Wednesday, 17 July 2002

GearGrip Pro GearGrip Pro: Wrong, yet somehow very right. 5:33:22 PM

Sentient Coffee Coffee Is Better Than a Woman. [...] You can have an intelligent conversation with coffee. [C:PIRILLO.EXE] I think someone has a real problem relating to females. Or his coffee has just gone sentient. Either way, he's fucked. :) 3:36:23 PM

Eye for an Eye what could possibly lead someone to think this was an acceptable thing to do?. Morons in the News: Throw Another Cat on the Barbie. Ten *!*!heads from Liberty, Missouri tortured a kitten on a barbecue grill until a neighbor intervened; the cat still died. Only one man is being charged. [Morons Dot Org] [weblog.masukomi.org] I hate to say it, but I'd go old testament on those ten. Only problem would be finding a BBQ big enough. 3:32:51 PM

PyAmazon et al Mark Pilgrim's Projects page, which currently includes: PyAmazon PyGoogle PySiteStats PyWebServices PyManila PyBlogger Cute. 3:16:35 PM

GM Genes GM genes found in human gut. UK latest: British scientific researchers have demonstrated that genetically modified DNA material from crops is finding its way into human gut bacteria, raising serious health questions. [Guardian Unlimited] I'm waiting for the day the roundup resistant gene from GM corn makes it's way into noxious weeds. Not that plants have anything like the gene swapping capabilities of bacteria. Bacteria are wild when it comes to gene splicing themselves. It's how they thrive. 12:22:58 PM

Web Services wildfire spreads to Amazon Loosely Coupled: Forrester warns of web services wildfire. "These historical parallels highlight the one overriding challenge that CIOs will face with web services — how to manage the anarchy of a major change in computing technology, without suppressing the innovation that will be required to take advantage of the opportunities that it is sure to bring. The lesson of history is that the 'safe choice' of sticking with established big-name vendors will lead many enterprises into expensive wild goose chases down tortuous and bruising blind alleys. Making the right choices will demand a lot of imagination and hands-on involvement from those CIOs — along with a recognition that neither Gartner nor Forrester nor any other analyst is going to be in a position to provide all the answers." [toolbox] Peter Drayton Cool, Amazon releases their a web service API! Interfaces to the Amazon API are an rpc/encoded SOAP endpoint described with WSDL and a raw XML over HTTP endpoint described using XML schemas & prose. Savvy move. There are already some quite interesting uses of the API: BookWatch combines RSS, the Google API and the Amazon API; and Similarities Graph which creates diagrams of the similarities between books. For example, check out the Similarities Graph for C# Essentials. One thing I noticed was that both the WSDL and XSDs type everything as string even if a more specific schema type exists. For example, in the SOAP API /Details/ImageUrlSmall is typed as xs:string, I would have expected this to be xs:anyURI. Any thoughts on why they chose this route?  Presumably they took the least common denominator approach for maximum interop.  Clearly we need to add anyURI to our SOAPBuilders list.  Also cool to see AmazonWebServicesJavaCodeSampleclient.axis.sh in the toolkit.  Apparently they tested the same source code with both Sun's JAX PAK and Apache Axis; and they have a Perl client using SOAP::Lite. [Sam Ruby] Funny how they wound up in my aggregator at the same time. Now that the biggest player in the web space has gone webservices, everyone is going to want to play. Cool. Another Buzzword to add to my resume. Which I am going to need RSN. 9:54:04 AM

Topic Maps The TAO of Topic Maps. Steve Pepper has written a succinct introduction to topic maps, titled The TAO of Topic Maps. Thanks, Column Two: KM/CM blog [ia/ - news for information architects] Must get to understanding topic maps. Maybe they can be generated from the inherent meta data embodied in a WikiWiki. Hmmm. On another note, it's neat to see a knowledge management company here in Sydney with a weblog. 9:44:47 AM

Methanol fuel cells GM Embraces the Fuel Cell. A nice article on how GM is pushing hard for Fuel cells (fuel cells convert hydrogen into electricity and emit water as by-product). [weblog.masukomi.org] I want to know why GM and the like aren't pushing towards using methanol fired fuel cells? Methanol has to have a higher energy density once you take into account fuel storage weight and size costs. Methanol can be mass produced from easy to grow crops like maize and hemp. It is the quickest way off of oil. And the current petrol infrastructure could be reaonably easily converted to methanol. The only major change required would be in the car paint. 9:40:04 AM

Peercast Dennis fired up peercast and is streaming his MixFreaks mp3s. Totally 80's kickass stuff. Beauty is that I'm in Belgium receiving his broadcast from the Netherlands. Neither of us are communicating with a central server. I'm receiving his signal from another listener in the 'chain'. Big stuff here. Expect entertainment to come in 'network form', where you are a part of the physical network. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] I wonder how the RIAA is going to attempt to stop this one. 9:36:15 AM

Windows, schmidows Ballmer 'fesses up to Linux/Windows cost FUD. Just can't keep that myth alive [The Register] I love a good ElReg article. Even if it is an article about Microsoft coming in for a RealityUpgrade. Heh. 9:34:44 AM

Watching JDBC traffic OJB. Thanks to the OJB guys, Thomas in particular, I ended up stumbling on p6spy today, which looks very handy. If anyone has to ever profile the SQL statements that occur in their code I can highly recommend it. [james strachan's musings] Very nice. Last time I had to do this I implemented a JDBC driver shim, but it wasn't particularly pretty. This tool looks very nice. I will probably even get to try it out RSN. 9:18:30 AM

© Copyright 2002 Brett Morgan.