The short-form week of 7–13 Nov 2011
14 Nov 2011
The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 47 messages in 45 conversations. (With 4 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 05:46pm
I am pleased to report: we have power! The furnace started. Normality will be restored
tomorrow after we buy a fridge full of groceries!—@ndw
@ndw congrats!—@jojobickley
@ndw Congrats, glad to hear things are looking up for you :-)—@adamretter
@ndw Nothing like being able to sleep in your own home again—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers That’ll have to wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid 47F won’t become comfortable in time
for bed, but still, a delicious relief.—@ndw
@ndw 9 days! OMGface!—@davidpriest_ca
@ndw Congrats on rejoining modern society! We missed you.—@hunterhacker
@ndw excellent news, glad you have heat & light again—@jeffsonstein
In a conversation that started on Monday at 09:30pm
You know what's cool? When you flip a switch and the lights come on. That's cool.
Oh, and central heating, too.—@ndw
@ndw it is not that bad from time to time to have such an experience, right? It makes
you really appreciate what you have. Enjoy the coffee!—@georgebina
Monday at 09:32pm
Bonus points for me! Not only did I remember to setup coffee for the morning, I also
remembered to fix the clock on the coffee pot.—@ndw
Tuesday at 11:35am
Jury's verdict: why Geert Josten won the XMLHolland Code Challenge.. http://t.co/ANhVLXU9 /CC: @ndw @PeetKes @pmasereeuw—@grtjn
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 03:49pm
@ndw Yes.—@bortzmeyer
@bortzmeyer Nevermind. I found it.—@ndw
@bortzmeyer Ok. This was announced/described where? Ironically, a quick Google search yielded
nothing useful.—@ndw
Tuesday at 04:53pm
.@OReillyMedia Politics ruins everything.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 05:02pm
I think the HD in my laptop is starting to make funny noises. Damn shame big SSDs
are so expensive.—@ndw
@ndw Worth the investment if you can afford a 64gb, I can't complain.—@DarkStar851
@DarkStar851 Yeah, except I want 500Gb.—@ndw
@ndw they make 1.3tb SSD's now, actually. I don't want to know how much they cost. my
last laptop took two drives, the board may support it—@DarkStar851
Tuesday at 09:00pm
Fuck every single thing about for-profit health care, the single worst idea in the
history of ever.—@kendall
Wednesday at 11:00am
"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you'll have to answer
fucking fish questions the rest of your life."—@shadowsun7
Wednesday at 11:17am
Finally, you can get Growl without having to use the bloody App Store: http://t.co/REmSST2X—@tommorris
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 12:27pm
if #XSLT/#XQuery supported #JSON as primary input/output, #XProc could be nicely extended to process JSONified #XML as well.—@dret
@xquery is there some coordination between #XProc and #XSLT/#XQuery efforts to somehow embrace #JSON as an alternative #XML serialization?—@dret
@dret yes we all met up (both WG) and discussed the need to do this in the future, positively
met from both WG—@xquery
@dret as for json ... I would further superset and say polystructured data, not necc just
json—@xquery
@xquery sure, not #JSON only, and there's probably not one #JSON mapping to rule them all, but it must become part of the processing model.—@dret
@xquery "polystructured"! my vocabulary has just been extended! how does that relate to "unstructured",
"structured", and "semi-structured"?—@dret
@dret I got tired of saying all those words, Curt Monash (and a few others) have been using
the term, I think its apropos—@xquery
@xquery that may be the case because #MarkLogic uses the marketing approach of saying that an *XML database* is for *unstructured
data*. ;-)—@dret
@dret @xquery I know what all the words in “#JSON as an alternative #XML serialization” mean, but the sentence fragment baffles me.—@ndw
@ndw or are you saying this is simply wrong? should i rather say "#JSON as an alternative (and severely limited) #XDM serialization"?—@dret
@ndw it's a simple observation that a lot of data being managed or represented in #XML is served to clients that would prefer it in #JSON.—@dret
@xquery @ndw @dret does "#JSON as an alternative #XML serialization" just mean human readable structure markup simpler for serialization?—@jonathan_robie
