afongen

This evening I took care of the kid while Kiara was in class. Nothing unusual about that, except we stayed in town instead of going home. We ended up at the TeaSource, where he fussed a bit but eventually settled down so we could read a couple of his favorite books. A couple guys at the next table had a copy of a children’s book that they’ve written and illustrated, due to be published in early March. I mention it here so i don’t lose this information: If I Had Thumbs Like People Do. ISBN 1-4010-8261-0. Looks like a fun book, keep an eye out.

Update: You can buy the book here.

Exciting news: Matt Sergeant has released the code for the AxKit OpenOffice Provider, which makes delivering OpenOffice SXW files to the web a snap.

You may already be familiar with AxKit, an XML application server for Apache written in Perl. The OpenOffice filter transforms OpenOffice files to the output format of your choice…say, XHTML. I’ve been eyeing it for some time now, but it was a commercial product so not easily available to me. (If we’d decided to use AxKit at work, it may have been an option, but we’re still quite a ways away from making that sort of decision.) Since Matt’s dissolved the company that sold the OpenOffice filter, he’s open sourced the code. I cannot wait to dig into this.

I’m curious, too, how I could incorporate it into something like Callisto CMS, a content management system built using AxKit. I’d also like to know out how easily it could be ported for use in Cocoon. I prefer to work with AxKit but have to be open to other options.

The Space Shuttle Columbia appears to have broken up on re-entry. Oh no. And I just now heard that the flag at the Kennedy Space Center has been lowered to half-staff. I guess that’s unofficial confirmation. NASA should hold a press conference in half an hour or so.

I’m up at Lake Superior College for the next couple days, doing web accessibility training for their faculty, so will be incommunicado.

I’m looking forward to it, should be fun. (Especially after the bureaucratic hell it took to arrange my involvement. But that’s a story for another day.)

I’ve switched the DOCTYPE of these pages to XHTML 1.0 Transitional, even though I will continue to “code” to Strict. Why? Because Dean Burge makes sense: the XHTML media types summary from the W3C suggests that XHTML 1.0 Strict should not be sent as text/html. Until user agents can consistently support application/xhtml+xml (yes, I’m looking at you, Internet Explorer), I’m treating the markup as Transitional and sticking with text/html.

I thought about serving up Strict to user agents that claim support for application/xhtml+xml. Paul went that route a while back, before he went off the deep end and moved to HTML (albeit for sound reasons). It just doesn’t seem worth the trouble, though, especially since I’m not doing anything very XML-like with the XHTML at this point. Until I do, I’m not entirely comfortable calling it Strict. Although one could claim that technically it is, it’s the spirit of the matter that sways me.

Mr. Paul Sowden is writing on his web site again. Very glad to see you, Paul.

Kiara was at big band practice, where she had of course broken out photos of the boy. One guy peered closely at a picture. “That’s his first bath,” Kiara offered helpfully.

“Yeah…” He squinted at the picture for a while longer. “Is Sam a programmer?”

When I heard this, I was dying to see what picture had led him to this conclusion. I didn’t think I had a Perl shirt on in any of them. Maybe an Apple shirt? Nah, that’d just peg me as a Mac user. Maybe that MySQL shirt…that would still be weird, though, why would he assume programmer?

Then I found it.

If this were TV, here’s where the camera would quickly back off to the house, then the city, then the country, then the planet, all while my screams echoed through the galaxy.

In the photo, I am wearing a Visual Basic .NET t-shirt.

Go ahead, Matt, chortle.

Why would I wear such a thing? Two words: free clothes. And I’m not the language bigot you might make me out to be.

It’s really funny the reactions I get to the shirt when I work up the courage to wear it in public. No one’s actually come up to me and tried to start a conversation, as has happened when I’ve worn Perl gear or an Apple shirt, but they do stare. Aghast, I assume. ;-)

Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions Superbowl trailer.

Excellent. This is what I get for not watching the game. (via Hack the Planet)

There are two movies that Kiara and I absolutely loved but it seems no one else ever actually watched: Dark City and Gattaca. No more. Wil Wheaton is a self-described Dark City weenie.

Ooh, guess what just made it to my wishlist: All Creatures Great and Small on DVD. Series 1 and Series 2 are out, it looks like Series 3 will be available before long.

I love this show. When Kiara was in Sweden for Christmas a couple years ago, my evenings consisted of pouring myself a glass of 20-year tawny port, dimming the lights, and watching episodes from the first season. It runs at such a completely different pace from anything else I’ve ever seen. If ever you find you need to slow down your life, All Creatures is for you. It might take some getting used to, especially if you’ve only been exposed to the frenetic whirlwind that is modern television, but take your time, kick back, and let yourself go. It is absolutely marvelous.

No, I never read the books. Probably should. They don’t have Peter Davison, though.

And did you know that there’s a BBC America Shop? Me neither.