My new blog is here

If you are designing web sites or web applications for the Apple iPhone, you ought to look at John Gruber's post on typeface availability and anti-aliasing. That is one thing that is nice about the iPhone (and presumably the iPod touch) - unlike, say, my RAZR, fonts exist. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

ihatephp.net aggregates all your Twittered hate for PHP. I've tried to start a tagging pattern, by appending the word love or hate to language names. Hence pythonlove, rubylove and - most importantly - javahate. Also, if one ever finds oneself with an unwanted erection, you can always think of Web Services Architecture, a document known to cause impotence and severe lack of REST. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I'm not sure there are words to describe the utter, irredemable nerdiness of this videoPermanent link to this item in the archive.

Links have been posted to slides from the UK SWIG special event. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I love hypertext. I am a Person. So is Joe Triple. From Resource to Thing to Person - it's like evolution all over again. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Stephen Fry nominates Tim Berners-Lee for the greatest living Englishman - but more interestingly, gets a mention of the Tabulator in the article. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Coverage of XML 2007Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I'm stunned that people this stupid can votePermanent link to this item in the archive.

Ian Davis has blogged about the ongoing Description vs. Content discussion in Semantic Web circles. It's all status codes, hashes and other assorted Web Architecture madness. If HTML 5 doesn't implement profile, it looks like we are going to have to come up with other solutions. An HTTP Profile header is one of them. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Lachlan Hunt has a post at A List Apart on the benefits of HTML 5. I still think that it's a phony application of pragmatism and the Pareto principle to exclude the profile attribute. That's the major stumbling block for me. Fix that and I'll be more than happy to start using HTML 5's XML syntax. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

A large list has been published showing how the Bush administration have grossly increased government power and undermined civil liberties. Don't worry, you can always go and read about celebrities afterwards if it's too much trouble to worry about freedoms lost. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

56 Geek Archetypes. Which are you? I definitely fall into the Apple, Portable, Photo, MMO, Code and Book categories. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

xkcd has an incredibly nerdy Python-related comic. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

A future for LaTeX Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Victoria J.K. Lamburn found an interesting application called LaTeX Lab - an online LaTeX editor. It's cool that people are still working with LaTeX, even though I can't stand the idea of writing raw LaTeX by hand. (If the people who hate writing markup by hand saw writing LaTeX by hand, they'd be stunned, I think).

I used to use LyX on my Mac for writing essays and also my monster, deadline-addled dissertation. Since reformatting my Mac, I haven't reinstalled it (it's a pain to install), but it's really a great system for academic writing - mostly because of BibTeX being one of the few bibliography systems that doesn't suck. It's complex, sure. I've written my own BibTeX style templates (I treasure tom.bst which contains all my personal bibliographic rules). It'd be nice if someone could create a LaTeX/BibTeX replacement that used XML, XSL or even XHTML with a smattering of microformats and Semantic Web data appraoches. The hCite efforts and the Bibliontology stuff seems to be going in that direction.

I look forward to basically a webby way of writing academic papers (even though I don't write academic papers anymore) - just as S5 has made a webby way of doing PowerPoint-style presentations using XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. This is where "word processors" like Word and Google Docs go wrong. Just because you put words on paper, doesn't mean you are doing it for the same purpose. Writing a dissertation and writing a birthday card are different tasks and should have different tools.

I'm helping someone with an essay at the moment, and I've suggested to them that they use a version control system like Git to keep track of changes they make to their work. Now, if you were writing a short letter, a version control system would be unnecessary. But document-focused version control is something I think is quite important and, if I were to write something book-length like a novel or doctoral dissertation, I would use in a flash. Similarly, if I were writing something that length, I'd not use any kind of word processor like Word or Google Docs. Too much like toys. I'd use an XML editor, have a RELAX NG schema and adapt the schema to the document as I write it. Then I'd use CSS or XSL to turn it into the finished product. Overkill? No way. I prefer to call it "doing it properly" - I try to do security properly, and I would try to do academic writing properly.

HomeTom MorrisOpiumfield

Last modified: Monday, December 17, 2007 at 12:41 AM.

December 2007
Sun
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
 
Nov   Jan

This is my old blog. Please visit the new one.

Send me a voice message via Odea PayPal
 Subscribe

My podcast (RSS)