July 2002
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Validation, The Movie
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2 min read
I’m gradually going around my site, cleaning each room, applying a template here, fixing a link there. In the process I’m finally getting around to reading Owen’s Validation, a persuasive argument for proper code, which could have been subtitled ‘Markup for the Long Now‘… My view is validation is very important, and not because I’m…
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Feeling Overwhelmed?
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1 min read
Michael started a therapy thread to deal with the overload of passionate development our discipline current exhibits. While the straw on the camel’s back in this case is the latest flurry of basic semantic arguments saturating the SIGIA list, I recognize it as something many of us experience now and then. The thread offers some…
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Blood Book
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1 min read
Mark Bernstein has an interesting review of Rebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook. For Blood, as for many diarists, the exercise of writing is its own reward. “If you allow yourself to begin posting entries based on what you think someone else wants you to write,” she warns, “you are missing the point of having a…
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Napple
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2 min read
I just taught a class to some designers visiting from Samsung Korea. As my first experience with an interpreter, I couldn’t help but laugh at the process a few times. Usually my sentence would result in a Korean sentence that was a little longer. But once in a while it was five times as long,…
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Scient and SBI
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1 min read
Scient was acquired by SBI/filed for bankruptcy. I’m not sure how to read that financial transaction, how it should feel to clients, or what it means strategically for the company. I just hope folks don’t lose their jobs. Word around town is that real estate liabilities hurt the bottom line (which means they had too…
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Job Search at Michigan SI
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1 min read
Peter points to this great job search engine at Michigan’s School of Information.
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BlogSpam
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1 min read
Spotted! Well, not exactly the BlogSpam I referred to. But crazy random posts on the topic of air-conditioning and mold appeared on Molly’s blog here and here. Is it someone’s idea of a joke? Do you wish you thought of it first?
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Hamza El Din at Lincoln Center
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1 min read
New York music lovers could do worse than check out Hamza El Din this Thursday at Lincoln Center. Here’s an older piece, an excerpt from ‘Manami‘ (850K), in what amounts to late 70’s Egyptian pop music. The tempo and rhythm shifts just floor me.
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Introduction to Ontologies from McGuinness
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1 min read
Deborah L. McGuinness, ontology goddess, released Ontologies Come of Age, a chapter to an upcoming book. A relatively gentle introduction, along the way she illustrates the difference between controlled vocabularies and ontologies: the former have implicit is-a relationships and the latter have explicit is-a relationships (e.g. in a taxonomy a Merlot is a narrower term…
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German Reference Tools
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1 min read
It’s a good thing the Germans know how complex their language is. They’ve invented two powerful tools to help learn it:The LEO English/German Dictionary can translate in either direction and the default setting is bi-directional, so you can type in either an English or German word and it’ll find the translation. This is only undesirable…
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Tire Swing Cartoon
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1 min read
If a digital design team designed a tire swing. Excellent. Link courtesy of xblog.
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Insights From LIS – Marcia Bates
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1 min read
Marcia Bates’ After the Dot Bomb reveals a few methods those of us without information science educations should know about. It’s a bit finger-wavey (you web design whipper snappers you!) but it’s worth reading. Also, she’s way off the mark regarding ontologies, but that’s a rant for another day. Eric unearths a related link, The…
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Pastina
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1 min read
Did anyone else have an Italian grandmother that would cook them Pastina? An earliest food memory for me, I recently picked up a box in the market, along with all the ingredients in the chicken-soup-with-pastina recipe on the side. Mmmmmmm, comfort food. And good for you. What’s the earliest food you can remember eating?
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Spam-Proof?
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1 min read
We have email spam and IM spam. Today I received a spam text message on my mobile phone (either Sprint sold my number or the spammers haven’t even bothered to harvest numbers, simply sending them out in numerical order because it’s so inexpensive). Oh joy. Next I predict – and I probably shouldn’t say this…
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Design Early, Design Often
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1 min read
In the latest issue of New Architect Alan Cooper espouses his usual philosophy: ‘Simply put, there is no downside to designing before coding.’ In the same issue, a member of the Mozilla QA team advises, ‘Release early, release often, and let your customers bang on it.’ Certainly two different approaches, but both valid I think.…