Blog posts

It has come to my attention (thanks to Kari and Harv) that some people subscribed to the atom feed from this site aren’t seeing updates come up in their newsreaders. When I changed the blog’s templates I also upgraded the atom feed to the (now standard) Atom 1.0 format, the latest and greatest syndication format. Some older newsreaders have trouble with the format so if you somehow ended up here but didn’t see an update in your newsreader you may want to check for an update, and/or request that the writers of your software catch up with the standards. ...

Fred Clark over at Slacktivist is one of the more astute bloggers out there, and this piece about the term ’ Cyber Monday’ was yet another laugh/cry triumph. A demonstration of why the mainstream press desparately needs a reality check, and how far down the road to corporate control of perceptions of the ’net we’ve already gone.

Watching Good Night, and Good Luck a couple of weeks ago was something of a cathartic experience. George Clooney’s writing and directorial skills came as a pleasant surprise, but the film’s main draw for this viewer was the way it tapped into an ongoing frustration with the self-censorship of much of the mainstream media, particularly in the USA. While direct links between the McCarthyism that is the film’s conflict and modern times should only be drawn cautiously, that period offers a historical lesson that has been forgotten all too quickly. ...

Through Google Maps Mania I came across The Starbucks Challenge. It’s an effort to use the web to hold Starbucks to their promise of providing fair trade coffee at the customers’ request. The idea is that you request a cup of fair trade coffee, and blog about the response you get, posting an appropriately tagged link on del.icio.us. They pull all those postings together, plot them on a map and communicate the results to Starbucks management. ...

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those books that has rapidly slipped into the subconscious of much of the programming community. So much so that I have delayed reading it for quite some time simply because I suspected its content to have been duplicated in the many, many articles on development techniques that have passed through my newsreader. But recently, feeling the need to spend a bit more time reflecting on my coding habits I decided to give it a go and I’m glad I did. ...

Grand Rapids, Michigan, the city in which I live, has recently been conducting trials of citywide WiFi technologies. Mayor George Heartwell and the City Commission have an impressive vision of the potential offered by municipal wifi, not just for helping the general community leverage online tools, but also to connect together public services and make service providers more efficient. Unfortunately that vision isn’t shared by some of the current infrastructure providers, or all State Congresspeople, and their are moves to introduce legislation at state and federal levels to block such plans. ...

Andrew Bird’s " …and the mysterious production of eggs" has justifiably become one of the year’s most acclaimed albums (it only has one competitor as my favourite) and his recent set at UICA came close to measuring up to its high standard. The album draws much of its strength from its eclecticism, balancing on the edge of the freak-folk movement but with a welcome injection of jazz and swing influences, and it was quite a surprise to see only two people on stage. Through judicious use of sampling and a versatile keyboard, Bird and collaborator Martin Dosh built a rich sound based around Bird’s violin (plucked and bowed), keyboard, guitar and percussion. While relatively stationary on stage—when singing and playing multiple instruments, there’s not much opportunity for movement—Bird’s an expressive performer, reinforcing and exposing the songs with his facial expressions. ...

Tony Bowden writes to lament inept attempts to make Belfast City Council meeting minutes available online. It certainly seems like a lot of e-government services are designed with the issue-focussed user in mind rather than those who simply want to keep informed or educate themselves. That’s not such a surprise given that most of the pressure for these services is coming from interest groups, but it would seem that with something so simple as meeting minutes it would be harder not to provide a browsing interface than to develop one and then provide for more complex uses on top of that. ...

Cleaning out a few tabs that have been open for too long… Josh Tauberer (of govtrack.us fame) has launched aboutrdf.net with the hope of turning it into a first destination for those looking for primers on RDF. It’s a resource that’s been needed for a long time and hopefully will help demystify RDF. And on a related note, Danny Ayers has started a Microformats FAQ for RDF developers. It’s a useful resource for those looking to understand how microformats can fit into the Semantic Web agenda and will hopefully raise the level of discussion between the two communities. ...

For anyone looking for an update following Tuesday’s election, Right To Life West Michigan’s nuisance calls didn’t achieve their intended purpose and Rosalynn Bliss won 52% of the vote to become the new Grand Rapids 2nd Ward City Comissioner.