Jonas Beckman

Justin Hall takes a break from his professional gaming obsession and contemplates broken companies and broken relationsships. He is young but still an oldtimer - anyone with the domain “www.links.net” is. I remember reading his page about the way new economy back in ‘97 - some people were skeptical even then.

Here is another oldtimer singing a 2001 blues - we made it here, but now everything turned out like we thought it would. Hal, where are you? No, not you!

Object oriented programming oversold! This long article claims that for small to medium business applications, the supposed benefits may not be worth it. Well… maybe so. The author has one undisputable point: it’s usually not a good sign when talking feels more comfortable than doing it.

And in a similar, but less serious vein: a comprehensive list of things to say when you are losing a technical argument. Links via spilth.

Swimming went well today and yesterday. I now feel comfortable doing good sets of 200 metres freestyle - but not wanting to turn into a distance junkie, I only do 7-10 sets. Becoming more relaxed in the water is still my primary goal.

Sometimes I flip homepages in advance, thinking I’ll post just a little later. This is one of those days.

Samuel R Delany wrote somewhere in Dhalgren: “How many days in your life will you never think about again?”.

I leave this as an excercise for the reader: pick a day at random and try to bring it back.

Several people noted that there is a new version of the official Python XML-package: pyXML 0.6.3.

It had just the bugfixes we needed for our current Python-project - but we had already delivered a workaround. So it goes… we’ll probably use it next time.

From the start, I liked the idea of a very simple XML-format for outlines - and OPML is certainly simple enough. But when it was time to display those outlines, I wanted to use something both simple and familiar.

And now Joshua Allen (author of the excelllent Unofficial MSXML XSLT FAQ has done what I was too lazy to do myself: written some code for using OPML with XSLT.

Some people think XSL is the devil’s child - which is true enough to be discussed at length here. At this point in time, I think learning the right combination of XSL and CSS is far more productive than messing around with homegrown template languages or building HTML in code.

This may also rekindle my enthusiasm for Radio Userland - I stopped using it some time ago, because having to edit XML in my browser felt so stupid.

Schockwellenreiter links to the Star Office XML format - it’s interesting to see how much more than just a DTD is necessary to build real applications based on XML.

Jörg also links to Java: slow, ugly and irrelevant. Yes! Me too. Java is something I try to avoid whenever possible.

DangerousMeta sometimes has so many links I don’t know where to start. But don’t let that stop you, go there and see for yourself!
Thanks for lots of inspiration, Garret!

Martin doesn’t sleep… and is happy anyway. Enjoy your only day… and have pleasant dreams, when it’s time for that.

James Vornov is in transit right now, visiting many cities. When he’s not, he’s teaching his 8 year old son to program in Python!

I’m not a Mac person anymore, so I don’t have to join Hal and the others who must. fight. reality. distortion. field.

Tired of the awful HTML Microsoft applications produce? Try Demoronizer - a little Perl script that turns MS abominations into decent HTML. Via Cam

I read some of my own old journals earlier this week. They are sometimes well written, but still very hard to read: I kept hurting myself and others and kept writting it all down in a detached voice.

But it did get better. Life still has complications - but it’s so much better than it used to. Being surrounded by good people is such a gift!

Aila came home yesterday. Unfortunately she has the flu and very high fever. We spent a good part of Sunday night together anyway, talking. Tomorrow I will be very tired.

A Secret History of the Sexual Revolution: The repression of Wilhelm Reich.

Fascinating story! Link via Flyingchihuahuas

Today Aila passed the final exam for her driver’s license.

Picture by our friend Jeanette

Aila had to go down to the south of Sweden to get it done - driving schools in Stockholm are impossible crowded just now. But at least it was an opportunity to stay with her sister’s family
for a few days. Congratulations. And see you soon!

Two sites which both embrace XML and criticize its flaws have appeared in the last few weeks: xmlsuck and xmlbastard
Link via XMLHack

Al wrote a brave and amazing piece yesterday. Thank you!

Erlang is very functional, very concurrent. I don’t need it for anything right now, but I downloaded it and played with the samples a little.

Here is an amazing bunch of Python articles by David Mertz. Some of these I need right now and read carefully.

The Unicode Standard, Version 3.0 is now online