Category: Technology

Categories
Technology Weblogging

The beauty of change

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

It would seem that Google has changed its algorithms and webloggers no longer dominate. I checked my own name, Shelley, and found I’m an ignominious second pager now. Still, we webloggers are facing this algorithmic demotion in stride, with humor, and wit.

However, the only way to know Google’s algorithmic change’s true effect, is to run a test. Searching on poem change, I find:

Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.

Elizabeth Barret Browning, Change upon Change

You would have liked
Who I could have been,
But he died with the rest of my dreams.
I could have changed this,
But I tried too hard…
…I tried.

Paul Graves, Change

I made a deal with God
a few years ago
and told him
“This is it!
until the end of this year
I return the money
if they give me too much,
from then on
I feel free to keep it.”

Moshe Benarroch, Change

Returning home

I left home when I was young, at old age I returned home,

I still had the hometown accent, though my hair had turned grey.

I met the hometown children who knew me not,

Laughingly the children ask me, where I was from.

He Zhi Zhang 659AD to 744AD – A Tang Poem

i cannot feel my skin right now. if i pinch myself, it does not hurt. if i embed my fingernails in my arm, i cannot feel it. only my fingers can feel the pressure of digging into my arm. if i cross my right leg over my left leg, only my right leg can feel anything. if i cross them the other way, only my left leg can feel. right now, there is a tiny itch on my right leg. when i scratch it, i can no longer feel my leg. it therefore no longer itches. theoretically all i would have to do to stop the itching would be to put my elbow on my leg. but then if i moved my right leg, i would feel it again without feeling my elbow. this would only be useful if i had an itch on my elbow.

crushing a bird :: pocket change

 

No, Google seems to work fine. Just fine

Categories
Critters Technology

Cats and computers

I’ve been having considerable problems with my Dell laptop keyboard. Several of the keys (SHFT, CTRL, and ‘c’) only work if you pound them, hard, and the ‘a’ key keeps repeaaaaaaaaaaating.

Thinking that the keyboard needed cleaning, I grabbed an index card and started digging around underneath the keys.

Cat hairs. Thousands and thousands of cat hairs. Underneath every key is a little wad of silvery fur. Even after I removed about a cat’s worth of fur, I still had to pound the ‘c’, and the ‘a’ still keeps repeating, because I can’t get out all the aaaaaaaat haaaaairs.

Today the decision about getting a new keyboard was made for me when I clicked the ‘a’ key and the top went flying off across the room.

Categories
Technology Web

Name that space

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The fluff about namespaces in RSS 2.0 seems to have boiled down to: the major version number should have warned everyone that this version of the specification isn’t compatible with previous versions. The solution: generate both sets of Userland RSS (0.9x and RSS 2.0) until aggregators can properly work with the namespaces.

Tim Bray wrote in comments at Ben’s:

The best suggestion I’ve seen so far in the thread above is to leave RSS 2.0 with the all the elements in the RSS2.0 namespace, but for publishers to provide 2 different RSS feeds until people get used to it. And then turn off the non-2.0 feeds after a few months. -Tim

First, I agree with Dare Obasanjo — the breakage most likely did occur within aggregators that do support namespaces rather than the reverse; the namespace with RSS 2.0 ‘changed’ and this caused the breakage. However, I disagree with Dare that the solution is to just continue as is and have the RSS generators now create two separate Userland RSS feeds: one for 0.9x and one for 2.0.

How many feeds will we end up with by the time this is done — one for 0.9x, 2.0, and then the RDF/RSS, RSS 1.0 one?

Remember that old chestnut: Poor planning on your part does not make an emergency on mine?

Several things missed with all of this:

  1. Documentation of the namespace support in RSS 2.0 is non-existent, leaving a great deal of confusion about its implementation
  2. Most weblogging tools don’t have the capability of just adding yet another RSS feed, and most webloggers (or others who use software that provides RSS) don’t know how to program enough to generate their own RSS feeds (and those that do, don’t care)
  3. If RSS 2.0 is a major tool release, two weeks to hack it out, implement it, and then shove it into production is a farce — there was no time to allow for third party developers to adapt to the new specification
  4. Focusing on pure technical solutions to what is the result of poor business practices will only postpone these same problems until the next release of something like RSS

However, what I’m saying is not sexy and isn’t full of code. And since I don’t support RSS, it doesn’t impact on me anyway, so why am I talking about it?

