Category: People

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People Semantics

Danny gets sudsy

Recovered from Wayback Machine.

Mark Woodman did a nice interview with Danny Ayers on life, love, corner offices overlooking chicken coops, and cats.

Weeellll, not really. The focus of the interview was Danny’s steadfast work with XML, RDF, Atom, and his new book, Beginning RSS and Atom (an excellent book, by the way, and rich with detail and Lotsa Code).

Danny talks about RSS 1.0 and how the old gray mare ain’t what she used to be…well….actually, she is what she used to be. Anyway, he says not to discount the old girl just yet. Now the rest of the world is into Meta, her time has come.

One thing, though — RSS 1.0 is not RDF. By this, I don’t mean it’s not based on the RDF model, and created using RDF/XML. No, I mean that the two are not synonymous.

When I ported my soon-to-be released extensive metadata layer for weblogs to WordPress, the first problem I ran into was the tool used ‘rdf’ in URLs to indicated an RSS 1.0 syndication feed. In my own Wordform, I use rss1, which is much more accurate. RSS 1.0 is the syndication feed; RDF is the model/syntax. You don’t use ‘xml’ to indicated Atom, and you don’t use ‘winer’ to indicate RSS 2.0. So tool makers — stop using ‘rdf’ when you mean RSS 1.0.

I mean it. I’m going to start getting pissy about this.

Oh, and I also want to extend my congratulations to Les on getting engaged. Your lady is a luck woman, Les.

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People

Bite me!

I thought I loved code, but Sam Ruby is a man who really, really loves code. He’s also a very scary man at times–but lovable for all of that.

As for the crack about older than dirt, my friend C passes along a message to Sam: Bite me!

Categories
People Writing

Head First into Kathy Sierra

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I received an O’Reilly email update today about a new edition of Head First into Java just hitting the streets. I had reviewed the Head Into series a while back, and particularly liked the EJB book.

Seeing the book notice today reminded me of the discussion on the O’Reilly ETech conference and the 9% solution. During this, I got into a comment exchange over at David Weinberger’s post with one of the attendees at the conference, Kathy Sierra. Kathy is none other than the author of this series.

I was remiss in not linking to Kathy at the time–probably because like all magpies, a bright new shiny caught my attention and there I followed. However, I thought the book announcement was an excellent opportunity to rectify my ommission. If you haven’t chanced by Kathy’s weblog, Creating Passionate Users yet, you really should; she’s brought her “Head Into” use of fanciful and colorful graphics, and her very active, positive writing style into her weblog and it’s a fun mix. Most importantly, she’s a ‘longform’ writer, and we need more of these!

Well, along with women in technology that is.

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People

The Pope leaves

For those who are Catholic, I am sorry at the loss of the leader of your church today. There were many things I admired about Pope John Paul II: his dedication, hard work, and the common touch he had that made him so endearing. In the end, though I did not agree with many of his opinions and some of the actions he took (or did not take), I can respect him as a man who was fearless in the face of adversity, and had earned the love of many.

Categories
People

Sheila, Radio diva

Sheila Lennon did her first podcast, related to an article her newspaper is doing on the legend, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It’s a nice mix of voice, story, and music, and I have to admit, there might be something to all of this podcasting stuff.

I’ve had a couple of people ask where my podcasts are. All I can answer is they’re in the future. If you all want to buy me the podcast equipment I need to do the job decently, I’ll do a podcast. Otherwise you’ll just have to assume that I have a wonderful voice that will bring you to your knees.

No, seriously. A real pip. Eat your heart out Virginia Clark.

In the meantime, check out Sheila on Sister Tharpe. It’s a girl thang!