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Permanent link to archive for Sunday, August 03, 2003. Sunday, August 03, 2003

A picture named john.gifJob For John: "Last Thursday, July 24th I was downsized from my job of 3 years at a software company. Later the same day I heard that President Bush's economic team would be doing a bus tour through Wisconsin and Minnesota this week touting Bush's tax cut and its prosperous economic effects. 'What a bunch of BS. I'd like to give their PR tour a dose of reality,' is what I thought. So I packed up the minivan and decided to follow their bus around the countryside and talk to whoever would listen about the real facts -- that this economy stinks, and Bush's tax cuts are making it worse." 

Don Park: "It is a great feeling just being here." 

NY Times: In DSpace, Ideas Are Forever

Dan Gillmor: "In the past month, I've done my part to undermine a monopoly. How? By making phone calls."  

Chris Pirillo: "E-mail is a polluted medium." 

Chris Heilman: Summer in Southern California

Error-handling in MetaWeblog API 

I added a new note in the comments section of the MetaWeblog API spec explaining that errors are handled through the fault-reporting procedure described in the XML-RPC spec. Comment on the mail list, or in the comment section of this weblog post.

Technography at Berkman 

I've been gently introducing technography to the Thursday evening weblog writers group. A scenario. I put up an outline and ask "How would we know if we were successful in New Hampshire." People start blurting out ideas. I note them in a projected outline that everyone can see. The conversation stalls after the list fills up (this always seems to happen, people get evaluative too quickly). I add a dozen blank lines in the middle of the list, after sorting it by the size of the idea (big ones go at the bottom, little ones at the top). Then the ideas start flowing again.

Two XMLs, sliced and diced 

I've been discussing two different ways of approaching XML. At XML Devcon, talking with Peter Drayton and Brian Jepson, I postulated that there are people who love XML for its technical intricacy, and people who use XML because it is a convenient way to move info between apps. Brian pointed out that the latter is the Worse-Is-Better philosophy or POGE, the Principle Of Good Enough.

Last night I realized there may be another way of describing the dichotomy, people who think of XML as a programming space, and people who think of it as a literary space. I am generally in the latter group. It's why I shudder when I see namespaces in an otherwise understandable-as-literature XML doc. There is no equivalent of namespaces in prose or poetry.

Let's say you could step back in time and rename the Dublin Core, what could you call it so that it would read well in any XML document? Nothing. A colon has a completely different meaning in writing. Nothing you name it could make it read well.

Being important 

Bloggers who never flame anyone and don't have blogrolls (or don't make a big deal about them) may take a long time to become "important" -- but if they stand out because of the quality of their ideas, and the ideas they insipire, they can attain a kind of longevity that has value, like the giants whose shoulders Sir Isaac Newton stood on.

Think orgasmically 

Did you know that you can be intellectually sensual in your interactions with other people? It's virtually impossible to find anyone who wants to play this way, but a good university offers the possibility that other people came there who want to collaborate, truly. The sexual metaphors make some people uncomfortable, maybe most people -- but I kind of believe that God gave birds orgasms when they migrate in the spring and fall; and that's why I feel so good when I have an idea that mixes well with the world. I wrote this thinking about Betsy Devine. I have no doubt she fully understands what I'm talking about. Very few people do, and I think most of them (seem to be) are women.

     

Last update: Sunday, August 03, 2003 at 6:13 PM Eastern.

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