The short-form week of 14–20 Jul 2008

21 Jul 2008; last modified 13 Mar 2011

The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 71 messages in 57 conversations.

This document was created automatically from my archive of my Twitter stream. Due to limitations in the Twitter API and occasional glitches in my archiving system, it may not be 100% complete.

In a conversation that started on Monday at 12:50pm

not liking the <step1/>, <step2/>, <step3/> design. much prefer #docbook's <step/>'s—@coreyopenmls
@coreyopenmls Does #s1000d have change-page requirements? That seriously constrains your output format.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 01:03pm

Perhaps users like to shop for apps on the App Store more than they like browsing the web? What does that tell us about the web itself?—@robc2
@robc2 Mostly, I think, it tells us that the web doesn't have a uniform directory of web applications grouped by category, price, etc.—@ndw
@ndw #s1000d figures and page breaks: There must be no manual attempt to move the figure to another page due to an automatic page break.—@coreyopenmls
@coreyopenmls One of the aerospace schemas does require the ability to generate change pages, but maybe it wasn't s1000d.—@ndw

Monday at 03:46pm

Clouds blew away: lamb on the barbi is a "go"—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 11:05pm

My colleagues in pizza have very boring taste.—@plasticbagUK
@plasticbagUK Muddy? Or soapy? :-)—@ndw
@ndw lol. Thanks for the laugh. Just got 2 crowns put on; your observation's a great way to start the morning.—@peteaven
@peteaven Uh, thanks. I'm not sure which observation, but if you got a chuckle out of it, I'll call that a win :-)—@ndw

Tuesday at 08:52am

Keeriest! The Office 2007 application UI is *ugly* and confusing—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 11:07am

@twitter, please give me a preference to auto-block spammers with more than a 5:1 following to follower ratio. That would rule, thanks.—@kplawver
@kplawver What's the benefit of blocking folks you aren't subscribed to? Does their subscr to you give them powers of which I'm unaware?—@ndw

Tuesday at 01:50pm

I am managing *page breaks* around section headings *by hand* Word=FAIL—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 04:03pm

Taking Aquamacs for another spin—@ndw
@ndw Carbon Emacs reigns here, at least until I get so totally fed up with Mac OS X that I install Ubuntu directly on the hardware...—@freddrake
@freddrake Carbon still reigns here too, but it crashes periodically. And I'm slowly being swallowed by the dark side, expecting uniform UIs—@ndw

Wednesday at 07:56am

XProc + Saxon 9.1 = working attribute match patterns!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 09:20am

Learning about optimizing pages for the iPhone—@liza
@liza31337 Where? I've been considering trying to make some better mobile pages—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 10:21am

I have a PNG, I want a tool that will let me eyedropper colors off of them in #hhhhhh notation. Pointers?—@ndw
@ndw I use Paintshop Pro - I can't live without the eyedropper capability..—@harveybetty
@harveybetty Yeah. I'm just *astonished* that AFAICT, Photoshop's eyedropper only reports the values in decimal.—@ndw

Wednesday at 12:03pm

@cavlec Perfect. Thanks!—@ndw

Wednesday at 01:45pm

Any exim4 experts out there?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:52pm

Burning question - where do old technical books go to die? Is it sacrilegious to put them in the 'circular file'?—@harveybetty
@harveybetty Yep.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 06:29pm

TwitterPoll: name the song/singers: "Maybe I'm a stupid fool / chasing butterflies like you"—@mollydotcom
@mollydotcom What do you call... "Molly" is my first guess :-)—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 06:44pm

OS X puts desktop icons down the right side. Can I change that?—@ndw
@ndw Use "System Preferences" for the "Dock" preferences.—@freddrake
@freddrake It's not the Dock I want to move, it's the Hard drive and other junk that winds up on the desktop—@ndw
@ndw Recent news story indicated that the sudden flood of bizarre news spam msgs are attempts to re-establish robot spam software on ur pc—@jillmwo
@jillmwo Good luck with that :-)—@ndw

Wednesday at 06:45pm

Spam subject: Pope killed by assassin in Vatican City. Huh?—@ndw

Wednesday at 06:46pm

Dear GMail: If the mail is in an eastern European or Asian encoding, it's spam.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 09:22pm