One thing I will say, though, is that if RSS 2.0 had been based on RDF/XML, many of the questions arising now about RSS 2.0 would have been answered by the RDF specification, and there wouldn’t be this chaotic scrambling to understand what all of this means (namespace, default or otherwise). RDF/XML is an implementation architecture, and as such, provides a good understanding of what is, or is not, valid XML within the specification. That’s one thing RDF/XML would have provided.

Categories
Technology

PHP/MySQL Help

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

My system has MySql 2.23.51, Apache 1.3, PHP4, FreeBSD, and I’m running into problems trying to update or insert into MySql with PHP. The update or insert works, but I get warning back:

Warning: MySQL: Unable to save result set

The change is saved, but the application breaks. No error message is generated in log, no error number is returned. I can insert or update using Perl without a problem.

I researched the problem and tried compiling PHP as a shared Apache module — and not. I’ve used PHP’s default MySql libraries, and have also tried local MySql libraries.

I’d sacrifice a chicken at midnight, if I thought this would work. Anyone recognize this problem? Suggestions?

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Consumer rights and RSS

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Yesterday was a disappointing technology day. I had hoped to use the position of devil’s advocate at the RSS-Dev group to see if we couldn’t get a firmer definition of what the group sees as its future direction, strategy, as well as specific reasons for use of RDF. I continue to see confusion reign as to a) what the group sees as its purpose, and b) what the group sees as its direction.

Last week, I found I was having a hard time justifying the use of RDF for throwaway syndication feeds. I’ve always felt that if you can’t easily justify something, or provide a solid argument in support, either you don’t understand the need, or there isn’t a need — one or the other. At this point, I couldn’t continue to support RDF for throwaways.

Phil found out in the last two weeks of very hard effort that sometimes RDF just doesn’t work for a specific application. Doesn’t mean RDF is ‘bad’ — I use it for 3 applications at my web sites and it’s wonderful stuff. But RDF isn’t a replacement for XML. Sometimes XML works better. Sometimes plain text works better. If we start developing an attitude of “It’s on the web, so let’s put it into RDF”, we’re guilty of using the right technology for the wrong task, which doesn’t benefit anyone.

Now, I can support RDF for a different type of business, such as persistently documenting each weblog or news item posting, using something that is Dublin Core like, but geared more towards the document sub-unit business. This then could be used for traditional syndication/aggregation, but would primarily be used to literally document our content — for searches, for identification, for whatever. And I tried to get the RSS-Dev group to bite off on this as a possible direction, but in the end I was left with “we’re syndication/aggregation”, or in another case, “we’re RSS and the purpose of this group isn’t justification but tools development”.

Making a long story short: though I respect many of the individuals involved with RSS 1.0, their effort and hard work and intelligence and capability as well as energy, I can’t continue to support RSS 1.0 or RSS-Dev. Not with this current level of confusion about what the group sees as its purpose.

Unfortunately, not supporting RSS 1.0 is seen as giving victory to Dave Winer at Userland, by forcing us into choosing an RSS 0.9x/RSS 2.0 path. However, I still don’t approve of Dave’s approach to implementing RSS and his unwillingness to give up ownership of it. I can respect Dave’s contribution, and his hard work and effort, and his intelligence and capability, but I can’t support a supposedly ‘open’ spec that’s controlled by one company.

Ultimately, supporting either specification means, to me, continuing to support this competition between the groups, competition which threatens to Never…Go…Away, as can be seen in the comments to Phil’s posting.

Sometimes, when I read these types of comments, I feel as if you and I don’t matter at all; that you and I are nothing more than scraps of meat being fought over by two junk yard dogs. Well, this just peeves me. So, I’m taking the route that’s been available to consumers since the beginning of time: I’m not buying.

I’m not buying into RSS 0.9x. I’m not buying into RSS 2.0. I’m not buying into RSS 1.0.

I changed my RSS 0.91 and RSS 1.0 templates to read the following:

 

RSS not supported here

This weblog does not support RSS 0.9x, RSS 2.0, or RSS 1.0. If you wish to view entries, may I suggest that you visit the weblog, and save your fast skimming for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

 

My weblog. My web sites. My choice.