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The short-form week of 9–15 May 2011

16 May 2011; last modified 27 May 2011

The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 61 messages in 61 conversations. (With 24 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 09:40pm

May 22nd is going to be so much fun.—@kendall
@kendall Dude, you’re so not going to Heaven.—@bsletten
@kendall 2013 too. But I fear the last few weeks/months of 2012 are going to be an unmitigated assault on reason.—@ndw

Monday at 05:27am

"The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster." - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html—@simonstl

In a conversation that started on Monday at 06:40am

Great, thanks a lot Samoa - as if timezone calculations weren't tricky enough already http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13330592—@simonw
@simonw One does not calculate timezones. That's a n00b error. One looks them up in the Olson database. Soln is no harder than it was. :)—@malcolmt

Monday at 09:30am

If your web site uses a proxy to block access from readability.com, you're an idiot and an ass.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 09:48am

Sad Face: brand new i7 MacBookPro is suddenly experiencing freeze on wake issues. Trés unhappy.—@dhmspector
@dhmspector If you’re using the DisplayLink USB adapter to drive a second external monitor, make sure you update to the latest beta drivers.—@ndw
@ndw sadly I'm just using it by itself.. goes to sleep and randomly freezes on wake. Sometimes w/the graphics all smashed/de-interlaced—@dhmspector

Monday at 12:30pm

Worldwide Night Sky Stitched Together In 5 Gigapixel Image http://bit.ly/iLNhJ4—@slashdot

Monday at 02:09pm

Copyright industry has fooled creators into thinking all rights reserved model is their friend. It is not.—@newsbrooke

In a conversation that started on Monday at 02:48pm

I now possess an International Driving Permit. Seems like a $15 scam to me, but I'm assured it'll help should I get stopped in ES.—@ndw
@ndw You could test it by speeding in, say, the UK—@billtrippe
@billtrippe I could do lots of things, but I think I’ll try never to have cause to remove it from my pack.—@ndw
@ndw A wise man—@billtrippe
@ndw Not needed (in Europe at least).—@vambenepe

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:28am

We should start a fund to finance a virus the sole purpose of which is to remove Comic Sans from all computers on the face of the Earth.—@robinberjon
@robinberjon I recently received a template for technical documentation that used comic sans as the default font. Not sure if I’ll recover.—@ndw
@ndw @robinberjon @georgevhulme comic sans is what happens to typography when Microsoft gets involved—@mtezna

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:41am

http://is.gd/wWGeau On camera controls. Neat teaching tool #photography—@dpawson
@dpawson That is pretty cool.—@ndw
@ndw @dpawson ya, lets see who uses tpp first for their next presentation ... can't wait !—@xquery

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 08:08am

If you mean "cd /some/where; rm -rf thing", don't accidentally type "rm -rf /some/where". #justsayin—@ndw
@ndw ouch.—@RepoRat
@ndw did you? *outch*—@dscape

Tuesday at 08:18am

Oddly, /some/where is neither excluded from TimeMachine nor does it appear to have been backed up with its sibling directories. #fail—@ndw

Tuesday at 08:19am

RT @ndw: Oddly, /some/where is neither excluded from TimeMachine nor does it appear to have been backed up with ... http://bit.ly/iQmCaP—@fail_watch

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

Yep: /MarkLogic/MyDataDir. On the plus side, I’ve got about 20G more space on my disk now. Thankfully that was just dev/test data. I think.—@ndw
@ndw You probably wish you'd setup that replication service thingy, eh?—@ronhitchens

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 08:45am

I need a good SSH tunnel manager for OS X. Recommendations?—@kplawver
@kplawver Meerkat.—@ndw

Tuesday at 08:48am

"Torture all too easily becomes acceptable. A society that allows that to happen can not call itself civilized." http://econ.st/jJa3XO—@ndw

Tuesday at 08:51am

Thanks @ndw, @danielmorrison & @wfarr! Looks like Meerkat is the SSH tunnel consensus!—@kplawver

