October 29, 2004
Checks & Balances
an interesting article from "the man" Bruce. a good way of pointing that the current administration has gone about committing its recent acts without intervention by the other two branches.
Schneier on Security: The Security of Checks and Balances
Presidential power as a security issue will not play a role in the
upcoming US election. Bush has shown through his actions during his
first term that he favours increasing the powers of the executive
branch over the legislative and the judicial branches. Kerry's words
show that he is in agreement with the president on this issue. And
largely, the legislative and judicial branches are allowing themselves
to be trampled over.
October 28, 2004
flickr and php
check out this blog entry about a recent talk by the flickr PHP guru and what they've been doing over there (what it is exactly that google bought). impressive.
id really like to go into something like that.
Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Flickr architecture
October 27, 2004
some links on "folksonomies"
i dont like the term very much, but its the whole "tag" thing in Flickr and Adobe Photoshop Elements (and should be in every MP3 player, or anything else that categorizes anything)
sorry bout the random, poorly formatted post. in a rush to read/work/etc.
Folksonomy: social classification (Atomiq)
October 21, 2004
old times
eating breakfast with andria this morning. i've been drinking tea every morning for a while, but today andria made it. she served it to me in my old IC SC mug. its been a long time since ive used that cup. its funny how you can keep something around for a long time, but never use it.
its kinda nice. brings back good memories. fun office times, comraderie, etc. anyone else still use theirs?
October 20, 2004
new osx
if you want a preview of some of the new things going on in the mac world:
Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger: Developer Overview
Tiger should be out in early 2005.
podcasting
discovering podcasting recently. (ipodder, et al).
the whole "reading your blog into a mic" thing is pretty lame, but there are some real uses. for example, itconversations is neat, allows you to listen to saved interviews, keynotes, etc based on techie stuff.
basically its all about "time shifting" again. there are radio shows popping up that you don't have to tune into (you just download and listen to it when you want).
the whole thing is tivo for your ears.
rode into work today with headphones, listened to a few of these podcasts. listened to bruce schiener's interview on itconversations (never knew he had a funny voice). and "the daily source code" with an old MTV VJ Adam Currey.
October 19, 2004
weasly is our king
doing a bit of non-work this afternoon, i ran across a few interesting potter sites regarding a theory out there named "Knight2King"
essentially, this guy claims that Ron is actually Dumbledore, sent back in time, grown older. it sounds quite outrageous, but the evidence gathered is interesting.
what is more interesting, however, is the analogy of the chessboard in the first book (more). the two chess games symbolizing the two wars against Voldemort.
there are, of course, some arguments and rebuttals (and more) and it's a bit far-fetched, but so is the idea of a whomping willow.
October 15, 2004
del.icio.us
after seeing it referred to many many times, glancing at it once in a while, and basically ignoring it, ive finally sat down to take a look at del.icio.us and ive got to say, its pretty sweet.
and don't forget the firefox extension to make it even easier to make links. or other nutr.itio.us ideas.
not that having online bookmarks is that new of an idea. honestly the only cool thing about this is the ability to add "tags" to everything. that is, one bookmark can have more than one category.
for example, a link to MarsEdit might be tagged as "blogging" and "osx"
so what? so you don't have to maintain the standard view of your bookmarks in a hierarchical manner, allowing you to find your links faster as you spend less time thinking "ok, now what category does this fit the best under?" because it can fit in any category, perfectly or not.
this concept also isn't that new, but for some reason hasn't caught on too much yet. the programs that use it effectively, i consider very good: GMail, Photoshop Album, Flickr, etc (more?)
this whole concept of mapping one object to several names is very useful. our brains work that way, we are not strictly hierarchical in organizing our thoughts. it reminds me of a better way of organizing files a la kurzweil's brain (java applet) and the much-hyped MS Longhorn WinFS (i think). ive heard that BeOS had a similar filesystem for a while. not sure if that is true anymore.
these tools are so intuitive and easy to use, its just a matter of time before more pop up.
October 12, 2004
yes, i have sand
that is just my response to those stupid "got sand?" stickers that are on every bumper from Paso to Santa Maria. of course, they are referring to the Oceano Dunes, which Andria and i visited on sunday for our first real experience with these Sand People.
for my birthday, andria took me out to the dunes to go Sand Railing. we rented a Sand Rail, which is essentially a car frame made of metal tubes with an engine on the back and big ol' tires.
man, it was a blast. first of all, apparently sand dunes are incredibly steep on their far slope. the guy warned us, but i had no idea until we started heading over a dune and i felt like i was on a roller coaster, except i had a steering wheel. and as "the guy" said, the last thing you want to do when you're going down the back of a dune is turn, even if its your first instinct (cause you will flip and lose your $500 deposit).
fortunately we never flipped, although we did bottom out a couple of times and get stuck, requiring us to dig our way out and guide the car backwards down a dune to the bottom where we could get it going again.
i would go again in an instant. andria, however, might not. she was a bit freaked out by the possibility of getting stuck on the far side of a dune and some motorcycles flying over our heads. i guess i just didn't think that far ahead, as i was so overwhelmed with the torque under my right foot and sand in my eyes.
as for the community of "sand people," they were very much like lake folks. in most respects, the entire feel was much like going to a lake. everybody is camping, it looks like most people are full of cheap beer, and there are basically no rules governing safety besides the motto "try not to run into each other" .. so ya, it was pretty cool.
October 08, 2004
wiki v3.0
so stealing once again from alacrity, i send you off to discover JotSpot, a new type of wiki that is much more than a wiki.
first off, it has improved the wiki interface tremendously, basically it looks a lot better than your basic WikiWikiWeb. it also provides some neat new features, like being able to email to any page for an addition (eg if i cc: a page on the wiki, that email will be appended to the page, a great way to track discussions related to projects). also your standard WYSIWYG tools are available (bold, italic, align, colors, links) so if you know how to use a word processor, you're set. no Wiki formatting required to learn.
just adding those would be nice, would make this a cool new wiki. but what they do next brings this tool into a new realm. as mentioned in alacrity, this becomes sort of the 3rd generation of wikis after (1) basic wikis and (2) Database backed wikis (wikipedia, etc).
What is so great is essentially the introduction of structured data. instead of just being plain text, some bits can be considered "dates" or "values" and can be tweaked, sorted, etc. this allows a wiki to transform from a place to stick a bunch of linked thoughts into a Web Application Development Platform. their example of making a new-hire application is so simple, and so elegant, i just wonder what else can be done that easily. more interestingly, i wonder what tough problems will be find solutions here, ones not immediately obvious.
these guys are a company and they're going to sell this stuff. they just got $5.2M from a VC and it looks pretty neat. im gonna try to hop on early and see just what can be done with this new technology. because, really, thats what this is.
watch the demo (SWF)
October 06, 2004
coolest map ever
too bad its only british
check it out here and be sure to mouse over the map. thats what's so cool.
(taken from alacrity)