@jonathan_robie @xquery @ndw @dret There are still people who consider #JSON as not very human readable, especially on larger data chunks.—@jirkakosek
@jirkakosek @xquery @ndw @dret agree - #JSON is not more readable than #XML for large hierarchies of data & especially for human documents—@jonathan_robie
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:13pm
@adamwitwer @shelleypowers Could you post it, please, rather than send it. There might, ahem, be other folks
interested :-)—@ndw
@ndw Sure. :) http://t.co/VyutCjmd (user: guest; leave pw blank). Will email you more info, @shelleypowers—@adamwitwer
Wednesday at 01:19pm
Wednesday at 01:36pm
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:43pm
Waiting for compile on 3 branches. Yawn. That's what I get for touching the one header
file used everywhere.—@mathling
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:45pm
Wednesday at 03:39pm
I prefer real lego, but still pretty stunning work! RT @ndw: Awesome. http://t.co/vrajEMGz /via @flickr—@grtjn
In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 04:17pm
@xquery @ndw @dret #JSON is simpler & less baggage for Python or JavaScript objects, easy to read if used
for objects, bad for XML documents—@jonathan_robie
@jonathan_robie @xquery @dret That’s true, but doesn’t speak to me of ease of readability. I also mostly care about
mixed content.—@ndw
Thursday at 08:10am
Thursday at 11:02am
Dear advertisers: if you agree to force me to sit through a 30 second spot before
I can see some video clip, I won’t buy your stuff. Ever.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 11:22am
In other words, Hixie tells everyone they're wrong but him http://t.co/Re6bR6tV—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers That's literally not newsworthy because it happens *all the time*.—@kendall
@kendall True, too true. But it's blunt and out in the open and impossible for the W3C to
ignore.—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers You use "impossible for the W3C to ignore" in a way that I'm not familiar with. :>—@kendall
@shelleypowers @kendall Wanna bet? And in other news: are you volunteering to take over as editor?—@ndw
Thursday at 11:55am
Conflicts of interest. http://t.co/KPzWjkjL—@ndw
Thursday at 12:20pm
What a joke "Church & State founded on enforcing morality" They want to rule the world..
RT @ndw Conflicts of interest. http://t.co/antZ8Z0y—@grtjn
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:06pm
Wait, is tomorrow 11/11/11 or 11/11/11?—@kendall
@kendall 2011-11-11 as learned in Y2K ;)—@gcarothers
@kendall You got it in reverse...—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers By the way, why doesn't *Google* step in and say enough is enough?—@kendall
@ndw Hey, you finally realized that @shelleypowers and I don't have exactly the same view on this mess. :>—@kendall
@kendall @shelleypowers I don't believe I ever thought you had the same views. That said, I give you both
credit for having rational views.—@ndw
@ndw @kendall I think we maybe agree that chaos is to Google's advantage. Ultimately, though, the
spec is in W3C space--W3C's problem.—@shelleypowers
@shelleypowers @kendall I don’t know if it’s too their advantage or not, but I’m prepared to believe they
absolutely don’t care.—@ndw
@ndw @kendall And genuinely don't care. "We know what's best, you don't, and you're in our way"
sort of attitude.—@shelleypowers
Thursday at 01:15pm
“I sympathize..., but text modeling is a complex problem, and simple solutions...are
hard to engineer.” http://t.co/xQuO8byS /via @hcayless—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:33pm
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:38pm
@ndw @hcayless HTML5 vs XML is (IMO) a side effect of the unnecessary complexity, and not about
the formats themselves.—@azaroth42
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 01:57pm
Permanent Trauma to Dozens of Kids, 0; Joe Paterno's legacy, 1. Or so it looks here:
http://t.co/Pf3Pvsqi—@dsearls
In a conversation that started on Thursday at 10:56pm
very interesting to read about #XSLT3 maps. #XSLT keys on steroids, allowing functions as values. maps can also be passed as arguments.—@dret
@dret Unfortunately not in XPath 3.0 I believe. A language without maps and sets: unbelievable.
