The short-form week of 12–18 Jul 2010

19 Jul 2010; last modified 13 Mar 2011

The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 12 messages in 14 conversations. (With 3 favorites.)

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 Sunday at 10:30pm

Note to self: Payless car rental is *way* offsite from SFO. Avoid in future.—@ndw
@ndw What's not way offsite at SFO? Takes an hour just to go to the rental line to wait in.—@eliasisrael
@eliasisrael The offsite building at the end of the train is one thing. Payless is a shuttle ride *beyond that*.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 06:31am

Leaving Exeter for the London #xquery meetup. Love travelling by train, but this one has no plug sockets - weird!—@adamretter
@adamretter Tell me about it! The trains from Liverpool Street to Norwich never have plugs. After a trans-Atlantic flight, it's a real pain.—@ndw

Tuesday at 04:58am

The air intakes in #concorde slowed the air by 1,000 mph within the space of 14 feet!!!—@philipfennell

Tuesday at 04:59am

The longest golf putt ever was done on-board #concorde whilst travelling at Mach 2. It took 23 seconds and the ball travelled 8.5 miles!—@philipfennell

Tuesday at 01:41pm

The iPhone does not drop calls. Steve Jobs cuts off conversations he considers unworthy.—@qhardy

Wednesday at 12:01am

Went rock climbing with @ryangrimm at Planet Granite. My first time climbing. Serious, addictively fun.—@ndw

Wednesday at 10:00am

Morning radio DJs failing utterly to grasp the Poincaré "conjunction". And phonetic pronunciation apparently.—@ndw

Wednesday at 11:26pm

A pre-red-eye toast to @dckc from SFO. Thanks for the heroic efforts!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:55am

Now departing at 1:00a, if Murphy's had his fill of fun. Home tomorrow, but not before the afternoon. #longday—@ndw
@ndw Yikes! And you're back next week too?—@jpcs
@jpcs No, I won't be back. See you next time!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 07:39am

Anybody out there know if XML-FO is useful for generating textual tables (i.e., just in ASCII)? @ndw ?—@mnot
@mnot Do you mean XSL-FO? No, I wouldn't think that'd be good for text output. I'd try HTML + elinks -dump for a start. HTH—@ndw

Thursday at 09:35am

Google voice transcription: "Alternate Flight, your new itinerary is. Mesa. Her night. It's like number or 70 3:29. Hello routed. Bye."—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 02:52am

http://is.gd/dtYPo On numbers.. and sets thereof. #math s—@dpawson
@dpawson I must not have had a std math education b/c I'm pretty sure I encountered them all except perhaps Quaternions before college—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 07:26am

lazy crowdsourcing: if a func defined in xquery w/ 0 arity (no args), whats its default context, if any ? scanning xquery specs for answer!—@xquery
@xquery I had always thought functions were context free, and that only arg or global variable could be used to establish context in func—@abcoates
@abcoates me too, but can't find this explicitly anywhere in the specs and eXistdb xqy funcs allow default context—@xquery
@xquery XQuery 3.1.5: During eval of a fn, the context item, pos, size is undefined, except where it is def by some expr inside the fn—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 02:40pm

Cucumbers: pickling. Tomatillos: salsaing. Dinner: ratatouilling. It's almost like New England has great local produce in summer.—@liza
@liza Almost?—@ndw