The second edition of the book appeared in 1995, seven years ago. I browsed through the book and it was not too much out of date. The example codes and pointers to the web have to be checked to be sure that they still work.

There is also some additional material which I could include in the book: course material, lecture notes, articles, case studies etc. There are also other books published during the last seven years which contain some material on optimization. But the amount of time which I can dedicate to the third edition is quite small, a month of work at maximum. Thus I am wondering when I have the time to make the update.

When the pressure is greatest, I need to write. About something, about everything. Thus blogging has been a nice channel for making sense of the world. However, I'm not quite sure how useful it is to collect links to topical information. Perhaps this will be later on a treasured collection of items that interested me at this time.

Weblogging Standard? You know what we need in Roller, MoveableType, Radio, Blogger, etc. is a "standard" for our data stores. How sweet would it be to be able to move your site from Roller to Radio without writing an import/export tool. The quick and dirty solution is to write a bunch of import tools for Roller, but the best idea is to unite the weblogging community into creating a common database schema, or whatever it may be.

Adam Curry is the number three Adam on Google today, ahead of Adam Smith, Adam Sandler, and the guy who did the deed with Eve. [Scripting News]

MonasticXML.org is a look at XML from a different angle, focusing on what markup is best at rather than what markup can do to solve a particular problem or set of problems. While XML is powerful, developers seem insistent on using XML in ways which seem convenient for a moment but which cause much greater trouble down the line to both their projects and to markup itself.

One of my colleagues uses an SLR, and scans the pictures after developing the films. This of course makes it easier to get the resolution you want. You could also correct the lighting problems manually while scanning. But for me this is too much work.

The new 3-5 megapixel digital cameras are good enough for replacing the APS camera. I'm not in a hurry, but if there appears to be a reasonably priced digital camera with good picture quality and good battery life, I'm going to buy that one. There is not much point in waiting too much longer.