Scripting News

Wed, 19 Mar 2003 00:52:16 GMT

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:21:43 GMT

Craig Cline, my friend from Woodside, has a new weblog. Craig is the editorial director at Seybold, the big twice-yearly publishing show. Craig is looking for someone to do a one day tutorial on weblogs. He offered me the job, but that's not what I do. Let Craig know if you're interested. It's a paying gig.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:40:12 GMT

BBC: "Developers of file-sharing services have redesigned the applications to use random ports."

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:21:02 GMT

Reverse Cowgirl: "What is it about brown hair that just says, I'm armed and ready to kill?"

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:04:00 GMT

Four Guys From Rolla have a tutorial on RSS.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:18:32 GMT

Here's the latest trick in marketing conferences. They created a personalized "site" for me. Yeah they got me to click on the link. But I'm not going to the conference. Sorry.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:10:37 GMT

I have a confession to make. I never use regular expressions to parse XML. My programming environment has a very good XML compiler, very nicely integrated. It's much easier for me to use it than to hack together something with regexp.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:59:49 GMT

Ray Grieselhuber blogged a cross-country drive with pics.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:00:02 GMT

In Boston, when listening to NPR they say "WGBH in Boston." Of course, that's the public radio station in Boston. It's world famous. We hear about WGBH even in San Francisco. It's snuck up on me twice, making me giggle both times. I imagine after a while you get used to it. Not there yet. James Cham writes: \"I'm a long-time reader, and I thought I'd mention that although WGBH is pretty popular, the public radio station that most people listen to is WBUR (90.9). It's more talk-y/news-y than WGBH's eclectic mix, that's the format that does well in these parts.\"

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:04:19 GMT

Another weird thing. Governor Romney.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:06:14 GMT

My lawyer in Palo Alto wants to do a conference call at 7:30PM Pacific. That's a bit late for me. I'm already on Eastern time. I can tell I'm going to have a problem here. Being a morning person worked in California. It doesn't work as well in Eastern.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 21:53:54 GMT

Later: I've arrived in Cambridge. Rarin to go!

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 14:35:19 GMT

Earlier: I'm on my way to Boston. I'm going to drive through the Berkshires, and approach from the west. When I was a kid we spent vacations there, there are a lot of memories for me on this route. Look for pictures tonight or tomorrow.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 12:46:36 GMT

NY Times report on amateur photographers and the Columbia disaster. "A composite of the images, shown by NASA today, reveals that the shuttle shed debris even earlier than previously suspected."

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:45:55 GMT

BBC: Blair loses third minister over Iraq.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 07:11:10 GMT

Scott Rosenberg blogs something that has been on my mind. "Overconfidence breeds disaster." As I watched Bush's speech last night I was struck by his confidence, and have to say I liked it. Then I remembered another way of looking at it. "Famous last words." Or what Maude used to say when Walter said something over-confident. "God'll get you for that Walter."

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 07:46:17 GMT

NY Times editorial: "Once the fighting begins, every American will be thinking primarily of the safety of our troops, the success of their mission and the minimization of Iraqi civilian casualties. It will not feel like the right time for complaints about how America got to this point. Today is the right time."

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 07:31:52 GMT

Jeremy Zawodny notes that you can fly from coast-to-coast round trip for $300. It's true.

I woke from a dream with an idea

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 06:51:27 GMT

Woke up in the middle of the night with an idea I wanted to add to my weblog, so I went to my editorial site, looked for the Flip Home Page button, it wasn't there. Look at the clock, it's 1:45AM, do the math, that's 10:45PM in Calif, no wonder -- I decide to bite the bullet and switch my site to the Eastern time zone. Yet another piece of my safety net disappears. Wheeee!

The sounds of NY continue to impress. Far off in the distance a hot rod with a cop in pursuit. At least that's how I interpret it. I hear two loud engines, one with a siren, one without. Maybe they're racing to get someone to a hospital.

The idea I woke up to blog, came to me in a dream. Wes Felter you were in it. I had just walked onto a beach on a lake, and I passed a family that I knew, except of course none of the people looked anything like they look in real life. This was a dream. Everyone is leaving as I'm arriving on the beach. The sun is going down, but I'm going to catch a few of the remaining rays. Someone had been reading something our group produced, and Wes said that was an idea Dave came up with. Wes explains this to me casually. And then I had the thought I wanted to blog.

Do you add understanding to the world or do you add entropy? People who make good friends add understanding, or are good people to work with. Sometimes it seems that most of the people in the world are programmed to create entropy. And of course there are good reasons to have that too. People like Wes keep chugging along, not taking up too much mental bandwidth, but are reliable suppliers of understanding. I think there's lots of value there, underappreciated value. End of insight.