The short-form week of 11–17 Jul 2011
18 Jul 2011
The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 105 messages in 92 conversations. (With 14 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 Saturday at 03:55am
RT @ndw: My nephew is 15 and wants to learn programming. What, his mom asks, do I recommend
as a first language? I'm tempted to suggest ...—@silentlennie
@silentlennie @ndw Would love your feedback on our fun programming course for kids at http://t.co/TtO5TrHH. Thanks :).—@schoolofskills
Monday at 05:30am
Thanks, @christo4ferris I couldn’t get in with Chrome yesterday, but when I tried again with Firefox this
morning it worked.—@ndw
Monday at 05:50am
Spam: "Can I trust you?" That's not really the question is it? The question is, can
I trust you? And the answer is categorically no.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Monday at 06:17am
My twitter archiving tool has stopped working. I suppose Twitter changed something
about the API. Dagnabit.—@ndw
@ndw that's the risk of using a third party app, when api changes, the app breaks down
:)—@capucinnolover
@DALDEI Not at all, it’s the source for my “short-form” summaries. http://goo.gl/y4HA2 And good search has proved useful more than once.—@ndw
Monday at 06:18am
Monday at 06:39am
RT @ABridgwater: Wonder if I should Google + my Tweet and then screenshot it for Facebook so I can
email that to my LinkedIn contacts?—@atmanes
In a conversation that started on Monday at 06:48am
working code trumps everything ... except for 'very fast' nearly working code—@xquery
In a conversation that started on Monday at 09:03am
In a conversation that started on Monday at 09:27am
Years ago, someone said the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names might eventually be
available as RDF/linked data. Did that every come about?—@ndw
@ndw @sgillies there's a web service now, but it still requires a subscription. (and still XML)
http://bit.ly/nmNKWm—@Musebrarian
@Musebrarian @sgillies XML would be ideal for me, but I doubt the subscription costs are anywhere near justifiable
for my random tinkerings.—@ndw
@ndw @sgillies Europeana has some open data up. Useful for tinkering? http://bit.ly/r6Wwha—@Musebrarian
@Musebrarian @ndw I assume you're aware of http://t.co/ONbbmQn and geonames.org (extends the former)?—@sgillies
@sgillies @ndw yep, but I haven't looked to see how it handles historic places (?) e.g. http://bit.ly/qCzrId—@Musebrarian
In a conversation that started on Monday at 10:19am
I just realised that in-browser apps won't really work for me until they show up in
Cmd-Tab.—@robinberjon
@robinberjon I’ve had the same experience.—@ndw
@robinberjon on a Mac + Chrome, I can do option-cmd-cursor-left/right after cmd-tab to Chrome.
Standardization opportunity?—@frumioj
@frumioj You don't want any old page to want to appear in the Cmd-Tab list. Installed web
apps might be the right level, worth investigating—@robinberjon
@frumioj Yeah, there are similar shortcuts for other browsers, but it's one step too many.
Yes, there's opportunity, but it's touchy.—@robinberjon
In a conversation that started on Monday at 10:47am
Predictably underwhelmed with Google+ (I don't really use Facebook either), but I
apparently have invitations if anyone wants one.—@kerryb
Monday at 11:59am
100 pixelated camera illustrations for anybody to use for anything. http://bit.ly/h5GEyJ—@azaaza
Monday at 12:15pm
bzip2 has been running so long, I doubt it'll make the overall xfer time faster. Also
so long that I'm afraid to abort it in case I'm wrong.—@ndw
Monday at 12:44pm
It's too bad republican ideas about job creation are totally made up pretendy-land
talk, otherwise I'd totally be one. @speakerboehner—@MarthaPlimpton
In a conversation that started on Monday at 01:02pm
As requested, I've created a new #nodejs logo using Times New Roman font and MsPaint. http://twitpic.com/5oorlv—@maraksquires
.@maraksquires that's not how you mspaint. this is how you mspaint: #nodejs logooo http://t.co/X7qn91D—@fat
In a conversation that started on Monday at 01:12pm
After many hours, bzip2 saved roughly 1GB. 3.5% of the total. So not worth it. (Mostly
camera raw data, FYI, so maybe not unexpected)—@ndw
Monday at 01:15pm
In a conversation that started on Monday at 01:51pm
If you get offended in a job interview when I ask approximately how many lines of
Java code you've written, then...not sure what to say. :(—@kendall
@kendall Ok. I think I could guess that close without fear that I might be aggrandizing myself.
