36 years of Jython

The first post was in 1969 when I was 4 :-)

More seriously though, Brian Zimmer et. al. are moving closer and closer to a new alpha release of Jython. Watch that space.

The biggest shock to received wisdom since the irrational human acceptance of the 404

"It very well may be that, in the future, we’ll look back and realize that microformats were the bootstrap needed to haul the web into semanticity." -- Eric Meyer

Amen to that. The standard wisdom in this space is that you start by digging out pure, pristine semantics and then put them into a formaldehyde solution with the lable:

Universal form - do not touch.

on the bottle. From these, you generate mere renderings. (X)HTML is only for such throw-away renderings. Second rate, derivative, impure things...XSLT/CSS are prophylactics that insulate the high priests from the possible infections that renderings carry around on their hind legs.

Real XML vocabularies on the other hand, are ones in which domain specific concepts have their own custom tags dammit! Tags I say! Tags are the rightful home of the most hallowed Universals of noun-ness : from cars to coffee pots to chalk to cheese.

He who would slide semantics into (gasp!) renderings under the banner of nasty vomative attribute skullduggery will suffer the death of a thousand first order predicates...

Or so the received wisdom would suggest. Just as received wisdom suggested that the Webs failure to deal with link integrity would render it useless. Just as received wisdom suggested that the only way to find stuff in a large corpus is to have everything classified beforehand. Just as received wisdom suggested that SMS was too limited to act as an effective human-to-human communication tool.

Good arguments all. Simple, elegant and wrong. Every one of them.

Semantics is next up.

Derssolation

• Derssolation: or Dersolation: An unpleasant emotional state that comes with not having access to your RSS aggregator for a period of time through no fault of your own. e.g. because your server based RSS aggregator is down.
  

Origin of term uncertain. Though by some to be a combination of desolation, isolation and RSS. Rumoured to have started life as a googlewhack on 18 May 2005.

Pulling the divil (sic) by the (long) tail

Bill pointed me to BBC backstage apropos my recent separating content from presentation soliloquy.

Interesting indeed.

Methinks an interesting metamorphosis gatherth momentum. He who hath e-content brand, hath better figure out a way of harnessing the creative potential of the the long tail. For truly I say onto you, he who hath not got a hold of the long tail hath a major problem brewing going forward as an e-content brand.

Referer curiosity syndrome

The curiosity that results from seeing repeated appearances of a firewalled URI in your HTTP refererlogs...

A URI to an FAQ for example, in a big tech. company. A blue one :-)

Differentiating content from presentation

Differentiating content from presentation is dead easy. The boundary line is clearly visible surrounding the black bits in this picture.

Trouble is, as you zoom in on the differentiation to clarify your own thinking, the complexity of the boundary refuses to reduce...Or so it seems to me.

Anyway.
Where does content stop and presentation start? is my rumination in ITWorld this week.

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