Tuesday at 11:16am

I'm not sure what you call a society where 'corporate leaders' get to approve or disapprove everything, but I'm quite sure I don't like it.—@kendall

Tuesday at 11:47am

I paid next day shipping and 24 hours later my order is still "processing". Customer service says "let me put a rush on that for you."—@ndw

Tuesday at 11:48am

Why isn't overnight shipping a rush? "We get so many online orders sometimes it takes a while to process them all." #wtf #newegg #fail—@ndw

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

So many PDF files would be so much more valuable as ePUB files—@ndw
@ndw theoretically, #ePUB trumps #PDF for most scenarios. practically, how many people know how to generate or consume ePUB content?—@dret
@dret @ndw It's HTML. ... the annoying special sauce needed other then that should be automagiced away. http://ochook.org/—@gcarothers
@ndw Even more valuable as Web sites.—@hsivonen
@hsivonen somehow agreed, but then you have to cope for offline reading.—@karlpro
@hsivonen Indeed. Though in particular these are files I’d like to put on a portable device to read offline, so ePUB was what came to mind.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 11:57am

amen to that RT @ndw: So many PDF files would be so much more valuable as ePUB files—@xquery
@xquery @ndw Sounds like an opportunity..—@grtjn

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 12:01pm

RT @ndw: So many PDF files would be so much more valuable as ePUB files—@RepoRat
@RepoRat @ndw How so? What are differences between them?—@campbell_b

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 12:23pm

I'm *so* going to pre-order one of those Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices powered by Honeycomb as soon as I can.—@jillmwo
@jillmwo Bah. I want a 7.x Tab with Honeycomb. Oh, well. #firstworldproblems—@ndw

Tuesday at 01:35pm

Wow, VERY cool. RT @mathias: Photoshop’s layer styles window remade in HTML5, producing CSS3 as its output: http://mths.be/aze—@Fyrd

Tuesday at 02:07pm

.. Who Owns Your Social #Identity? .. Evan replied: RT @evanpro There is one namespace that you own: DNS. Use it. #fb—@JamieXML

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:24pm

Splashed water all over my MBP :( Now drying, may Eris save it. Any idea how long I should wait to turn it back on?—@robinberjon
@robinberjon stick it in a container of rice.—@davidpriest_ca
@davidpriest_ca Thanks, but its ctrl key is dead — brought it to repair!—@robinberjon
@robinberjon Until it’s dry, at least? <smirk/>—@ndw
@ndw Oh you're a funny one aren't you? It's the laptop I got with my XML Prague money!—@robinberjon
@robinberjon Put it under a hot incandescent bulb, if you can, and leave it overnight.—@abcoates
@abcoates Thanks, looking for a good source of mild heat. The us refusing to oblige though.—@robinberjon

Tuesday at 02:27pm

"many webservices that return HTTP STATUS 200 OK with an html body that says “400". If you’re doing this, you suck." http://bit.ly/kGkTch—@pgor

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:35pm

@ndw Makes you wonder what Orville and Wilbur would have thought. Hard to beleive what happens in just over 100 years.—@noahmendelsohn
@ndw Glad to see it has lots of cupholders & CDROM bin near the back seat. That all apparently comes with the $300M version. Wake up Boeing!—@noahmendelsohn

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

Oddly nervous about my 1st formal "func spec review mtg". But I'm sure my peers will be gentle. Not. #laughwhileyoucanmonkeyboy #timetomanup—@ndw
@ndw fortunately, nobody can throw tomatoes far enough to reach you :)—@mdubinko

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 05:59pm

pointers into #XML and #XHTML resources defined in an #RDF-specific way? what happened to web architecture and frag-ids? http://is.gd/92owju—@dret
@dret Indeed.—@ndw

Wednesday at 05:12am

File under: Sharecropping, DRM, Apple, Fucked Models. http://bit.ly/k7uw8C—@blaine

