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February 25, 2004
FOAD^HF
I'm not quite sure what to make of this, really. It seems to be yet another social networking gizmo, but based on a simple RDF file that you stick somewhere on the web where people can find it. Or maybe it's just a framework to build a social networking system on top of. Who knows? Anyway, if anyone's playing with it, I'm sure I could be persuaded to include them as a "known" person, and stuff. There's a nifty tool for looking at this stuff already, called FOAF Explorer. My RDF file is linked below, for the interested.
Posted by James at 21:29
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February 24, 2004
I can't stand dogs
Anyone who knows me well, and has seen me around dogs, will know that, by and large, they scare the wossnames out of me. I'm not even sure why, I think I was conditioned to think that way from an early age, or something. That said, some dogs I can cope with — generally ones I've been exposed to a lot, and thus feel more comfortable around, or something.
But this entry isn't really about me not getting on with dogs. It's not even about the few dogs I do get on with. It's about a dog that I, for some reason, feel really, really sorry for, and would love to be able to do something to help, having heard about her plight via Carl Ebrey. The poor thing has been underfed by previous owners and, while the rescue place are feeding her up to build up her strength, her malnourished legs basically can't cope, and she needs (expensive) surgery. See Capricon Rescue's site for more info.
I know this sort of thing probably happens a lot, and to people and other animals as well as dogs, and so on, but for some reason this case touched me. Go figure.
Posted by James at 00:12
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February 20, 2004
CSS is love
Today, I really, really really like CSS. And I had to say this somewhere, so why not here.
Don't be too surprised if the colour scheme and layout of this site, and any others I run, changes repeatedly in the next few days. Like it already has, say.
[Update: I think I'm sticking with this bright orange on navy, with occasional black or white bits... comments are more than welcome, though]
Posted by James at 17:36
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Wikis Weally Wock.
Well, they do. OK, so they have confusing and inconsistent markup languages, and often encourage CrushingWordsTogether, but the advantages of having something on a webpage, editable by anyone capable of operating a web browser, outweigh (IMHO) these problems.
For instance, Huggie has a wiki, running the MoinMoin wiki software, which I've used a bit and seen other people using to organise stuff — it's very useful for a simple, impromptu online signup system for an event, say.
They don't have to be all open access and public, either. There's a Wonky Wiki, most of which is intended solely for people with accounts on a shared colo machine (the one hosting this blog). We use it to keep some vague semblance of documentation for the system, so people know what's going on when confronted with the mess someone else has made of a config file, say. Some of the pages are world-viewable, too, and it makes a quite simple way to stick some information on the web with a minimum of hassle. Great.
I've somehow got this far without mentioning OpenGuides, though I'm not quite sure how. It's a piece of wiki software, intended for running an online guide to a city, written by its readers. It includes nifty features like listing all the reviewed locations within a given distance of a given location, automatically generating links to Streetmap maps, and generally being ace. The London and Oxford guides are especially successful examples, and there is a (still) nascent Nottingham Guide available. There are more like them, but these are the ones I've used. (Weelll, OK, maybe my interest in NottinghamGuide runs to a little more than having used it).
There are, of course, defacement problems — the human race may be generally decent, but there are still morons out there who are out to ruin things for everyone. Generally, though, the genuine contributors outnumber the morons, and defacements can be undone quickly and easily. Most wikis offer a means to roll an entry back to any state it has previously been in, which can be great for dealing with this sort of thing. Other people have more to say on the subject of wiki "security" than I do, though, so I'll leave that alone for now.
In other news, I've apparently been too busy to write much here... I've had a few great weekends, and meant to write something about them, then never really got round to it. I've got just about all my marks for the first semester at uni, and it looks like I've done pretty well (or got a First, anyway), so I'm quite chuffed about that.
I've been reading more, too. I particularly liked Cory Doctorow's first novel, which as an added bonus is free to download, from his website, along with his second, and some short stories.
Wow, that was almost like content. Time for a lie down, I think.
[Update: this entry is getting hammered by comment spammers, so I'm going to close comments on it. If you have something to say, comment on another entry, or mail me; if people do, I might even reopen comments on this]
Posted by James at 00:49
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February 03, 2004
#I believe in a thing called...
Really, I do. Try watching something like Fox News some time, you'll see just how much worse things could be. This clip, for instance.
(If any of the small American contingent reading this could reassure me that Fox isn't always that bad, I'd be really grateful....)
Posted by James at 22:04
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