Links published in July 2006
I’m going back to find some piece of mind (BlogHer Day 2)
Maura’s taken a bit of flak for her opinion here, but she’s pretty much dead on with her conclusion:
Mostly, I just identify with/want to be treated like a person, not a woman or a man or a space alien.
Select election to change
Matt’s humorous screenshot of the World Online admin site, waiting to take in data from Tuesday’s primary election.
Excuses
Alex says:
Less is not better, better is better.
I find nothing to argue with.
Highways highways everywhere and not a drop to drink.
I found this a while back while looking for some information on the interstate highway system (that’s the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” to you), and was impressed with its thoroughness. It gives you a searchable list of every interstate highway, every intersection of interstates, major cities along all of them, explanations of the numbering scheme and a list of highways which violate that scheme.
And, of course, since my father worked for the West Virginia DOT highway division, I’m a bit of a road geek and tend to get immersed in this stuff.
Acknowledging the Mobile Web with Django
Matt explains how Django makes it stupid easy for us to have relevant, contextualized mobile editions of all our sites.
Why XHR should become opt-in cross-domain
Not sure I agree with the conclusion, but the analogy he comes up with for the gymnastics of doing cross-domain data fetching is priceless.
(Via Ajaxian)
Links should open in a new window? Want to bet?
If I want a new window or a new tab, I’ll open one.
If your browser makes it hard for you to open new windows or tabs when you want them, get a better browser.
And let the web be the web.
(Via Greg Storey)
INAPPROPRIATE CAPS: Misleading title 4 exclamation points
Snobbish comment from old fart pointing out that it’s been done before.
(Via Metafilter)
JavaScript Sound Kit
Making it stupid simple to access Flash from JavaScript for sound.
(Via Ajaxian)
The Long Tail: a dubious theory of everything
He writes that “there are now Long Tail markets practically everywhere you look,” calling offshoring the “Long Tail of labor,” and online universities “the Long Tail of education.” He quotes approvingly an analysis that claims, improbably, that there’s a “Long Tail of national security” in which al-Qaida is a “supercharged niche supplier.” At times, the Long Tail becomes the proverbial theory hammer looking for nails to pound.
I’m safe from terrorists because I have a big belly.
Yeah, I’m pimping the big belly.
Johnny Depp and the dead man’s chest called Hollywood
I wonder if it isn’t time for Hollywood to get chunkier. Maybe the real opportunities lie in the middle ground. A chunky approach to marketing says go for the sweet spot, the place with money enough to hire real talent, and enough freedom to set them free. (Freeish.) There has to be a habitable space between the deeply eccentric, entirely self indulgent freedoms of the indie and the “fear of falling” rigidities that understandably beset the studio when spending $160 million.
Like, say, a “big belly”?
(Via Jacob Kaplan-Moss)
Want a New Pony?
Tim’s not quite right about Python programmers; in reality, it’d break down like this:
- 49% would recommend submitting a PEP for a Python Pony Protocol, which would take approximately five and a half years to be reviewed, commented on, implemented as a proof of concept, reviewed again, commented on some more and finally buried in peat moss.
- 50% would point out that Python already provides the necessary infrastructure for ponies, but likely wouldn’t provide any examples of how to take advantage of it.
The remaining one percent would be split among:
-
People who point out that with IronPython you could just use the built-in
System.Horse.Ponyclass from .NET. -
People who point out that with Jython you could just use the built-in
java.lang.Horse.Ponyclass from Java. -
People who point out that asynchronously generating ponies is much easier in Twisted, once you wrap your head around the idea of needing to put your foot in the stirrup and mount the
Ponybefore you call the code to create it. - Guido, who’d just say, “I like ponies”.
Now, where did I leave my asbestos suit?
Must Ignore vs. Microformats
Upset at how microformats add complexity to your HTML? Use XML instead! That always makes things simpler…
(Via Simon Willison)
Knights of the Round Table
Oh. My.
The Quiet Miracle Of A Normal Life
“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.”
Amen.
The Importance of Maintainable JavaScript
Lots of good stuff here. When you’re done learning JavaScript, go read this.
Django admin for your PHP app?
Jeff points out how easy it is to use the Django admin as a “non-cruddy CRUD” interface for administering an otherwise PHP- (or any other language-) powered application.
Framework Performance
Nice little benchmark of three popular web frameworks. The conclusion:
Rails performed much better than Symfony. And Django performed much better than Rails.
(Via Jeff Croft)
PediaPress - Individual books based on Wikipedia
You pick a set of Wikipedia articles, and they’ll print them into a book for you. How cool is that?
And how long until we get a Greasemonkey script to add articles to a book while browsing Wikipedia?
(Via Django-powered sites)
Screen Grab Confab, vol. VI
As I write this, there are two screenshots of people working with Django.
Carousel Component - Documentation
This is good.
(Via Jeff Croft)
Wassup, Beatrice
There’s so much important stuff going on in such a small space here that I don’t know where to begin talking, or even thinking, about it.
Don’t serve JSON as text/html
MIME types matter.
(Via Simon Willison)
15 Things you can do with Yahoo! UI
YUI often goes underappreciated in discussions of JavaScript toolkits.
It shouldn’t.
Django tips: Forms With Multiple Inline Objects
Malcolm takes something which, at first, sounds like it’d be hard, and goes and makes it simple.
Improved text image view
How very handy.