afongen

From the I’m-likely-to-lose-track-of-this-unless-I-mention-it-here department: Mozilla’s DOCTYPE sniffing, including Almost Standards Mode. Must also remember Matthias Gutfeldt’s pages on DOCTYPE switching, since that’s always where I send people when the topic comes up, which seems to be every couple weeks.

I’ve actually done very little with DOCTYPE switching except spread awareness of it when troubleshooting others’ designs, and am unlikely to do anything with Mozilla’s Almost Standards Mode since I’d rather use other solutions to the “problems” it solves, but still: if I don’t make note of it now, I’m likely to have a harder time finding it when I need it.

And this looks to be one of them: “This week Apple declared war on its grassroots enthusiasts, by preventing ‘rumor sites’ from attending MacWorld Expo in New York. And one has already responded by shutting-up shop. ”

What a shame. Even some sites that aren’t really what you might call “rumor sites” are getting caught up in the mess.

Oh my. The Two Towers trailer is out.

Funny how things develop. I was planning to go to the Ronald Bourret’s XML-DBMS session at OSCON (yes! I’m going!). Mr. Bourret maintains what I’ve found to be fundamental articles about transferring data between relational databases and XML documents, and I was really looking forward to his talk. But then I stumbled into gnat’s mention of Allison’s talk at OSCON, and the broken links there got me wondering: who is this Alison and what is her talk? So I found it: Tagmemics. As a linguist and Perl nut, how can I pass this up? Then I took a closer look at the description for the XML-DBMS talk and it seems to focus on Java. So I can pass on that and learn something new!

I finally thought of a way I could use an iPod. I don’t really listen to all that much music, so iPods have never excited me. But I am always coming across articles that I don’t have time to read online, but neither do I want to waste the paper to print and read them on the bus. Sometimes I use a text-to-speech software to read an article to me as I putter around the house, but I have to stay close to the computer. If I had an iPod, I could convert that speech to an MP3, then carry it with me and listen to it on the bus or in the car.

Still. Helluva lot of money for that sort of convenience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.