Wednesday at 06:52am

Have we all seen the Met's creepy new digital stalking, thoughtcrime-patrolling, Philip K. Dick-style equipment? No? http://t.co/79yQSTe—@piercepenniless

Wednesday at 07:27am

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't configure FreeBSD".—@mktums

Wednesday at 08:45am

If people investigated their religion with as much scrutiny as Obama's birth certificate, there'd be no religious people.—@AnonyOps

Wednesday at 11:09am

cool! i didn't know science gave out an award for "best illusion of the year" but they do and here it is for 2011 http://tinyurl.com/3dby36l—@brigittedale

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 11:09am

I'd rather be a tax-and-spend liberal than a slash-and-burn conservative.—@kendall
@kendall Can I be a Tax and pay for things we already have liberal? ;)—@gcarothers
@gcarothers Sure. That's better than being many other things.—@kendall

Wednesday at 11:21am

Wow, Apple really screwed the iFlow developers. This makes me sad: http://is.gd/JmMrAY—@wilw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 11:33am

How do Windows users live with this insanity where the system decides to install 30 updates when I'm trying to turn it off. WTF.—@ndw
@ndw set it to download updates, but not install them, then always hibernate, rather than shutting down (if you have a laptop)—@aristippus303
@aristippus303 In this case it was installing an app that required a restart. I’ve probably not rebooted that VM session in ... ages—@ndw
@ndw as someone who has written installers, it's often just lazyness that requires a forced restart. That or including a MS component ;-)—@aristippus303
@ndw you're sure it's not part of the group policy that admins force onto you? Maybe the admins are the blame. Or remove the battery ;-)—@xokomola
@xokomola This was on a completely stock Windows XP install. No admins here.—@ndw
@ndw How do they live with the insanity of a system so insecure that forcing that behavior is the *good* answer?—@eliasisrael
@ndw in my parents' case, they switched to iPads. Windows machine is now giant dust bunny.—@JeanKaplansky
@ndw by switching to Mac #obligatoryjoke—@mdubinko
@mdubinko Yeah. This was for a piece of windows software I needed to run. It was in a VM so it didn’t really matter, but how annoying!—@ndw
@ndw re "The Secret Life of Word" ... I shudder whenever I read "without being a programmer" ...—@DALDEI
Because Windows users are insane :-) There now I've offended everyone. QT @ndw: How do Windows users live with this insanity—@docum3nt

Wednesday at 12:11pm

@ndw, I fell for that one too recently. Changed Shutdown to Sleep, but got tricked by Windows that changed it back to Shutdown (!).. :-(—@grtjn

Wednesday at 12:23pm

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

MarkLogic Dev Lounge slides now available: http://bit.ly/hJMTL0 Including my own preso on how we use XSLT: http://bit.ly/l28Jlj (PDF)—@evanlenz
@evanlenz PDF!? you need help my friend @ndw #xslt—@danja

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:29pm

Success! 25 screws out, 25 in. 40G out, 120G in. Epson P-3000 upgraded. Those D7000 raw files are big! http://bit.ly/leuEuY—@ndw
@ndw D7000?—@noahmendelsohn
@noahmendelsohn Yeah. Early, pre-vacation birthday present. :-)—@ndw

Wednesday at 01:31pm

Another task for my task list: investigate integration of #Emacs #Org mode and Google Tasks. No pun intended.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:57pm

I've just put 0.9 available on the pre-release updater, would love for pre-releasers to verify this build for the next 30 mins! :)—@alfredapp
@alfredapp Works fine for me.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:13pm

if i have an XML-centric application accepting email: is there an XML vocabulary for representing an email message? #RFC2822 #RFC2045—@dret
@dret there will not only be an XML repr, ther ewill also be a much more useful RDF version—@danja
@danja why would an RDF version be "much more useful" in an XML-centric app? metamodel preferences aside, is there such a model somwhere?—@dret
@dret the model is in the RFCs, I'm sure someone will have done an RDF version, how reliable that is is another matter—@danja
@danja that's the reason why i was asking. schemafying an RFC can be surprisingly hard (be it in RDF or XML), so i'd like to avoid that.—@dret
@dret we have an internal one we use at markmail.org—@eedeebee
@dret ... I have a feeling @hunterhacker and @ndw might have an answer ;) http://markmail.org/—@gcarothers
@gcarothers that indeed is a very good pointer; i have to admit that i did not think of the fabulous markmail when i wrote my question.—@dret