@avernet What about it? :-)—@ndw

Wednesday at 09:31pm

So I've got some jQuery JS that updates the page based on time-of-day. I'd like it to run a function every 5 minutes. Is this a solved prob?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 12:57am

Fluid MobileMe Window Style coming soon (for the record I know this is fugly.. but it *is* kinda fun...) http://skitch.com/t/f11—@iTod
@itod js doesn't seem to be running in my fluid app, even though I've enabled it. Got a clue-by-four?—@ndw

Thursday at 07:01am

I wonder how long I have to wait for the #freerunner to be a reasonable platform.—@ndw

Thursday at 07:21am

You know, I feel bad about considering a closed, DRM-encrusted, walled garden of an iPhone, but if the alternative is windows mobile...—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 09:14am

Losing will to live reading the "Observatory" posts on planet.opensolaris.org. Get a room guys! [this one isn't it imho]—@timfoster
@timfoster "Best shapes" looks fine, but the characters are chubby - perhaps more like Mac OS X. I don't have 91 on this machine :-(—@dme
@dme Also, the hiptop folks got bought by MS so I expect the next gen SK will be Windows too—@ndw
@dme The browser isn't really adequate. And access to corporate email would be nice. So would a GPS, but really, it's the browser.—@ndw

Thursday at 09:48am

Everytime I look at "mind mapping" tools I think they should be really cool and useful, yet, I never find any actual use for them. Just me?—@ndw

Thursday at 10:57am

I wonder if Pandora can be taught to talk to Last.fm?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 11:22am

Dang it! The repair folks returned my printer, but not the power cord. I only sent it because I was have a problem with power!—@ndw
@ndw i havent heard of that before. might try showing the JS console (under window menu) and reload. (console is weak, but basically works)—@iTod
@itod bah, PBCAK. Works fine now. Unless turning on the console changed something system wide :-)—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 12:46pm

Stay tuned for details, but it'll be in Santa Cruz, sometime in next 8 weeks. Must be OK w/ dogs, dirt, and horses. Can camp here, too.—@KathySierra
@KathySierra There are days when building physical stuff is more appealing than coding.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:34pm

Most annoying Firefox bug on the Mac: cmd-back in an input field does a browser back instead of taking you to the beginning of the field.—@ebruchez
@ebruchez re: cmd-back Oh yeah!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 09:01pm

Half of me is excited at hell, the other half is convinced they're gonna █████ it up: http://tinyurl.com/5zyklh—@b3gl
@b3gl sync isn't happy today. I may just use it in iPhone only mode.—@duncan
@duncan I've never scanned it, but I always worry it won't come back for just the same reason. It always has though.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 07:24am

I've stumbled into a "happening": http://tinyurl.com/pradipta-rolodex—@kplawver
@kplawver Fantastic!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 08:21am

By what miracle of pronunciation can "phreadz" be pronounced "threads"? Heh.—@ndw
@ndw non-native english spearkers (e.g., here in Portugal) sometimes say "thread" as "sread" or "fread" if unable to vocalize the "þ" sound.—@ruidlopes
@ruidlopes Ah, yes. I meant no disrespect to non-English speakers (as a pathetically monolingual American, I wouldn't dare).—@ndw
@ruidlopes Still, that's going the other way, isn't it? That's a linguistically alternate pronunciation of "threads" not a variant spelling—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 08:49am

Just heard a new term 'backscatter'. Now for the Google search to see if I can resolve my issue.—@harveybetty
@harveybetty Backscatter as in spam? Yeah, I got a deluge too, someone forged my email for p0rn spam.—@ndw
@ndw but it does make me wonder if that's language evolution or pure language trashing (by those who write "phreadz"). I vote in the latter.—@ruidlopes
@ruidlopes I think it was searching for a 1337 domain name :-)—@ndw

Friday at 09:01am

No disrespect intended to the folks at phreadz.com, either, btw. :-)—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 09:51am

I would say that the iPhone OS is crashing way too often.—@ebruchez
@ebruchez "Ever" would be too often, but what is reality?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:50am

enjoying getting things done on macbook pro. Fusion + multiple macs is awesome. Lots of apps on Mac now as well.—@DaveO
@DaveO "Fusion + multiple macs"? Did you mean multiple guests?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:53am

picking up the pieces after some <expletives deleted> who managed to remove roots crontab 5 hours ago and not tell anyone. *SIGH*—@quasi42
@quasi42 Death penalty called for, I'd say.—@timbray
@timbray Not I, though I'm more and more confident that I've made my Mac unstable, http://is.gd/RUF—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:56am

