Markdown

Markdown is a well thought out syntax for creating (X)HTML from plain text. Coming to a blogging tool/CMS near you RSN.

Kala 300 handset registration

So, I gets me a cool new Kala wireless phone extension from Philips for my newly habitable home office. And whaddya know? The instructions for setting up this puppy *suck* real hard.
Herewith, a message in a blog bottle for future Googlers perpelexed with page 7 of the Philips Kala 300 manual.

You need to register the base station handset *first*. Switch it off and on again to put it into registration mode. Punch in the RC code as instructured. Then, switch it on and off again to put it into registration mode for the additional handset. Now go to work on the additional handset. Register it by switching off/on, punch in the registration code.

Now it works like a charm!
Note to technical writers. When there are two objects involved in a procedure and those objects are both handsets but they serve different purposes and have different associated instructions, give them unique identifying names why don't ya? Sheesh!

And finally for today, on the subject of language

I recommend mother tongue by Bill Bryson. I'm about 3/4 through it now and its fun. Well worth a look if the complexities/power of language - especially English - floats your boat.

Warning: don't inhale this stuff : dihydrogen monoxide

This story nicely illustrates the powers of deception language grants to those who wish to wield it.

SOA is like the night sky

A useful analogy by Pat Helland. SOAs like the night sky. Mr Helland has a knack for useful analogies - Fiefdoms and emissaries is a particularly powerful one for helping people see past OO to the really valuable abstractions underlying true web services.

Schematic Vacuity

I just *love* the tolerant - yet mildly reproachful - tone behind the "Using vacuous schema" message produced by James Clark's nXML XML editing package for emacs. What are you? Some sort of markup wimp? Get yerself a schema man and look sharp about it!.

Ugly, inefficient and fully functional pretty much from first run

It never ceases to amaze me what < 100 lines of Jython will do and how quickly (in terms of development time) it will do it.
Here is a command line app + useful library of stuff for applying xpath's to DOM's and files: xpath.py