I hope they change their mind on this.—@ebruchez
@ndw @dret I wonder why? The boundary between XPath and XQuery/XSLT seems arbitrarily (and incorrectly)
placed.—@ebruchez
@ebruchez the X* landscape is messy. it's mostly history with #XSLT/#XPath 1.0 being there first & then XPath being super-sized for #XQuery.—@dret
@ebruchez @ndw @dret I find XPath, XSLT and XForms should live in perfect harmony. Why not have xsl:key
in XForms?—@RobbertAtWork
@RobbertAtWork @ebruchez @ndw @dret Yes, xf:key support in #xforms is a good idea for performance—@AlainCouthures
In a conversation that started on Friday at 02:30am
Welcome to the real world Kid. http://t.co/7meV6VhA—@0x9900
In a conversation that started on Friday at 08:12am
Google+ added "people you may know" sometime during the night.—@mikeloukides
@mikeloukides Must be rolling it out slowly, I noticed it a few days ago.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Friday at 11:13am
Dear @linuxjournal the unique-identifier “bookid” is not a unique identifier if you use it in every
single EPUB file. #EPIC #FAIL—@ndw
@ndw Universal Identical Identifier?—@kiphampton
Friday at 11:39am
By the way @linuxjournal, the empty string in dc:identifier is equally full of #FAIL as a unique identifier.—@ndw
Friday at 11:41am
And finally, @linuxjournal, dlj211.epub is a #FAIL: you’ve left href=“http://t.co/wIuqdHvb” style links in the HTML which aren't relative—@ndw
Friday at 11:43am
Sorry @linuxjournal, I'm still not done. What's with all the encrypted fonts in the EPUB files?—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Friday at 03:27pm
It must be somebody’s law that the longer you wait to do an expense report, the longer
it takes to do it. #KMN—@ndw
@ndw that's now Norm's Law of Expense Reports—@jonathan_robie
Saturday at 12:25pm
I agree: Penn St jokes are in bad taste. Know what's in worse taste? Covering up child
abuse for 10+ years.—@BorowitzReport
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 03:42pm
Most honey on sale in stores isn't: http://t.co/EyHd5BDX
Food industry must be regulated to the max cause they'll cheat at every chance.—@timbray
@timbray All industries need to be regulated or they'll cheat.—@davidpriest_ca
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 04:21pm
Houston airport: same as every other airport I've been through lately, could be anywhere.—@collwhit
Saturday at 05:37pm
Giving "Mint" Linux a try.—@ndw
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 05:49pm
Official Dr. Who convention in Cardiff, 24-25 March 2012. Anyone in Wales want an
XML talk in March?—@ndw
@ndw Hehe—@aamelnikov
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 06:01pm
After 10 minutes with Linux "Mint", color me impressed.—@ndw
@ndw Curious: does mint have a "live" CD to try without installing? Took quick look yesterday
didn't find answer. Need 2 look harder.—@noahmendelsohn
@noahmendelsohn Yes, the std 64 bit version version I d/l was a live CD.—@ndw
@ndw cool, I am looking around at distros as well, build quality in laptops have increased
and next machine will be (li|u)nix—@xquery
In a conversation that started on Saturday at 06:49pm
Saturday at 08:11pm
“@ndw: After 10 minutes with Linux "Mint", color me impressed.” I agree.—@lcahlander
In a conversation that started on Sunday at 02:37pm
1. Carry large desk upstairs. 2. Build closet on upstairs landing. 3. Attempt to move
desk back down. 4. Contemplate unexpected consequences—@ndw