If more lines of Java is aggrandizing...—@ndw
@ndw It's only a rough metric of experience, but it's better than nothing...And kind of
important if applying for, you know, a Java job :)—@kendall
@kendall @ndw I think I have written negative lines of Java still at this point. More code deleted
then added.—@gcarothers
@gcarothers Excellent answer! :>—@kendall
In a conversation that started on Monday at 02:30pm
Apocalypse Now In My Pants #improvefilmtitlesbyaddinginmypants—@ndw
Monday at 02:31pm
In a conversation that started on Monday at 02:41pm
For the sake of completness [complete what? -ed], gzip got within 2% of bzip2 in 27
minutes—@ndw
@ndw gzip roxs—@jeffsonstein
Monday at 04:29pm
@ndw pssst... it looks like they have reopened Google+ invitations & I just sent you one—@jeffsonstein
Monday at 08:32pm
Monday at 08:32pm
So the g+ circles icon shows overlapping circles, but you can't actually overlap them
except by coincidence of membership. Huh. #clearasmud—@ndw
Monday at 08:49pm
Today was the International Day Against Stoning. Sometimes the human race makes me
want to weep. Or wretch.—@ndw
Monday at 11:16pm
"Hey, know any good jokes about sodium?" "Na."—@tamalw
Tuesday at 05:03am
Damn straight. RT @olivierthereaux “The illegal version isn't just free. It's better.” http://t.co/74EZA8D—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 08:01am
Sigh. Updated IntelliJ Scala plugin and build still goes bang in a bad way. Emacs
and Make, my old friends, let us try it your way.—@ndw
Tuesday at 08:11am
@ndw Whoops, sorry, misread ... my excuse is that there was a Scala IDE for Eclipse release
today.—@milessabin
Tuesday at 09:00am
RT @jackwilliambell It's easy to shoot your foot off with #git but also easy to revert to a previous foot and merge it with your current leg—@monkchips
Tuesday at 09:40am
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 10:14am
Polygloat markup — when you're being smug in both XML and HTML.—@robinberjon
@robinberjon polygoat…—@karlpro
@karlpro polygoatse!—@robinberjon
@robinberjon polybloat markup? maybe too.—@karlpro
@karlpro Oh certainly, I've seen a lot of polybloat markup out there. That's pretty universal
:)—@robinberjon
Tuesday at 10:21am
Hey! It's not IntelliJ's fault! My code crashes scalac (2.9.0.1). /me slopes off to
try to figure out how to report this.—@ndw
Tuesday at 10:37am
Not raising debt ceiling isnt taking a stand for responsibility, it's refusing a
bill after making the purchase. http://tinyurl.com/6jzfrqq—@noahmendelsohn
Tuesday at 10:41am
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 10:42am
balisage: a method of marking a land route with dim lighting so that vehicles can
travel at higher speeds in blackout conditions—@peteaven
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 12:55pm
Sanity - if only it passes http://trunc.it/hfoor—@DALDEI
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 01:47pm
The insanity, it hurts. RT @simonstl "Statue of Liberty.... an idol, a demonic idol, right there in New York harbor."
- http://bit.ly/oE9rJR—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:32pm
When we lived in NYC I said no to vaccines; autism runs in my family. Now we live
in a rural Amish community; they don't vaccinate so I do.—@penelopetrunk
Tuesday at 10:48pm
RT @ndw RT @simonstl "Statue of Liberty.... an idol, a demonic idol, right there in New York harbor."
- http://bit.ly/oE9rJR—@hunterhacker
Wednesday at 02:36am
The ᐸinnovimax/ᐳ Daily is out! http://bit.ly/a7Qy04 ▸ Top stories today via @david_megginson @ndw @simonstl @blaine @planet_ocaml—@dominiquepere
Wednesday at 04:18am
the eternal re-factoring of a spotless codebase—@psd
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 05:59am
Doc is right: the "commercial" nature of the web has swamped everything else, making
it much less useful. http://flpbd.it/VgnN—@mikeloukides
@mikeloukides To avoid the commercial crap, I’d buy subscriptions in a heartbeat for just over
the projected ROI of sending ads to my eyes.—@ndw
Wednesday at 07:55am
Dear Netflix competitors, please send me your offers. Entice me. It won’t take much.—@ndw
Wednesday at 08:06am
@DrWhoOnline I appreciate that you want to publicize your contest and all, but could you contain
your enthusiasm to only once a day or so?—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 08:12am
"as banks were relieved of the onerous responsibility for due diligence, they took
sillier and sillier risks" - http://bit.ly/nvmqg8—@simonstl
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 09:13am
Pondering a GreaseMonkey script to do the "configure new MarkLogic server from scratch"
dance.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 10:23am
Price of a movie in theatre ($8) seems fair for a month of DVDs. $8 also seems fair
for a month of streaming. (Actually seems cheap.)—@abdelazer
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 10:26am
Wednesday at 10:48am
Wednesday at 11:01am
Imagining that if @9600 were to have the need to erase a cd, this is how he would do it: http://t.co/F69M0Pd /via @ndw—@philhawksworth
Wednesday at 11:37am
Oh, yes, after 'git checkout master' I *will* have to rebuild *everything* won't I?
