodo, which is quite nice but slow and bloated-feeling. I was first excited about Komodo because it was one of the first Mozilla-based products I'd seen. I even bought a license when they started charging.
I have come to realize that, as Matt Sergeant writes, "I change my text editor like I change my pants." Religious wars about text editors are even more pointless than religious wars about operating systems. I use whatever seems the most appropriate tool at the time.
June 19, 2002
S: This car really needs a pterodactyl proximity alert system.
K: What? How about this? (opens moon roof)
S: No, with this visor down to block the sun, I can see the cars in front of us just fine, but...
K: But if a pterodactyl were to come at us from head on...
S: Yeah.
K: ...you couldn't see it until it was too late.
S: Yeah! Exactly!
K: (laughs) You and I live in different worlds.
S: What, you don't think a pterodactyl is likely to attack?
K: No, it's just that the visor doesn't block my field of vision.
S:
S: (finally dawns on him that he's a foot taller than K and so sees the world very differently). Oh.
June 14, 2002
mod_survey, an Apache module that creates web-based surveys/questionnaires that are built using an XML notation. Cool. It wouldn't be that hard to write something that created the XML source files, thus making the whole thing web-based.
June 14, 2002
PHPGeek: Setting up Apache 2 with PHP on Windows. Also worth a look-see at the documentation on the Apache site.
And dangit, once again I missed the Twin Cities PHP Users Group meeting. That's — what? — 6 or 8 times in a row now? I start the day with every intention of attending, then completely forget by day's end. Aargh! OK Sam, repeat after me... July 10, July 10, July 10...
June 12, 2002
Bremsstrahlung Records's web site mimics the Mac OS System 6 interface. Why, I'm still not entirely sure I understand.
June 12, 2002
For the most part, I'm glad to see the changes in Mozilla 1.1. I'm glad to see the site navigation bar back, I'm lovin' the HTML-email-as-plain-text feature (although I wish it were global), but I'm annoyed to see the context menu reorganized again so "Open Link In New Window" is back on top. It's not so much that I need to relearn a habit, it's that I sincerely doubt that once people are exposed to tabs they open up windows as often. That should not be on top.
June 11, 2002
I was poking around on Mozilla's FTP site and came across Mozilla 1.1 Alpha. New things listed in the release notes include viewing HTML email as plain text, "new layout performance enhancements targeted at DHTML," fast-loading XUL, and image blocking for mail and news.
Viewing HTML mail as plain text will be nice. OK, it'll be great. And it looks like the site navigation bar is back.
June 10, 2002
Okay, if grayrest's Guide to the DOM Inspector doesn't convince you that Mozilla is one kick-ass tool for web development, I don't know what will. I've already been using the DOM inspector to, well, inspect the DOM, but it does so much more. Change stuff. Tweak CSS. Delete nodes. Grab screen shots of sections of selected elements.
Whoa.
June 09, 2002
I had the opportunity earlier this week to install and tinker with Apache on Windows. Specifically, Apache 2.0.36 on Windows 2000 Professional. A few observations:
All in all, even though mine was hardly a scientific or even useful test, I'm happy with Apache 2 and impressed with Apache on Windows. Enough to convince me to stress-test it soon. Why, I don't know, since I am at heart a Unix geek and have no reason to use Apache on Windows. If you have to run Windows, take a serious look at it. For the rest of us lucky ones, I'm waiting almost patiently for mod_perl to be production-quality on Apache 2. Then we're a go.
June 06, 2002
Scott Andrew LePera's posting lots of good Mozilla links today. The archived version to which I just pointed doesn't have his design homage to Mozilla, so hit his home page if you're reading this today.
June 05, 2002
From the "For Web Developers" page linked to from the new Mozilla 1.0 start page, I found the Mozilla source generator sidebar, which generates formatted HTML source based on the current page's DOM. Interesting idea.
One complaint: the output is HTML, not XHTML, even on XHTML pages: the tags are upper-case. This does most decidedly not mean that this is not a useful tool. I think it just needs a bit of tweaking.
Take note of the instructions to add this line to your prefs.js:
user_pref("signed.applets.codebase_principal_support", true);
The script that runs in the sidebar needs elevated permissions, which this preference setting allows.
Note, too, among the documents, a Guide to Mozilla 1.0, which brings together links to some very useful information.
June 05, 2002
You've probably seen it elsewhere, but I have to mention it: Mozilla 1.0 has been released.
Those simple words do not do justice to my excitement.
June 04, 2002
Apocalypse 5 is out, dealing with regular expressions in Perl 6. Whew!
And it's looking like there's a slim chance that I'll be able to go to the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this summer and see Larry et al talk about Perl 6. Crossing my fingers.
June 04, 2002
"You don't survive the cola wars without some kick-ass ninja moves."
Damn straight.
For some reason, that just cracked me up. The best I've read there yet, though: Apple Executives Selling Stock, Buying Puppy. "I told them that a puppy is a huge responsibility that you can't just throw $19.5 million at. Who's going to feed it? Who's going to walk it?"
June 04, 2002
New three-column design. I made the "mistake" of implementing it without testing in IE/Windows. 8 hours later, settled in at work, I give it a shot in IE6/Win and a couple sections overlap. Stupid friggin' browser.
I should not be so quick to judge. As I keep pointing out to a colleague of mine who criticizes what Mozilla does to his designs, just because a browser does not act as you expect does not mean that it is wrong. It's quite possible — probable, even — that in my tweaking here and there I broke something. It's also possible, of course, that I need some weird workaround for a bug in IE6. I very much would like to avoid ugly hack workarounds, so I may end up having to go to a simpler design.
Just as well, because while thinking about how to fix it I realized that I'm not sure I want a three-column design. So after a quick workaround, back to the drawing board...
Update: for the record, it's a problem with IE. So there.
June 02, 2002
Reading about <link>ed RSS feeds, I'm interested. Good idea. "Say, Sam," I tell myself, "why don't you check that out with Mozilla's Site Navigation Toolbar?" A fine idea. But I can't find it. In vain I methodically check through the preferences. Oh, great. It's not in the Mac builds. I thought I remembered it there, but maybe not. Hm, maybe on OS X. Nope. Rats.
Wait! Release notes! Maybe I can dig through the release notes and find out whether it's available for the Mac. Hey, there it is:
The Site Navigation Bar, also known as the Link Toolbar, is not available for this release. (Bug 138496)
Ah. No one has it in RC3. Bummer.
June 01, 2002
Fink, a project for bringing open source Unix software to Mac OS X, is making KDE available for OS X. Oh yeah. It's still experimental, though (that is, "There are no guarantees that it won't delete your hard drive, kill your dog, put water in your gas tank, or make parts of your body randomly explode."). Doesn't mean it isn't good for a lark.
