Category: People

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outdoors People Photography

Festival of Nations

A storm blew in tonight and took with it the heat that has oppressed our state. We have broken records right and left, including a heat index of 121 degrees on Saturday, and several days straight with over 100 degree real temperatures.

Now I can go outside, and I need to as my daily level of stress has increased beyond comfort or even good health. I was so desperate that I did go to the Festival of Nations for a few hours on Sunday — with a heat index of only 106.

The poor dancers — especially those in more elaborate costumes. I was so hot that sweat poured into my eyes, burning them, as I surreptitiously wiped my brow with my shirt (having forgotten a handkerchief, and desperate enough to conveniently forget everything my mother taught me when I was young). But at least I was in light and loose cotton — some of these people were in woven silks and satins. The only groups that seemed truly comfortable were the ones from Haiti and the Ivory Coast and South Africa. Their outfits fit the intolerable heat.

But the dancers never showed anything but love of the dance.

The Festival had food from so many countries, including Eritrea, a first for me. Vegetarians would have been delighted as most of the stands had meat free dishes. The Greeks had Baklava sundaes having hastily converted their offerings into something with more appeal on a hot day.

One stage provided the dancers, another music, and other areas provided craftspeople and individual performers. An Irish fiddler roamed through the trees. The crowds were light, and whether it was because everyone was suffering together, everyone was in good spirits.

But it was too bloody hot and I could only stay for a few hours, which was disappointing. Still, there was much to see in those few hours. The time was richly spent.

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People

Sponsoring squid people

Danny Ayers posted a note about funds and looking for work, sponsorship, or patronage.

Since RSS is the new ‘hot’ thing and people are throwing around money as long as whatever technology being funded has “…and RSS” attached to it, Danny has to be a hot property right now. He recently wrote a book on syndication feeds, “RSS and Atom Programming” and has been involved with RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, and all variations in between. From the beginning, and indepth.

More, Danny almost always maintains his courtesy and humor when dealing with the world of syndication. This absolutely blows me away, because I lost both in regards to this particular topic recently — as will be apparant with additional writings this week.

Anyway, Danny’s a sharp cookie, knows programming, knows data, knows markup, knows RDF (but don’t hold that against him), knows RSS (hey Harvard guys — hey!), and has several mouths to feed.

(Well, okay, Basil and the cats including my godkitty, Sparql. Still, Basil is a big dog.)

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Diversity Events of note People Photography

Pridefest

Pridefest 2005 Today’s outing to the St. Louis PrideFest 2005 parade did not begin auspiciously–we were hit from behind by a lady driving an SUV. Luckily my roommate, who was giving me a lift, drives a larger van and we could drive away after the insurance cards were exchanged.

(I hate the sensations of a car wreck: the screeching tires, the metallic thud, and the fast jerk as your car is pushed forward. I dislike more my roommate’s car being damaged because he was giving me a ride.)

Anyway, he dropped me off at the parade route, and I found a spot in front of a light pole in a little bit of shade, right next to a large group of gay women. Ironically, it was the group the lady who hit us was joining. That poor woman became the butt of several of her friend’s jokes, and one bad pun from me (“Nice running into you again.”)

They were a marvelous group to stand with : every time any car, float, or group went by they would cheer and cheer. Their exuberance added much to the event.

The Parade started right on time, and they kept the pace up, probably because they wanted to finish quickly. It was in the upper 90’s and humid and the air quality was horrid. The conditions were more than compensated, though, by the parade participants. They were a wonderful group, and more than once, I found my eyes stinging a bit from the gentle pride, and absolute joy you could see on their faces.

A Mother's Pride

There were participants from several companies, including several real estate firms. I gather that gay money, at least, is welcome in the housing market. Even in Missouri. Politically, the mayor was there, as was the fire chief and a couple of aldermen, and Ross Carnahan, a Democrat. There was even a small contingent from the Log Cabin Republicans, though they marched at quite a distance from the one somber entry, aptly named “Fear”.

Fear

There were some fun and flamboyant participants, but most of the marchers wore simple cotton shirts in various colors, with the word “Pride” over the chest. Even though they live right in the middle of that part of the country which condemns everything about them, they can still smile at, and throw pretty beads to, a crowd that has consistently voted down many of their rights. I think next year the St. Louis Pridefest organizers should consider adding the words “Courage” and “Determination” to the outfits.

Truth

Reflection in Glass

Everywhere

Categories
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!