Wednesday at 02:14pm

Reality bites Newt Gingrich -- http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/2009/04/turned-into-newt.html -- and the sad thing? It won't matter at all.—@kendall

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:31pm

I find I have reason to ponder "What'll it take to get end user XML editors that don't suck?" I wonder if I'll think of any good answers.—@ndw
@ndw Question is: what do you want in an end-user XML editor?—@robinberjon
@robinberjon @ndw oXygen doesn't suck for me. What does Emacs do that oXygen doesn't? :-)—@abcoates
@abcoates It all depends on what you want to do — hence my question. I don't think you can make an XML editor that's good for all use cases.—@robinberjon
@robinberjon True, although I don't find myself wanting to have a selection of XML editors as much as I used to 5 years ago.—@abcoates
@abcoates oXygen is indeed great for the IDE sector. I like Axel for simple, in-browser editors (which is what I need most).—@robinberjon
@ndw @xml editors that don't suck @altova #xmlspy—@pmvallone
@pmvallone By whatever metrics you selected those, I bet #Emacs, #oXygen, and #Epic don’t suck either. Yet, they’re not for ordinary users.—@ndw
@ndw [end user XML editors that don't suck] If the end-user is an XSLT programmer: the tool should be at least as good as the XSelerator.:)—@dnovatchev
@ndw IT WILL TAKE TOTAL REVOLUTION. (Actually, it'll take somebody revamping Panorama Pro. Which didn't suck! Much.)—@RepoRat
@ndw imo, Xopus is not that bad. It's not Oxygen but the browser editor is schema and stylesheet driven. http://xopus.com/demo/dita—@garyprusso

Thursday at 09:21am

Losing your edge is when making sure people don't get upset is more important than making sure people do the right thing—@Carnage4Life

Thursday at 09:24am

RT @dria: Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google http://shar.es/HuFAV // I cant think of anything Facebook has done that I actually like—@dcm

Thursday at 02:19pm

Agility doesn't stop you from having to occasionally say "sorry", but it's nice to be able to do it the next day instead of three months on.—@gleneivey

Thursday at 02:59pm

a bit confused by how much live TV you people from the future still watch.—@mattb

Thursday at 03:07pm

Yeah, you can ignore that e-mail that made me sound like an idiot. Because, I was, you know, temporarily impaired in the brain.—@kplawver

Thursday at 03:37pm

Note to self: Reading the news does not help when you're trying to be less grumpy :-P—@fakebaldur

Thursday at 04:10pm

Ugh. BOS is a zoo. So nice to fly out of a small airport most times.—@ndw

Thursday at 06:58pm

Two Twitter people walk into a bar. First one says: "We just walked into a bar!". Second one says: "RT We just walked into a bar! LOL".—@DrTwittenheimer

In a conversation that started on Saturday at 01:38am

@ndw Lucky man! If you have a chance, go to the Baños Arabes!—@robinberjon

Saturday at 02:17am

RT @ndw Hello Sevilla http://t.co/SDU0LeA—@MoniqueSleek

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

Smartphone owners: does the phone's GPS work when you're on a train? If so, how well?—@RichardOfSussex
@RichardOfSussex I think it depends mostly on whether or not the car is a functional faraday cage. I've had some success on some trains.—@ndw

Saturday at 09:03am

La Macarena. Insert irreverent dance joke here. http://yfrog.com/h35dcukj—@ndw

Sunday at 01:00pm

Plaza de España http://yfrog.com/h8pyahtj—@ndw