http://intertwingly.net/blog/ It's just data en-us http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/29/Rails-and-Snowmen People have started to notice that Rails is adding a snowman to their URLs.  There even is now a website devoted to this. The fact that people care about such things to complain indicates that socialization of the concept of that URIs are to be meaningful is working.  Alternatives being discussed to date include renaming the form field, choosing a different character, moving the field to the end of the query, and providing a mechanism to opt out. ... http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/26/Rails-3-0-Release-Candidate Many things have changed since Rails 2.3.x.  Few changes (except for those affecting views and mail) affect existing projects beyond the normal cycle of deprecation.  Lots affect books, and the way you learn Rails. If you are the type that prefers to learn from a book, there are lots of good Rails books out there.  In all, I would say that the most important criteria is picking a book that matches the version of Rails you plan to be working with on.  Agile Web Development with Rails is available for Rails version 2.x and for Rails version 3.x. ... http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/18/Community-over-Code Noah Slater: Joining the ASF was an interesting experience for me. I had come from a free software background, and proudly wielded my gnu.org email address around. At some point along this journey, I gave up on my publishing software. There was no other reason for my continued involvement with the project, beyond the fact that I loved being a part of the community. It was, and remains, so vibrant and positive. All of the aggression, and trolling, and arguments I had become used to on the free software lists just didn’t exist. It was comparatively idyllic! It slowly occurred to me that free software misses the point, and so does open source. It isn’t about enforcing freedoms and political agendas. It isn’t about more eyes for shallow bugs. It’s about community. Without a throng of decent, friendly people who are open to new ideas, discussion, and who enjoy collaborating and helping each other, a project like this is nothing. A good community can make up for poor documentation, and lack of features. A good community can make up for anything! I love CouchDB, but I love the CouchDB community even more. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/17/Feedback-Loops Allen Wirfs-Brock: Web standards are complex software artifacts and like all software, they contain bugs. Sometimes the best way to find and fix compatibility bugs is to implement and deploy the standard on widely used browsers. This generally takes place in the context of early releases such as the IE9 platform preview builds. So, when you as a web developer are providing feedback on such releases you aren’t just providing feedback on a specific browser you are also providing feedback on the new and emerging standards that it implements. Of course, for this feedback to be worthwhile, browser implementers and standards authors need to be able and willing to quickly respond to feedback that identifies significant problems. The rapid response to the ES5 jQuery toString problem and other issues on es5-discuss show how browser implementers and other TC39 members can and do work closely together to create a more compatible and interoperable Web. But it all starts with your feedback, so please keep it coming. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/16/Back-in-Line Total weight gain on in the 9+1 days of cruise and travel: 4.6 pounds.  Total weight loss on the 6 days since we’ve returned 4.5 pounds. I expect some dampening oscillation to occur, but seem to be back on track. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/07/10/Inventory-Checklist Just got back from a 9 day cruise, with no email, internet, or cell phone.  Recommendations for future preparations: Pack a watch.  I’ve stopped wearing one as I’m typically near my house, my car, or my cell phone, each of which will readily provide me the time.  On the cruise, I wasn’t near any of these three. Purchase inexpensive water shoes.  The shore and water were gorgeous, but once you got to the waterline, sand was replaced by rocks.  My sister-in-law tipped me off on this one, and this recommendation is worth passing along. Bring a waterproof card case with lanyard.  You will need to carry your pass key and driver’s license with you whenever you get off. Check out a towel the night before any excursion.  The cruise line will loan you towels, it simply is best to avoid the morning when there may be a run on them. Expensive lanyards and watches are available; oddly water shoes and card cases were hard to find. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/28/Growing-Pains Stephen Shankland: One possibility is a growing rift between two camps that are both deeply involved in the standard. But given the players' commitment and their continuing work together, a rosier scenario is perhaps more likely: oversight of the future Web isn’t collapsing, it’s just rebalancing. Balanced piece that neither sweeps under the rug nor sensationalizes the differences that we are working through. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/27/HTML5-Interoperability Brian Hogan: I am getting really, really tired of Mozilla screwing up the HTML5 specification. First it’s video, and now "we’re never supporting Web SQL" By video, I’m assuming that Brian is referring to the fact that Mozilla does not plan to implement H.264.  With respect to Web SQL, what would be needed is for somebody to define an interoperable dialect of SQL which would be support multiple interoperable implementations. ... http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/25/Remote-Application-Removal-Feature Rich Cannings: Every now and then, we remove applications from Android Market due to violations of our Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy. In cases where users may have installed a malicious application that poses a threat, we’ve also developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices. If an application is removed in this way, users will receive a notification on their phone. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/25/ProActive-Energy-Systems The upgrade is complete, and yesterday the temperatures hovered around the 100-degree mark.  In total, the air conditioners ran 3:14, 5:52, and 5:49 on the first, second, and third floors respectively, and at all times each and every part of the house was comfortable.  I don’t have a baseline to compare it to, but I do recall that in prior years the air conditioner on the third floor was unable to keep up, and therefore ran continuously. The company that did the work is ProActive Energy Systems.  They were courteous, cleaned up after themselves, and addressed other problems that they noted along the way, such as sealing the air conditioning unit for the second floor.  If others in the area are considering taking similar measures, I would recommend this company. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/24/Deworming Running Linux and Firefox, I’m pretty safe from most viruses, but worms are another story, and I was fooled into propagating one earlier this evening.  I haven’t pieced together all the details yet, but as near as I can tell Facebook doesn’t care to police such things despite many people reporting the issue. Looking deeper into the worm itself, it appears that Google is hosting key portions.  I’ve reported the abuse to Google; meanwhile I’m hoping that somebody at Google who reads this could expedite the taking down of this blog. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/23/IE9-Platform-Preview-3 Dean Hachamovitch: Our continued ask, is that you download the latest preview, try the samples on the test drive site, and try your own sites. Send IE9 the same markup that you give to other browsers. Much improvement (in particular, SVG width, height, and clipPath seem to be supported now).  One issue, which is rather glaringly obvious. ... http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/22/5INO Paul Irish: Because HTML5 and its related technologies cover so much ground, it can be a real a challenge to get up to speed on them. That’s why today we’re sharing HTML5 Rocks, a great new resource for developers and teams looking to put HTML5 to use today, including more information on specific features and when to use them in your apps. I encourage advocacy sites to validate their content, and either conform or submit bug reports on intentional differences. Note: Google is not unique here, see also Apple, and Microsoft. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/16/OPML-Interop Dave Winer: Chris Janton pointed out that some of my OPML isn’t properly handled by another OPML-processing application, and that my own validator rejects it as invalid. I’ve corrected the feedvalidator to not report that message for OPML 2.0 feeds.  The message still is produced for OPML 1.1 feeds, per the test case. Other problems I noted: it looks like the example isn’t well formed xml, as it includes duplicate attributes.  Additionally, it also contains a number of attributes which are not defined on this page that are not in a namespace. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/15/Planet-Venus-as-a-PubSubHubbub-publisher Matt Domsch: Following are 3 patches which implement PubSubHubbub publishing By the time he was done, there were a total of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 patches. To enable, simply pull the latest Venus and add the following to your config.ini, tailoring to taste: pubsubhubbub_hub = http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/14/Foil-Covered-FROG Phase two of our whole house upgrade has begun. Yesterday, a Minneapolis Blower Door was used to depressurize our house, in order to detect leaks.  Overall, the house fared fairly well. Today started the installation of the aluminum foil energy barricade, starting with the area over the FROG.  I’ve not taken any formal measurements, but on a day like today (92°F) that area generally would be considered unbearable.  I wouldn’t say that it was exactly comfortable, but it was bearable — roughly equivalent to sitting in the shade on a 100°F with no breeze.  By contrast, the foil itself is definitely hot.  This barrier alone has to make a difference. ... http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/09/RailsConf-Slides Slides from the presentation that will start in just a few minutes. The live dashboard snapshot referred to in the presentation is showing a number of NO OUTPUT failures due to the recent change to 1.9.x breaking my usage of test/unit. Other pages referenced: bug 4781, bug 4786, changes. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/07/A-Rose-by-Any-Other-Name Brad Neuberg: Do they really care that things like Local and SQL Storage were broken out of the main HTML5 spec? Do they care that the Web Socket protocol actually lives with the IETF now rather than being inside the HTML5 spec itself, as it originally was? Do they care about the “how many angels fit on the head of a pin” battles between HTML5 Microdata, RDFa, and Microformats? They don’t. They just want to come up to speed on the newest developments and apply them to their jobs. I agree with all of the above, with one exception. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/04/Irrevocable-Promise DeWitt Clinton: what is important is how a company licenses a particular technology, regardless of their patent holdings.  As Brett points out in the comments, PSHB is covered under the OWFa, which was signed by all the many contributors. http://intertwingly.net/blog/2010/06/03/Deleting-Flash-Cookies I’m A Super: What if there was a type of cookie that ...Couldn’t be deleted by your browser Count me in the set of people who were previously unaware that such cookies existed.  As to deletion, I prefer a more direct approach. ...