Month: June 2003

((Echo)) ing

The ((Echo)) project is moving along.  Frankly, I find it difficult to keep track of what is going on in the ((Echo)) wiki particularly because contents are being changed all the time without any warning or explanation.  I wish there were pages that showed what people are looking at and where changes are being made.  Sort of like a radar except it shows the activity history for the past 24 hours.  Little footprints and color hints on the map can provide that sort of full-court awareness.  As it is now, wiki is extremely disorientating.

In case you are wondering, I proposed "((Echo))" as the project's textual logo so the name will stand out.  My also proposed that the graphical logo match the textual logo and came up with an ((Echo)) hand-sign just for fun as you can see on the right.  Yup, its me with my eyes crossed although it is kind of hard to see.  My wife and I had a great time taking the picture although my son got another evidence of his dad's crazyness.

Sunset Today

My family had first real taste of summer today.  Just now, I looked out the window from my house office and noticed a gorgeous sunset happening.  So I took a couple of shots from the boatdeck.

A shot toward Korea.

A shot toward New York.

Awesome colors.  After taking above pictures, I came back in and my wife had a cup of ice coffee waiting for me.  Nice.  As I am drinking it and writing this post, the sun has already set and its pitch dark outside.  Life is a stichwork of fleeting moments.

Funky Echo?

"PIE (aka Echo) – Formed as a result of accusations of funkyness. Well, theres a bit more to it than that but it is definitely the result of ongoing confusion in the RSS format(s). This is definitely a work in progress at this stage but is gaining support from many popular blog engines and sites." – Neuron #9

My rant was just the last stone thrown before the landslide called ((Echo)) started, so I don't quite deserve the link there.  Besides, I am riding the landslide down as well.

RSSConnect

Darshan Singh, managing editor of PerfectXML.com, announced on XML-DEV the release of RSSConnect, an open source .NET news aggregator.

"PerfectXML.com team is pleased to announce RSSConnect: A C# .NET application that primarily allows reading RSS feeds. Other features include: XSLT skins, ability to export to any OLEDB/SQL Server/MSDE database and search this database, check for new feeds, OPML support, Integrated Internet Explorer Favorites view, Web search functionality, and more." – Darshan Singh

RSSConnect has two neat features:

  • XSLT Skins – HTML is rendered from RSS using a user-selected XSLT file inside a Skins directory.
  • Export ot Database – articles can be saved to a database.

While RSSConnect is less polished than projects like RSS Bandit, I think some of the ideas in RSSConnect are stepping stones to some really neat stuff.

For example, one of the common complaints by client-side aggregator users is that they like the unique looks of each blog.  Extending the XSLT skin idea one more step, each RSS feed can specify the XSLT files the news aggregator should use to render the feed content into HTML or other output types like PDF.

Why I can’t use my yellow boat this summer

As I mentioned before, I avoided photography because it felt artificial to me.  I want to do it naturally and appropriately, not like a kid who got a shotgun for his sixteenth birthday.  So I am using my little camera to add to a little story.

Several weeks ago, I saw a really fat bird that I haven't seen before.  It looked similar to a pigeon, but smaller and different in color and patterns.  It seemed too overweight to fly far, so it was hopping around my backyard.  Then I realized that it was dancing to court another bird, an even fatter bird, fat enough to drag its bottom.  I watched them dance around for a few days and thought no more about them.

Two weeks ago, my wife told me that those birds have built a nest on top of an inflated rubber boat I hung outside on the side of my house.  We began laying down birdfeeds regularly to make sure the newlywed birds didn't have to fly far to feed.  I guess we completely forgot how fat they were just a few weeks ago.  Duh.

Today, the weather was fantastic as you can see in the picture above, blue sky, no wind, and comfortably hot.  Then I realized that I wouldn't be able to use the boat for most of this summer because of the birds.  I then thought, this little story would make a good story for my blog.  Heh.  Here is a closeup of the mother bird sitting in its nest on top of the rubber boat.  I particularly love its eyes, most beautiful eyes I have seen on a bird.

Why do I keep my rubberboat inflated?  Lazyness, pure and simple.  Besides, it makes a great nest.  If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you are able to enjoy the great weather too.  It's too good to be wasted inside an office.

Silliest Web Service?

I just had a silly thought.  It must be something I had for dinner.  I thought that the silliest web service might be XML well-formedness checker.  If you don't get the joke, nevermind.

Hoover Dame

John Dvorak, guest blogging at Boing Boing, thought about real men's t*ts while eating a tofu-burger and then thought of J. Edgar Hoover as desert.

When I saw J. Edgar Hoover's photo displayed right on top of the Real Men's Tits photo, I thought it was funny enough to post here.  What you see on the left is what I saw in my mind.  Frankly, 60:40 is not my favorite ratio although the volume looks about right.

Destroy Majar Al-Kabir

Stories about the six British soldiers massacred in Majar Al-Kabir upset me.  It reminded me of the Alamo.  Soldiers just doing their duty and getting killed by a crazy mob.  If Ghengis Kahn was in charge of the British forces, he would have destroyed the town with everything in it.

Since this is the modern age and Ghengis Kahn is long dead, I think the British forces should vacate the town and then completely destroy it to prevent similar thing from happening again in the future.  Letting them go about their daily lives without such a severe punishment will just get more soldiers killed.  I know this will be harsh to innocent townfolks but I don't think anything short of this level of response will work over the long term.