BurningbirdWhen I was looking for a reference to something else, I accidentally stumbled on to this page. Such a pretty poem, and the background music suits, as does the use of DHTML.
Note: Music will play when the page loads. And it is very sentimental.
I just wanted to share this with you all because it’s nice.
Yes, I am packing, but catching up with emails and weblog visits first.
Rogi asked why Boston is called Bean Town. Well, sit down dears, I have a story to tell.
In the golden old days of New England when they would burn you as a witch for working on the sabbath (or was it the dunking wheel?), anyway, all the women in the community would make these pots of beans to be left at the Bakers. During services, which lasted all day, the beans would bake. At night they would have these beans with the traditional brown bread that still accompanies these tasty legumes.
The beans, mixed with molasses, became a favorite primarily because Boston was awash, as they say, in this dark, syrup (treacle to you from other continents) — a main trade commodity, unfortunately associated with slavery. These beans were such a favorite with Bostonians (probably because they’re cheap, and Bostonians are nothing if not frugal), they were called Boston Baked Beans. Hence, Bean Town.
More at About New England.
To make this an even stickier story, there was the molasses flood in 1919 that killed 21 people, a dozen horses, and one cat.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Found this one at Scripting News also:
Charles Cooper wrote on the independent developer’s struggle from being overwhelmed by the big companies such as Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle.
He asks the question, “As for the remaining independents still fighting the good fight?”
There has been, is, and will always be big companies. One time, even Microsoft was nothing more than a couple of college kids. Dorky college kids. The key issue that I’m most concerned about and that Cooper discusses is the standards organizations tied-at-the-hip attitude about the big players. If anything bothers me, that bothers me.
What to do?
Look around you. If you build something good, people will use it. If you build something new, people will be interested. If you open doors, generate interfaces, and make something lighter, faster, more workable and exciting—you won’t be ignored forever. You’ll see the prize at the end of the techie rainbow.
If you just schlep along subsisting on BigCo crumbs, all you’ll ever see is their ass in your face.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Oh this from DotNetCentric was excellent.
There is no war between scripting and compiled languages — both are here to stay. What we need to do is look at how we can get the two to interoperate. Is WSDL the way? Maybe. And maybe we need to look at other approaches, ones that will be effective from both sides of the typing fence.
As with open and closed source, the scripting and the compiled language environments must learn to co-exist with each other, or we’ll never have the interface we need to be able to safely practice chaos within our own domains.
(Link found via Scripting News)
Kick self in butt. Time for adventure, Orange Woman.
Saturday morning, in the early hours, I am finally getting in Golden Girl and heading out on the road. Final destination: Boston, with select points in between. I figure if I’m writing, I can do this just as easily from hotel rooms in the evening, and spend the days getting out in the world.
Can I afford this? Hell, no. But I’ve never let that stop me in the past, why should I let it stop me now? I am an American! I have credit cards!
My direction? Not sure. As in the movie Chocolat, I plan on following that old wind, seeing which way it goes.
So check back for installments of Where in the Weblogging World is Burningbird.