intertwingly

It’s just data

June 31st


Bill de hÓra: You’re seeing this error because you have DEBUG = True in your Django settings file. Change that to False, and Django will display a standard 404 page.

Update: seems to be better now. Will leave with this somewhat odd page.

Unable to Complete the Call as Dialed


Tim Bray: I’m not sure whether this free-TLD idea is a good or bad thing in the big picture

Consider the fun that will occur when existing software is presented with email addresses that contain non-latin characters.

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Minimalist Markup


While Ryan, James, and Mark have been pursing a minimalist design from a presentation perspective, I’ve been quietly pursuing a minimalist design from a markup perspective.

My front page (under development) will be valid HTML5 and yet have absolutely no div or span elements, no inline style or class attributes, and no table or img elements used purely for layout purposes.

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OpenID Check on Rails


Looking at openidauthentication, it seem to do everything I want.  Since I am looking to check an identity during the processing of a request, I need to somehow have the id of the unprocessed record tag alone with the identity request. ...

Intertwingly on Git


I’ve installed git and gitweb, and put up my initial code explorations for a Ruby on Rails based rewrite of this blog’s software.  Neither the code nor the tests are all that much just yet, mostly just scaffolding and CSS, a small bit of controller logic, and the autogenerated tests and fixtures.  But anybody out there feels compelled to try it out, go for it. ...

Atom-PubSub module for ejabberd


Eric Cestari: This module will offer an AtomPub interface to ejabberd PubSub data... The AtomPub interface passes the Atom Protocol Exerciser (though some warnings remain).  It means that any AtomPub clients will be able to post to a specific node in your PubSub tree.  It also means that your PubSub tree will also be available as an AtomFeed.  [via kael]

Intertwingly on Rails


Views: index, post, comments, archives

This clearly is just modest beginnings.  A snapshot of existing data.  Read-only views at this point.  No caching.

Technology is Rails 2.0.2 on SQLite3 using Phusion Passenger on Dreamhost.

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Advertise One Feed Format


Nelson Minar starts a meme.  Rafe Colburn waters it down.  I’ve watered it down even further.

Whatever you call your feed, Safari will call it RSS.  Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Which format should you pick?  I’d suggest that you pick whichever one that you can consistently produce with the fewest errors and warnings detected by the feedvalidator.  Test with Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn and ampersands in titles.  June, particularly in the UK is also a good time to test.

RX for Pain


Tim Bray: There is quite a bit of disgruntlement about XML and Ruby right at this point in time

I’m scheduled to give a talk about this subject and more at OSCON next month.  Short summary: if you are a markup geek (i.e., deal with things like HTML or XML), and expect things to “just work”, now is not a great time to be exploring Ruby 1.9.  The biggest issue is that bug reports and suggestions don’t seem to attract the necessary cycles from the key developers.

Hopefully, venues like OSCON can help draw attention to this important issue.

Sausages and Uncertainty


Scales of Justice. Based on work Copyright 2007 by Ken A L Coar. All rights reserved. The design and this SVG rendition are protected by copyright law, and may not be used or reproduced without the express permission of the author, coar@apache.org. Yesterday we had an ASF members meeting.  You can see the board results here.  I was asked about the status of the ASF third party licensing policy.  Luckily I had prepared in advance. ...

Rails 2.1


Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition has been updated to Rails 2.1.  The biggest visible change is the UTC-based migrations.  It is amazing how fast beta readers pick up on details such as these.

Wii Fit


Bought a WII fit two weeks ago when it first went on sale.  It hasn’t replaced going to the gym, but I will say that my wife and I have integrated it into our daily lives.  I recommend it.  Not because of the amazing graphics, but because the “training” is entertaining and psychological engineering is impressive — everything from continuous encouragement in the form of cheerful “good jobs!” to continuous measuring, tracking and reporting on your progress. ...