OH @on_radio4 "I have no objection to giving Margaret Thatcher a state funeral, but if she dies first then the deal is off"—@psd
@psd LOL!—@ndw

Friday at 03:34pm

Finished *all* my XProc action items; new editor's draft ready for WG review. I can haz weekend now?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 03:34pm

Finished all of Alex's actions too, come to think of it.—@ndw
@ndw Well done! Now you just have to complete your implementation ;)—@JeniT
@JeniT :-P Now that Saxon 9.1 is out, I'm making progress on that front too. And a long flight to CA coming up!—@ndw

Friday at 03:53pm

Starting to try to get a handle on what's installed to be as ready as possible for when I scrape my Mac back to spinning rust & reinstall—@ndw

Friday at 03:55pm

Hmm. I'm getting too many repeat plays on Pandora. Small song list, or my narrow preferences?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 05:54pm

If I don't want an iPhone under the current terms, and I don't want a Windows Mobile phone, and I want a GSM phone, what are the best opts?—@ndw
@ndw Blackberry?—@bmanley
@bmanley Are the browsers on the blackberry any good?—@ndw

Friday at 06:36pm

N95 looks nice, but no keyboard would be a drag. Blackberry has a keyboard, but doesn't seem to do much interesting.—@ndw

Friday at 06:39pm

I guess I"m going to lease my soul to Apple for two years after all.—@ndw

Friday at 06:49pm

The blackberry website is so f*cking loaded with flash, I can't tell if I'd want their damn products. FAIL.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 06:51pm

Cool. Now that identi.ca supports the twitter API, I could use twitteriffic with identi.ca. That might reduce my presence on twitter though.—@ndw
@ndw it's pronounced 'like' it. Not the same as it ;) Some people think it's like 'freeds'. But it should be like 'freds'—@kosso
@kosso /me smacks palm on forehead. Perhaps "phreads rhymes with threads" would be less confusing?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:59pm

Catching up on Facebook email..—@hfrench
@hfrench, sounds good. i am off to the cottage for a week and back next monday. mail me vallee@pythian.com to set up a call that wk.—@paulvallee
@paulvallee Buy me (another) beer and I'll tell you some insane RIM stories from my brief stint there as Web 2.0-guy. RIM-=clue—@distobj
@distobj Yeah, I poked at it in the store and decided I could probably learn to deal.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 06:42am

question - do you currently follow chinposin out of inertia, for the timeline tracker at chinposin.com/home/username or for the game itself?—@chinposin
@chinposin inertia, I'm afraid to say—@ndw

Saturday at 07:34am

Off to Lyman Plant House to see the Titan Arum in bloom then over to the Scottish festival at Look Park.—@ndw

Saturday at 03:21pm

The printer works better if you plug in the USB hub. I'm just saying.—@ndw

Saturday at 03:26pm

Fuck. Printer just came back from repair. Now it turns on, but it won't print. That's not really an improvement, is it?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 03:31pm

What's the OSX equivalent of lsusb?—@ndw
@ndw Did you ever find out the OSX equivalent to lsusb?—@pybe
@pybe I don't think so. I forget why I was looking for it now.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 08:15pm

TwitterPoll: If you follow, who leads you and why?—@mollydotcom
@mollydotcom I follow lots of folks I wouldn't necessarily let lead me anywhere. Friends, casual acquaintances, interesting people.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Sunday at 12:32am

Eddie Izzard was wonderfuly strange. Having coffee, dessert, and port at Absinthe.—@whump
@whump I'm jealous. Did he do the French monkey, table, and branch bit? That's my all time fav.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Sunday at 11:43am

Anyone else find that choosing SMS recipients (from the contacts list) in the iPhone 2.0 firmware is a bit laggy sometimes?—@mattgemmell
@mattgemmell with > 500 contacts all of the addr book functions on my 3G are bursty. Scrolling, selection, everything.—@dhmspector
@dhmspector Ugh. I'll have several thousand. Anyone else seeing this behavior?—@ndw

Sunday at 09:10pm

Whee! My #xproc impl runs all the test in the test suite again. Not necessarily correctly, but it's progress!—@ndw