No more tears: “Onions that taste as good as the original but do not have you weeping over the chopping board are now a possibility, say Japanese researchers.”
I saw this fly by the LED display at the MVA (Maryland’s equivalent of a Department of Motor Vehicles). It was one of the few items that scrolled across in newsticker fashion that didn’t involve fatalaties.
I really actually like Wired’s new redesign. My only problem is that for some reason it takes 40-80 seconds to load. Apparently, nobody else is getting this problem. Any ideas?
I love the redesign! It feels like a weblog.
feedParser was created due to the lack of a good, flexable, classed based RSS feed parser for PHP. It has been built as a class and currently handles RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 0.93, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0 feeds. For channels it grabs the title, description, link, and creator. For items it grabs the title, description, link, and date. It also provides a form of the date converted into the local timezone to facilitate cronological sorting of items. The dates are provided in UNIX timestamp format for easy manipulation by other PHP functions.
It requires xmlParser:
xmlParser was created due to the lack of a good, namespace aware XML parser for PHP. It is written as a PHP class. It functions as it is, however, many more features are planned. This class is still in the development phase. As it functions now, it will accept XML data as a string and present it as a struct.
Both programs are GPL and look like they could form the basis of some advanced projects in a shared hosting environment. Props go out to Reverand Jim, the author of the two projects. His weblog is here, his livejournal is here, RSS 1.0 feed is here, while his RSS 0.91/2.0 feed is over there. Oh yeah, and RSS subscribed.
Werner Vogels and his CS students at Cornell are working on a project that could change the way that people collect, report, and view news. Here’s a snippet from the abstract/intro:
The NewsWire project is to deliver a peer-to-peer system for collaborative real-time delivery of news items through a publish/subscribe interface. The systems is build using the Mariner system from the Astrolabe tool suite, a versatile tool for ultra-scalable and secure distributed state management. Astrolabe uses epidemic techniques and information aggregation to achieve the scalability and robustness needed.
It caught my eye at first because it sounds similar to NetNewsWire, but the project has a very high cool factor on its own. Here’s another snippet I like:
Our premise is that current push solutions fail to take advantage of the collaborative power of the Internet. The solutions are often proprietary, and employ a one-to-many model where the producer is expected to deliver “personalized” content directly to each of the consumers. The approach clearly has scalability limitations. Yet despite these problems, there has been little activity by publishers of the many real-time news sites to provide a coordinated solution for this problem. We believe that the time has come for an Internet-wide infrastructure for efficient real-time content delivery.
I have subscribed to Werner Vogels’ RSS feed to keep up with the project and the other stuff that he’s working on/thinking about. I think I originally found a link to his blog from Peter Drayton.
GAUL: More genetic programming fun:
The Genetic Algorithm Utility Library (or, GAUL for short) is a flexible programming library designed to aid in the development of applications that require the use of genetic algorithms. It provides data structures and functions for handling and manipulation of the data required for a genetic algorithm. Additional stochastic algorithms are provided for comparison to the genetic algorithms. Much of the functionality is also available through a simple S-Lang interface.
The current primary aims of this project are to produce documentation, examples and test cases for this open-source release of GAUL. Several new features are also planned for GAUL including wrappers to enable its use with programming languages other than C. The open-source release of GAUL is currently not parallelised, however this will become a priority development target.
Dan Shafer: “My new favorite sport is Race the Aggregator.”
It’s a habit that I’m trying hard to break, as I have many more than 27 news sources. It doesn’t come easily. I had to write off the time that I was in Boston, there was no way to catch up from that.
Kenneth Hunt points out rdesktop, an RDP client (think Terminal Services) for accessing Windows machines remotely. He also points to the Terminal Services installer for Windows systems. I’ll admit that I have a copy of it saved in my web-accessable email account so I can install it on any system that I need to.
I think now is the time for me to point out Putty, my SSH client of choice for the Windows platform.
