Ionrock Dot Org

The great thing about html is the standard concept for markup it provided. The browser provides just enough information and functionality to create a situation where people can depend on it and even make assumptions based on past experiences. This is exceptionally important because without someone thinking beyond what they have learned regarding the markup and how the browser renders it, there is no innovation or abuse of the browser. It is innovation and abuse that end up pushing the limits and creating new technology.

I am excited about formats XML formats such as Atom and RSS because it has the potential to provide similar situations. IE 7 and Firfox 2.0 will both support automatic RSS/Atom parsing and rendering for feeds. It also seems Outlook will also get the on the bandwagon (Thunderbird and Evolution are already there). In addition to this there are a ton of "feed readers" that provide a wealth of user interfaces for consuming information in RSS/Atom feeds. All these user level tools provide a great resource and allow us to assume something is built in for rendering and working with RSS/Atom content.

Along these lines, I have been very interested in seeing what is available in current browsers for general XML+XSL processing. I am glad to say that the support is rather robust. My one beef is that there is not an obvious way to pass parameters into the stylesheet without some sort of programming language. I had hoped that I might be able to find a workaround such as appending GET variables or something, but no dice. Fortunately, writing Javascript to do the transformation in order to get the dynamic qualities has become much more viable, since the XSL support seems solid.

My next step will be to try to style something like a DITA file. This morning I was thinking about using primarily CSS for this task b/c it seems that the browsers support this as well. We'll see what happens.

I became interested in computers through open source software and the hallmark of OSS is the community. Throughout the years I have subscribed to mailing lists and the like in addition to spending time on IRC and generally being a part of the community. Specifically, I have been interested in the GNOME community and as such, I became exposed to Planet GNOME. A "Planet" is a loose term for an aggregation of blogs based on some topic. Planet GNOME for example, includes blogs of GNOME developers.

When I became interested in XML while I was in college (man, was I cool!), I searched for a "Planet" for XML related topics. Having read Ed Dumbill's blog for a while, I found Planet XMLHack. It is not perfect and there are a few bloggers whose posts get duplicated, but overall it is a great resource. It provides a great deal of insight into the happenings in the world of XML from the perspective of those who define it. Take a look sometime!

Ok, I read this article on why the trash compactor on the Death Star makes no sense. The one prospect that I feel sends this whole argument in a tail spin is the assumption that the trash compactor was a permanent piece of the Death Star.

If we assume the trash compactor was actually closer to a local dumpster than part of the global waste management solution, things are more believable. This explains its proximity to Leia and how she knew about it. The two slow moving walls could not only be for creating more space but for examining what is in the dumpster. I am sure a perfectly good part or scrap might have been thrown in the dumpster by mistake, so a more gentle and slow moving mechanism might help find valid components and recycle them. I will admit the monster in the dumpster is a bit odd, but it could be to eat the organic waste that came along with the industrial components (a storm trooper throwing his lunch away in the same bucket as some scraps).

It's not a bullet proof argument, but at least it makes an effort to explain an admittingly silly scene in an otherwise amazing trilogy ;)

Last night I took a few minutes to update Ubuntu on my laptop. I updated to Edgy so I could check out Jokosher, a python/gstreamer/cairo music editing application. Jokosher seemed pretty slick and something I will try to download the source for at some point.

What really struck me was how much I miss using Linux. I can't say I am more productive or that it is a "better" way to work, but it was more fun. I realized that without Emacs on windows I would really be frustrated. Emacs gives me just enough of that *nix feel to supress my frustrations with the windows command line. It is funny that something so "unusable" as a shell could cause so many frustrations.

My other observation is that I don't use computers in the way I used to. Before, there was a whole world of community that interested me. I still enjoy the community, but it just isn't as important to me. As antisocial as this sounds, it is really a good thing. I have recently been working on "doing" more than "talking" about doing. Within the scope of working in the open source community, I do have time to contribute. If I can't contribute, I am not going to worry about becoming involved because my involvement would nothing more than me talking!

With that said, I hope to have a bit more free time at some point. I would like to take a stab at doing something with Jokosher or some other project. I finally feel my python skills are getting up to snuff and it would be a good challenge in organizing my time.

Last night I went to see The Rentals. The funny thing about it was I really did not feel like going to the show. When I was a kid and listened to them, I never really identified myself as a "Rentals Fan", but it turns out I really liked The Rentals and, in fact, still do! I think that when you are on the fence about doing something, you should probably go ahead and do it. I do not mean you should go ahead and crash your car into that jerk that cut you off in traffic of course, but giving an old friend you are thinking about a call, is probably a good idea.

I have been playing around with creating pages using just XML and XSLT. The great thing about it is that you can really separate your data from your presentation in a way that user agents can easily grok. This is a great thing because it means that you can effectively Atom-ify your whole web site and all its data without even thinking about it. The negative is that there seems to be a need for more dynamic XML.

More specifically, the style sheets used to present the data need to be able to change per request, and in turn, per user. I know this is possible, but I am curious what others have tried along this path. Part of the reason I see it as necessary, is XSLT is very verbose. Even a simple template can balloon into a rather large document. Having a good way to dynamically generate the necessary boilerplate code and general necessities is an issues.

Along the same lines, the XSLTs need to be configured per request. Fortunately, you can pass parameters to an XSLT, but I don't know if the browser can do so automatically. This is a non-issue if you are processing the XML/XSLT before sending it to the client, but my goal here is to simply serve files and let the client do the work. I don't mind a bit of javascript for this, but in the long run, I am trying to stay away from it.

If this type of development can be done quickly and efficiently, it makes for an extremely powerful system. It is kind of silly for something like small business site, but for anything that distributes data, it is helpful.

In the car today, I listened to a radio show discussing a press release from Mel Gibson. Situations aside, the concept of a press release struck me as strange. My impressions of what the "news" is meant to research and report what is going on in the world. This does include what is happening with celebrities and what happened at the game.  The problem I see is that when someone can do a press release and the papers/websites/etc simply publish it, what does it say about the rest of the content they provide.

Some friends of our play in a band and they consistently have fun writing a press release for their albums. In one release they said they created a huge machine full of blades, wire and antiques to write the record. Interviewers consistently asked, "So tell me about the music box..." Another release they claimed was recorded deep within the New England countryside beneath some ancient relics they found. Again, the press questioned where in New England.

The point here is that if someone can simply present the press with the content, then who is really judging its reliability before it is published. It also makes me wonder if the press even confirms or analyzes their sources. If they do not pay any attention to the content of a press release, what changes when they actually have something serious to report on?

The one good thing about the press release system is that it is a great way to advertise. Companies can let people know about when a major release is out or when they make a merger that could impact customers. I do think this aspect is positive, but it still makes me question the authority of the news organizations.