Analog or Digital?

"Digital photographs, MP3 audio and computer generated animation are all examples of 'good enough' emulations of an underlying analog perfection.

Maybe. Maybe not."-- From analog to digital and back to analog

A blogroll and an enema

I've cleaned out the blogroll on my blog home page pretty dramatically. I'm now just using it for pointing to various ways of contacting me rather than linking to blogs that I read/recommend.

The main reason is that the blogroll isn't a true reflection of the blogs I read these days. That would be by bloglines OPML file, not my blogroll.

The end of the beginning, middle and end

"Consider this: to a search engine, words like 'beginning', 'middle' and 'end' have no relevance. Consider this: to a WIKI, all orderings of content are fair game. WIKIs positively thrive on breaking down pre-conceived notions of orderly progression from beginning to middle to end. Consider this: a personal weblog is like an essay without an end. The end is always moving, always co-located with the last entry on the weblog.

It seems that search engines, WIKIs and blogs are re-writing some fairly time-honored assumptions about written communication."

The end of the beginning, middle and end.

A dynamic (near) future

"Simple dynamic programming languages and simple dynamic coordination languages are winning. Vendors will have to differentiate themselves on something more than wizards that mask complexity."

-- Patrick Logan

+1.

Don't tell me, show me, showmedo

I recently opined the general dearth in the use of the Web as a vehicle for explaining/detailing complex phenomena that involve movement, 3-D views and so on. Stuff that no amount of colour plates or line art in paper-illustrations can ever match.

Interactive software of the GUI persuasion is a good example of this. No amount of screen shots can come close to actually looking over someones shoulder and watching them do something.

So, I applaud initiatives like showmedo and wish them every success. I'm sure the Python training videos will be a big hit.

AJAX - nearly 2007 already

One of my pet theories is that no idea in computing every really takes off until at least ten years after it has been first hatched. XML goes back to the Eighties. So too does Python.

Would you trace AJAX back ten years yet? Its getting there believe it or not.

Back in 1997 Jon Bosak wrote about the slogan "XML gives Java something to do". http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/why/xmlapps.htm.

He was talking about client/server computing, browsers etc.

But the "J" in AJAX is "JavaScript" right.

Right.

Eliot Kimber Bloggeth

"Maybe next I'll discuss why all XML content management systems are, without exception, heinous piles of [elided] that should be avoided at all costs...."--Eliot Kimber

Eliot has been doing markup stuff for longer than nearly anyone else, me included. Subscribed.