Ironically the feature I used most frequently is the link saving tool. I say ironically because this is a full circle back to the first use of a web log - a personal directory of other sites.
As with the other dynamic applications, I saved all these pages to html for archiving.
- January 18, 2006
Rove & Plane
Thursday, July 21, 2005, 12:02 PM - Politics
Josh Marshall links to this letter from former CIA intelligence officers. Well worth the read.Judith Miller
Thursday, July 14, 2005, 01:07 PM - Politics
I've read a bunch of comments that we should ignore Judith Miller's pimping for Chalabi and the Iraq war and support her First Amendment situation vis a vis Plame and Rove. However, it's hard to get up in arms when there lurks the question of what smoking gun is she hiding.Frankenplumbing
Wednesday, July 13, 2005, 09:46 AM - Tech
This from Mark Gibbs of Network World:My house is full of Frankenplumbing. There's a maze of copper, galvanized, brass and plastic pipe-work lurking under the house, and some of it is sound though much of it is decaying. And it is draped from one beam to the next and winds around and through joists. It has been cut off, capped off, welded, brazed, extended and joined.
The problem is if you do anything that disturbs the status quo of your Frankenplumbing your life will become much harder. Any minor change will usually break something, and major changes are guaranteed to cause chaos.
This then is the real foundation of IT, particularly at the enterprise level: The IT group is there to fix, add to and sometimes replace the Frankenplumbing for as little cost as, and with the least disturbance to the system, as possible.
That tells you something important about the kind of people you need in an IT operation. Among all the groups, the analysts, the programmers, the support techs and so on, you want to have a fair number of MacGyvers who are happy to grapple with the Frankenplumbing and capable of using some digital bailing wire and virtual chewing gum to create a workable fix.
Health Insurance
Wednesday, June 15, 2005, 10:51 PM - Politics, Economy
Just heard about another self-employed person who had to go back to work for a large company to get health insurance. What a mess. Affordable access to health care is considered a necessity, and rightly so. Yet honest sweat of thine own brow isn't enough to cover the necessities.The marketplace doesn't seem to be handling this one very well. In a culture where money is the prime measure of things, there is little respect given to non-monetary qualities, such as the financial selflessness of a dedicated teacher.
This cultural attitude negatively affects the health care field. Nurses and Physician Assitants aren't respected. Even doctors, excepting the superstars, are falling into chumpdom. Why would smart, caring people want to go into medicine under these conditions?
One wonders how to build an American civilization where many measures of success are properly respected. Where a successful businessman and a successful and a successful family doctor are all accorded respectful status, recognizing that the yardstick of success in each case is different.
Security
Wednesday, June 15, 2005, 02:42 PM - Tech
This article by Winn Schwartau sort of goes with my previous post about openness. I wrote about how to keep the data open from proprietary formats and controls. Schwartau writes about the basic rules on how to keep data safe.Text based apps
Wednesday, June 15, 2005, 11:38 AM
I'm a fan of appropriate technology. For small sites, such as this, it seems to me that a database backend is unnecessary. That's why I go for apps that use text files for storage. Sure, the overhead on the server is probably higher per transaction, but the number of transactions are so small that the reduced technical complexity outweighs the marginally higher overhead.Here's what I'm using so far:
Blog: Simple PHP Blog
Wiki: roWiki
Photos: something I cobbled together
There is a discussion board app and an authentication app that I'm looking into.
What I think I might try is putting together a text-based app portal. More later.
IBM Patents
Monday, April 11, 2005, 08:58 PM - Tech
The release by IBM of 500 patents could seed some fascinating innovative growth.First off, IBM could be doing the whole PC giveaway all over again. In the same way that the company published the architecture of the IBM PC in the 70s, IBM is giving away another chunk of intellectual property. Since I don't know the quality and timeliness of the patents, I'd been delighted to be educated by a kind reader.
Second off, it is, of course, a challenge to other big guns to divest themselves of patents. And, of course, the strength of the challenge depends on the quality and timeliness of IBM's patents.
In the first instance, if the IBM gambit plays out the same way as the PC publication, you'd hope that the company has learned and is prepared this time to maximize on the disruption.
In the second instance, the best outcome is that the cumulative pressure would allow Microsoft to open up Windows 95 (under the MSPL: MS Public License).
The worst thing that could happen is that the patents are essentially uninteresting and the effort thuds.
List of IBM patents
And here's something from Chris Nolan at eWeek.com
The bottom line: IBM has played some smart politics here. It has satisfied its obligations under open-source agreements, it has racked up brownie points with the open-source community, and it has created a kind of political confusion that will help it exploit its new patents. It's a clever strategy that just might work to the advantage of IBM and its competitors.
Format Openness
Friday, March 11, 2005, 08:20 PM - Tech
Speaking of openness, I just spent about two hours messing around with a spreadsheet back and forth between Excel and OpenOffice Calc. Enough to drive you crazy. It is a simple grid to track speakers at a meeting. It is meant to be printed out.I don't mind that one app doesn't support a feature in another app, but why does the one have to strip the formatting it doesn't understand (rhetorical question)?
Something's got to be done, and it will at some point. Railroad gauges were standardized. Electrical supplies were standardized -- outlets, plugs, light bulbs, etc. So too will formats and treatment of data become standardized.
I just hope it will happen sooner than later. The key is to overcome the Microsoft domination. If the computing environment remains a monoculture, then there will be no need. But as more applications become widely used and depended upon, then the economic irritation coming from the lack of portability will prove overwhelming.
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