That test branch wasn't as cheap as I thought.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 11:44am
@grtjn Actually, it’s not clear that I can do the security setup, license key, and such
that way. More investigation at a calmer time.—@ndw
Wednesday at 11:53am
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 12:54pm
A recent tweet by @karlpro reminded me of this, which I thought was just fantastic: http://www.themarysue.com/fremen-girls/—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:57pm
If the US defaults, and if calamity ensues, how does the GOP think it's going to avoid
*all* of the political fallout resulting? #noendgame—@kendall
Wednesday at 02:12pm
Foursquare says I'm in CT in the banner, but knows my last checkin was in MA. Huh.
/cc @fsqsupport—@ndw
Wednesday at 02:50pm
Wednesday at 02:53pm
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 08:28am
Oh my - yes, I think there's diet tonic here (but actually I find all T kind of disgusting
anyway). Got used to G in martinis tho'.—@xmlgrrl
Thursday at 01:23pm
You may think you're more "efficient" by naming your variable or file "dwnld" instead
of "download". You're not. Plus, I curse your name.—@petdance
Thursday at 01:49pm
Thursday at 02:18pm
Twitter makes me want to have drinks with people I’ve never met, and Facebook makes
me want to throw drinks at people I already know.—@ibecrispy
Thursday at 02:48pm
Thursday at 03:01pm
I've memorized the 6502 instruction set in case any of you geek girls want to have
a torrid love affair or whatever.—@diveintomark
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:10pm
What do you call the confidence interval of your confidence interval?—@mdubinko
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:14pm
Now that my @evernote backup is 38MB (metadata, not content), I think sticking it all in one XML file may
be, uh, suboptimal.—@ndw
Thursday at 03:34pm
c'mon people, stop whining that you cannot find your +1'ed URIs. it's not a bookmark,
it's you doing your job as google's mechanical turk.—@dret
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 03:46pm
That plane trip did seem fast, didn't it -- old writing trick called "skipping the
boring parts."—@JaneEspenson
@JaneEspenson Yeah, what flight goes IAD to LHR in 2 hours? I want to be on that one from now on.
:-)—@ndw
Thursday at 05:38pm
The single best thing that can possibly happen to Google+ is twitter in-stream advertising.—@ndw
Friday at 07:40am
Friday at 08:16am
In a conversation that started on Friday at 09:02am
wow. #crazy RT @nyike Wood pulp in your taco? Really? RT @jamieoliver even im lost for words on this one!!! http://bit.ly/oLHrZH—@peteaven
In a conversation that started on Friday at 09:23am
MarkLogic User Group London intro prezi provides awesome,fun facts on Server, its
origins and team. check it out! http://bit.ly/nfxAzZ @mugl—@peteaven
@ndw @peteaven @ronhitchens @leepollington I didn't use Prezi this time. Sorta felt like I let everyone down with the hype they
built up :-)—@jpcs
Friday at 09:28am
The prevailing theory on the economy -- to fix flagging macro demand, cut public spending
to the bone -- is prima facie nonsense.—@kendall
In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:03am
Les Anis de Flavigny: bonbon dur, ne pas croquer. Delicious. And when they say "hard
sweets, do not bite", they ain't kidding.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Friday at 01:49pm
Question: should web page author have any control over whether an html5 video or audio
element plays or not?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers Not on my damn machine. None of ‘em play until I click ‘em thank you very much.—@ndw
@ndw Yes, but how many sites have you visited where music starts by default? Or what if
the site is a preview site for a movie?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers The former: none that I return to. The latter: I don’t care. Sit still and wait until
I press play.—@ndw
@ndw Is it right of the W3C to enforce this behavior every single web page author and
developer? Or shld it occur because of best practice?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers That said, should random web page author have the right to make my speakers start
blaring w/o any explicit consent from me?—@ndw
@ndw But if you go to the Harry Potter web site, are you surprised at music? Would you
surprised by video playing?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers Maybe not, but I’m right cheesed off when I go to somerestaurant.com and music starts
or somehotel.com and a video plays.—@ndw
@ndw But for every 1000 bad uses there may be one good reason for allowing this behavior.