How to install Pacific Bell DSL internet service if you have Windows XP: “Do not use the SBCIS Installer Disk #2 (yellow cd). Disk #2 cannot be used with the Windows XP Operating System.”
There is (was) a similar Black Disk of Death for Comcast users. It does not play well with 2000 or XP from what I recall.
WebServices.Org: Web services challenge at Comdex FALL 2002
Software vendors will compete on the show floor to build the best Web services based application
Folsom, CA -October 15th, 2002 – The World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) has agreed to host the first annual Iron Chefs of Web Services Challenge taking place at Comdex Fall on Tuesday November 19th in the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Five teams will be invited to compete by developing Web Services applications on the show floor. Their work will be judged by a panel of experts selected from the press and analyst community. This is an interactive development session with the software industry’s best programmers. The format will combine the spectacle of performance art with the entertainment value of a live high pressure sporting event.
Off the top rope…
Wallace and Gromit: Soccamatic
I haven’t had a chance to take a look at the video, but I have mirrored the Quicktime shorts:
Richard Caetano (stronglytyped.com):
Hun Boon is working on a Remote Desktop (both client and server) project. The amazing thing is it’s all built with .NET and ASP.NET.
Pretty Slick!
That’s really cool. I’ll try to keep an eye on the project.
Kenneth Hunt endorses TightVNC:
I use TightVNC quite often. Nice small download, highly recommended if you manage multiple servers/computers.
I used TightVNC about six months back. It seemed to run considerably faster than the AT&T labs version, especially on legacy hardware.
TightVNC: For when SSH just isn’t enough.
I’m looking at my $10k setup at home and seeing $1mm in ‘hollywood’ results.
The Shifted Librarian points to a Library Journal article announcing: “Wireless Internet Access Set Up in VA, IN, FL PLs.” Rock on!
from the stuff-to-get dept.
disco_stu00 writes “Aardman Animations has produced 10 new one-minute Wallace and Gromit shorts entitled Cracking Contraptions in preparation and training for the upcoming feature length film. BBC News has the first short available for download.”
I feel like I know Wallace and Gromit as much as some of the bloggers that I read.
I’ve just tried Eclipse /GTK and the look ‘n feel is absolutely awesome! Looks nice with RedHat’s default Luxi font. I just hope it’s got stable already—if so, good bye, Motif.
Can’t wait to do some real Java/JSP coding again using this nice piece of IDE. My personally hosted Mini/PersonalBlog is on the top of execution stack 🙂
Oh so pretty.
I ranted about Google, which got me written up in Wired (which was great fun), which got me misrepresented in The Register, which got me to rant about The Register, which got someone else to write to a letter to The Register, which got other Register readers to click through to my original rants, which got my “Further reading” script to notice The Register’s letters to the editor and include an excerpt in my “Further reading” RSS feed, which got my homegrown news aggregator to send me an email with the excerpt and the link to The Register’s letters to the editor, which kept me on top of the infinitesimal fraction of this glorious, ongoing, worldwide conversation that points my way, which is what I wanted.
Push To Test has some open source software for testing SOAP-based web services. They have released Load and TestMaker. Here’s a description of Load from the freshmeat page:
Load is a utility for Web application and SOAP-based Web services performance and scalability testing. It features a scripting language and a library of test objects for the creation of intelligent agents that drive the Web application or SOAP-based Web service. Running hundreds of agents concurrently shows how your software performs in production environments. Load is a Java application that runs on Linux, Solaris, NT, Win2000, and Macintosh. While Load continues to be maintained, the next generation is the TestMaker program.
Power
We had a power outage this evening. All of my machines that were on except for my Via Eden were on UPS. The built-in ethernet adapter seems to have been fried. It’s enabled in the bios, and Red Hat claims to bring it up, but it won’t sync to the NTP server. I get no lights on either end. It’s not the port on my switch and it’s not the cable. I guess I might have to break out a NIC and use the PCI slot. This makes it a heck of a lot less compact if I ever get a case for it.
