From the Orient

It’s only nine hits per week, but “a Polish blogger”:http://cathy-m.blog.pl/ has been stealing my bandwidth, and “the eyes of my cat”:http://www.dellah.com/vent/experimental_images.shtml so they had to go. It’s the principle of the thing. What if she (I’m guessing she) got slash dotted (okay unlikely) but on past results, it would crash angel again. Now she has a broken image on her weblog. She could just copy it and I’d never know.

What links David Beckham and XML? Well, the phrase “deep instead of broad”. The Guardian “points out that Galactico Ball’s talent is deep rather than broad”:http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1032150,00.html and I couldn’t agree more. “George Best summed it up when he said”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/618154.stm :-

bq. “He (Beckham) cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn’t score many goals. Apart from that he’s all right.”

Now, that may be over the top, but is more or less right. He can run all day, and pass the ball to perfection. He can pass it so hard into the net, he scores goals. I think it is exactly what Real Madrid need (unfortunately) and I’m pleased he has started to do well.

John E. Simpson points out “what I should be doing in relation to XML”:http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/27/qa.html considering I’ve become a bit out of touch with it in the last year or so.

bq. Select a speciality. Go deep instead of broad.

What’s wrong with me? Everyone else is complaining about the amount of virus emails they are getting, but I haven’t had a single one (not even one that has gone into my spam folders).

Either no one knows me at all, or all the people who know me have the intelligence to do silly things like click on a .pif file.

Well done everyone (especially my aunt who is the only person to ever send me a virus; 10 times).

I fully expect to receive a thousand in the next hour after posting this.

Want to play chess on the Zaurus, but think that that Java version is so crap because it doesn’t even have a checkmate (the king is taken!). Well, help is at hand. First, get “GNUChess”:http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=456 and then get ” Chess QBoard”:http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1135 a front end to the GNUChess Engine. Install both, and hey presto.

Got to love the screenshot for “Blanker”:http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1108 an application that turns your screen off. Very helpful.

I number of good software packages and languages are available on the Zaurus; e.g. “Vim”:http://rikkus.info/zaurus.html#vim, “mySQL”:http://www.caulfei.demon.co.uk/zaurus/, “Python”:http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/zaurus/index.php, (or “Python”:http://opie.net.wox.org/python/). To do a search, use the very handy “IpkgFind”:http://ipkgfind.handhelds.org/, or visit the “Zaurus Software Index”:http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/

If the default Sharp Rom isn’t good enough for you, I recommend “OpenZaurus”:http://www.openzaurus.org/. If that isn’t on the edge enough for you, you could always stick “Debian”:http://people.debian.org/~mdz/zaurus/ on.

And what OS isn’t complete without a version of “Nethack”:http://trolls.troll.no/warwick/nethack/ipk/

[Currently listening to Debaser by The Pixies]

“Extraverse”:http://extraverse.orcon.net.nz/
“Whalelane”:http://www.whalelane.com/
writing, visuals and hybrids
“Fray”:http://fray.com/
“Graph Narrative”:http://www.ftrain.com/
“afterDinner: for Readers”:http://www.afterdinner.com/readers/

Travelogs are all the rage. I like them but they have to have a twist, I need an interest. A random travel book about Italy is not going to appeal. I blame “Round Ireland with a Fridge”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091867770/026-7013568-6142066

Anyway, “Emergency Exit”:http://www.emergencyexit.net/ is the website of some people who jacked it all in and went round the world. They took beautiful photographs and wrote insightful reports of where they were. Sadly, I’ve had this in my bookmarks for so long, they’ve run out of money and have gone home.

“Notes From the Road”:http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/ is another travel photography site worth looking at. More of a story board with pictures than a travel guide.

“World Press Photos”:http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/index.jsp has some amazing and award winning photographs. The last thing I expected to see in the Children’s award section was a soldier’s worried stare looking at me from under a truck in Kabul. In fact, it was no soldier, but a boy. The trailer next to the boy looked just like a rifle.

Finally, O’Reilly has the “Top Ten Digital Photography Tips”:http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/10/22/digi_photo_tips.html but I doubt any will help me very much.

Javascript, the semantic web and much much more (okay, RSS; just RSS (spit, we hates it, we do))

“The Javascript Section”:http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/
A mass of javascript information, sadly no longer maintained (these are all old links okay)
“How to Create Pop-Up Windows”:http://www.youngpup.net/?request=/articles/how-to-create-popups.xml
Never, ever, ever use the javascript: pseudo-protocol for anything.
“Keep JavaScript Simple”:http://digital-web.com/columns/keepitsimple/keepitsimple_2003-07.shtml
“Unobtrusive DHTML”:http://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/aqlists/
“blo.gs microtools”:http://philringnalda.com/blog/2002/06/blogs_microtools.php
Phil’s nifty little add-this-weblog-to-your-blogroll tool.

“It’s Whom You Know”:http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/04/19/platform.html
“The Semantic Web (for Web Developers)”:
A brief history of Semanticism.
“The Semantic Web: 1-2-3″:http://www.disobey.com/detergent/2002/sw123/
aka Stupid Berry Pickers Make Idiot Jam

“FeedParser”:http://diveintomark.org/projects/feed_parser/
A (or even The) Feed Parser for Python. Includes support for the feed standard that has more name incarnations than a Time Lord
“Inside the RSS Validator”:http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/02/26/dive-into-xml.html
How the validator validates your valid feed and how it invalidates your invalid feed. And how it easy to add a the kitchen sink to it.
“Making Feature-Rich, Movable Type RSS Files”:http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/02/28/rss.html
To do this, take one RSS 2.0 feed, one 0.9x feed and throw over your shoulder. Pick up the remaining 1.0 feed, stick it in MovableType, and bake for 90 minutes at gas mark 5.

[Currently listening to Dumb It Down by The Divine Comedy from the album Regeneration]