Ug. My weblog isn’t updating. Tragic. No new content since last night.
Can’t get into the box, though Radio is still running (but not upstreaming). It might finally be time to do a reinstall on my server.
Update: A little Radio restart seems to have worked.
Aaron Swartz waxes philosophical on the Jon Postel phrase “Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”
It seems to me that a well-designed protocol would have only one saying things and require that you use it. After all, there are two types of interfaces: good interfaces and user interfaces. (There is actually a third type, as demonstrated by XML: bad interfaces, which are neither good for computers nor users. It never ceases to amaze me how XML is bad at everything.)
I can’t say that I agree, but it is definately a point of view. I think that there’s lots of hype around XML, but it does serve its purpose. It may not be easily human readable, not easily computer readable (or without headaches), but it might be the lowest common denominator.
Several interesting tidbits show up in today’s Sourceforge news:
Guess what I got for Christmas? My girlfriend’s parents snagged me Java Tools for Extreme Programming: Mastering Open Source Tools Including Ant, JUnit, and Cactus from my Amazon wishlist. Thanks! I’ve read the introduction and can’t wait to dive into it. It will definately compliment Java Development With Ant.
“It looks as if the CFP for next year’s OSCon has been announced. The deadline for submissions is February 15, so you better get moving…”
It’s happening in Portland, OR July 7-11 2003. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it, starving student and all. Attending the Web Services DevCon set me back significantly (even though fees were extremely reasonable). I learned a ton though. I’ll be attending PyConDC2003 because it’s about Python and it’s being held in my backyard.
An article I wrote (last summer) has finally been published in the February 2003 issue of JavaPro. It details how to write sophisticated custom Ant tasks by demonstrating how I built a custom Ant task to control IBM alphaWorks Robocode
The article is online at http://www.fawcette.com/javapro/2003_02/magazine/features/ehatcher/