Shouldn't we then allow this behavior?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers I’m not opposed to allowing it. I think we were at cross purposes for a couple of
tweets.—@ndw
@ndw Unfortunately, HTML5 does not allow it. There is no way for web page authors/devs
to have absolute control over media playback—@shelleypowers
@ndw Hard to discuss this in Twitter & one of those times I wish I was part of HTML WG
to discuss...but I think better to have opt than not—@shelleypowers
@ndw How about games, where it makes no sense to provide content menu options to control
media playback?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers I’m not an advocate for preventing authors from expressing their intent, but I would
like the ability to say “no” globally.—@ndw
@ndw And then consider you can redraw the video into canvas--should the browser automatically
enforce playing controls?—@shelleypowers
@ndw But is it right not to even offer this capability to web page authors and developers?—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers Given that it is possible today, it would seem odd to remove the capability.—@ndw
Friday at 01:59pm
LOL! RT @bortzmeyer Let's start a flashmob: When the space shuttle returns, everyone dress up in Ape
outfits. /via @jowyang—@ndw
Friday at 02:20pm
RT @ndw: LOL! RT @bortzmeyer Let's start a flashmob: When the space shuttle returns, everyone dress up in Ape
outfits. /via @jowyang—@gsohnlein
In a conversation that started on Friday at 02:44pm
First I was sad: http://goo.gl/qaKjP Then I saw it's about 40%. That means we're still almost half rational! Hope springs
eternal!—@ndw
@ndw still sad though... we are nearly at the bottom.—@kingargyle
@kingargyle Oh, it’s tragic. It’s embarrassing. It’s depressing. But it really could be so much
worse. I guess. #rationalhumanbeing—@ndw
Friday at 03:14pm
RT @ndw First I was sad: http://t.co/oI9e5nb Then I saw it's about 40%. That means we're still almost half rational! Hope springs
eternal!—@MoniqueSleek
Friday at 03:31pm
Integrate some XForms into DocBook for this presentation, or just write the damn thing
in XHTML. Decisions, decisions.—@ndw
Friday at 03:32pm
Friday at 03:51pm
RT @ndw: LOL! RT @bortzmeyer Let's start a flashmob: When the space shuttle returns, everyone dress up in Ape
outfits. /via @jowyang #fb—@billdback
Friday at 03:51pm
All this hand-wringing about press freedom is distraction. Murdoch and his criminal
pals have been DECIDING OUR DAMN ELECTIONS.—@tommorris
In a conversation that started on Friday at 05:11pm
IP law gone crazy: app developers removing apps from Apple & Android stores because
they fear patent suits. http://zite.to/nutGFC—@mikeloukides
@mikeloukides Gone crazy? That was the plan wasn't it? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, FTW.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 05:58am
A new anxiety for the socially awkward: Some Body added you on Google+. Shit. Do I
know Some Body? Should I? They look kinda familiar.—@ndw
Saturday at 06:23am
Of course they are. And worse, probably. RT @slashdot Judge Says You Can't Know If Google Spies For NSA http://bit.ly/rbfVQM—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 06:28pm
Whichi URI is dereferenced when (1) href="/bar", (2) href="bar", and (3) href="./bar"?
#OPC #ODF #epub—@muratamakoto
@muratamakoto I don't know about 1, but I hope 2and 3 arethe same.—@ndw
@james_clark Any relative references that always (i.e., no matter where in the ZIP file) reference
to the ZIP package? Not "/"?—@muratamakoto
@muratamakoto I think that's how it ought to be, otherwise zipping up a directory will break links.—@james_clark
@james_clark Sesible as a guiding principle, but I have some concerns. First, fragment identifiers
to EPUB will break after unzipping.—@muratamakoto
@james_clark Second, absolute URI references will break after zipping. Third, OPC of OOXML has
interleaving and %HH.—@muratamakoto
@james_clark Fourth, RFC 3986 does not take advantage of internal structures of a ZIP file, but
uses the URI of the ZIP file as the base.—@muratamakoto
Saturday at 06:30pm
In a conversation that started on Sunday at 03:36pm
Going from Amherst to Pelham is uphill. All. The. Way. #thingsyoudontnoticeinacar—@ndw