Category Archives: blurb
Something about Git
The Thing About Git is the first thing I’ve read that has made me think “Wow, I really have to try out Git sometime” rather than “yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve been doing that with Codeville for years.”
Plus, Git has the benefit of actually having, you know, a community of developers and stuff. Nifty.
What a DVCS gets you (definitely)
Bill de hÓra’s What a DVCS gets you (maybe) has one of the clearest explanations of why DVCS is superior to centralized VCS:
But once you accept this model of having your sandbox under version control, a lot of the pain (and fear) of dealing with branches evaporates. Passing around changesets and patches becomes normal and logical.
After using a DVCS for years (Codeville), I don’t think there’s any need for “maybe” in this post’s title, either. DVCS is superior, plain and simple.
PottyMouth ported to Ruby
I’ve ported PottyMouth 1.0.2, my library for transforming completely unstructured and untrusted text to valid, nice-looking, completely safe XHTML, from Python to Ruby 1.9. If you’re a Ruby user or fan, let me know what you think. This is part of a larger project to learn and evaluate Ruby. I’ll be posting my findings soon, so subscribe if you’re curious why I used Ruby 1.9, or if you’re interested in reading my thoughts on Ruby.
Lost in Democracy
This is an excellent video from CurrentTV about the first democratic elections in Bhutan:
Sweet Home Ленинград
Kill the cliché
Killthecliché.com raises new and troubling questions about perverse and often baffling word choices in the press.
Talking major trash about LiveJournal
This article and map of the “blogworld” has this to say about LiveJournal:
This blogging island is just barely in touch with the rest of the blogworld.
Them’s fightin’ words. You gonna take that lying down, LJ?
Relational databases and free-form data
I’ve just posted Relational databases and free-form data over on the Mosuki blog.
Strategically placed fig leaves
Hank Williams makes an excellent point about the restriction that apps on the iPhone may not run in the background.
[the] issue [of resource limiting applications] has been dealt with in Unix, and with real time systems for many years.
In short, this argument is a strategically placed fig leaf, which is easily blown away.
Previously, I thought the no background applications restriction was a good call on Apple’s part. This article totally changed my mind. Williams is right; and Apple will have to lift this restriction before long, or risk being overtaken Android and others.