a blab by idle

I had randomly run across some interesting (but highly geeky) XML quotes, and found this gem from Tim Bray:

Some of us really REALLY want to be able to deal with the bits on the wire and REALLY like the open-ness and interoperability that gives us. Others really REALLY want to take the bits on the wire away and present us instead with an API that has 117 entry points averaging 5 arguments and try to convince us that this is somehow equivalent. XML, for the first time in my professional career, represents a consensus on interoperability: that it is achieved by interchanging streams of characters with embedded markup. Since about 15 seconds after XML's release, the API bigots have been trying to recover from this terrible mistake and pretend that the syntax is ephemeral and the reality is the data structure, just read chapters 3 through 27 of the API spec, buy the programmer's toolkit, sign up for professional services and hey-presto, you'll be able to access your own data, isn't that wonderful!?!?

But you're not going to take the bits on the wire away from us without a huge messy noisy fight down to the last ditch.

 — Tim Bray on the xml-dev mailing list, Thursday, 05 Dec 2002

Sherwyn's is listed on fuckcorporategroceries.net in their list of good stores in Chicago. Warms my heart, in that sort of "down with the corporate whores!" rebellious leftist way. I'm kind of tickled that we're right next to the Spice House, too, even though it's just a happenstance of orthography.

Found that while surfing GeoURL. I've always been a big fan of geotagging and geoblogging. Perhaps some day I'll do something more than just adding ICBM tags to every system I run….

Holy crow! The EU actually got it together and told the US to go fly a kite: ICANN should be a global agency. This was just slashdotted, so most of you probably already know this, and thanks to Neal for the heads-up, but just in case (like me) you were one of the six people who hadn't read it, check out the Guardian's article on it.

Neal pointed out that this is one of the first times the EU, with one voice, looked the US square in the eye and said "We're an 800 pound gorilla, too." and went toe to toe. In this case, with the court of global opinion behind them, they are clearly going to get their way. It's good that we're being reminded we are but 5% of the world population, and we really do have to play nice with others.

I have been working for a fair bit of today on my new work web site. I have to give props to Open Source Web Design, a place where you can download all sorts of nifty and interesting templates for doing web sites, all put out free for use (except for the premium ones). What's great is that they have an excellent selection of XHTML and CSS compliant styles that allow for all sort of tweaking and experimenting.

I'm taking it to the next level by abstracting out commonalities and putting together a mini site toolkit for myself in PHP. It's not great, but it should make the overall site development effort (which, since Friday's workshop, has become needed presently) much easier.

You can examine the ongoing progress at http://staff.imsa.edu/~scott/. Note that it's pretty skeleton right now, though.

Well, not permanently. But today they did, and it really sort of annoyed me.

Went to the Apple Store to try to evaluate monitors for the replacement for Gail's old PowerBook G3, a computer that's definitely feeling its five year age. We'd decided already on a decked out Mac mini and a DVI monitor; the question was, which monitor? The Apple monitors are gorgeous, but pricey (my concern) and not black (her concern). We evaluated it, thought about it a bit, and she decided she was good to go with the 20-inch Apple Cinema Display. So, with readiness to buy a mini with an extra 512MB of RAM, a 20 inch display, and a wireless keyboard and mouse, we went to the front desk.

"Oh, you'll need to speak to a specialist, sorry. I can't help you with that."

Hmm. Time is tight and we just spent 10 minutes in the line to buy this. Not a good sign. "We know exactly what we want. A SuperDrive mini with 1G of RAM, a 20 inch display, and a wireless keyboard and mouse."

He blinked at me from behind his beige scarf and flowingly long blond hair. "So you want a mini? Uh, we don't sell those…"

I interrupted. "Not an iPod mini; a Mac mini."

"Oh. Um. Okay. You want that just as it comes?"

Sigh. His hair was very nice, but it really may have been one of his most intelligent features. "No, I need it taken to 1G of RAM."

"Oh, then, you have to have a specialist help you."

One walks by and we grab him. He starts talking us through the "Have you considered what you might be using this for?" bit. I quickly dissuaded him of the notion that we wanted any help. "SuperDrive mini, 1G of RAM, 20 inch display, wireless keyboard and mouse." He brought us over to the minis, at which point Gail starts getting a tad annoyed. "We don't need to see it; we know what we want." Finally, he takes us over to the order entry computer and starts configuring it for us. After a little more back and forth (during which time he did ask me the one question I hadn't yet pondered: AppleCare), he said "We'll print the order, they'll install the RAM, and you can pay for it." With that, he walked in back to check something. So there I was, staring at his internal order site. With a big note on it that says "Make sure to tell people that unlike the online store, we CANNOT buy back RAM from stock configs!" He comes back and I point to the screen. "So I'm buying a 1G stick and getting no credit for the 512MB?" He starts responding "Well, you get to have both of them." I'm starting to fume: "Yes, but there's only one DIMM slot in a mini, so I'll be eating the 512M DIMM, right?" He was a bit flummoxed but stammered out "Well, yeah." I figured if it wasn't that much, I'd eat the cost: "So how much are we talking extra here? $50? $100?" He said "Well, I'm not sure, but I think it's around $500." My eyes must have gone very wide (and not happy), because he quickly backpedaled: "But that's not with your educational discount!"

$500 for a stick of RAM? When the computer itself is only $679 or so? I don't THINK so. I quickly said "Oh, forget this. Can you cancel the order? I'll do it on the Apple Store site." He said, "Uh, sure. We can do that for you here and save you 1-2 days." At this point, I was just ready to get the heck out of this miasma of inept customer service. "No, that's okay, I can just order from home. Thanks anyway." Then we fled.

How annoying. Apple claims to try to make the in-store experience the same as the web site, but there's still things you just can't do unless you buy direct. Yet they don't actually point all of that out.

So, today, Apple lost a sale. Sure, they'll get it back tomorrow, or soon. But still, there are others who would have walked away and not come back. That such a thing could occur when Apple so desperately needs to leverage iPod sales to Mac sales is reprehensible. It was also disappointing; this is, in my opinion, the best computer out there right now for people. So why are they risking sales with such ineptitude at the retail level?

Well, I was happy with my iPod Photo 60G.

Until they finally did what I had been expecting for a year now: the new video-capable iPods.

At the same time, they've released iTunes 6, with video and video podcast support. ("Didn't they just release iTunes 5 within the last month or something?" Shh! Spoil not the marketing engine!!)

Oh, and a new iMac G5 that's smaller, sleeker, and has a built-in iSight and remote control. As if I wasn't having enough problems with deciding on the Mac mini… (by the way, hello to all of the MacSurfer readers who came by for my Apple Store rant!)

Ah, well. Obsolescence, thy name has always been iPod. But still we love them.

This is a test post from the Flock 0.4.9 developer preview.  I first read of this on boingboing and was sufficiently intrigued to give it a try.  Although I am not a del.icio.us user (although it turns out I know the guy who started it from my time in NYC), this is definitely intriguing me in this "Web 2.0" social navigation context.  However, just as I'm not sure I want my phone, pager, fax, mp3 player, camera, and scanner all converged into one device, I'm also not sure I want all my social networking technologies converged into one program — I just don't know if it's set to leverage it cleanly, which is the fundamental justification that I can think of for convergence.

I also have spread the seeds of NaNoWriMo at the work.  So far, the library is on board as a resource, and I've got at least one member of the English faculty intrigued.  I've also put the official advert flyer outside my cubicle and one student has already given me some positive feedback on it (at least for its humor value).  I wonder if I can get any of those already overworked students on board for a month of wordslamming.

Yesterday was a rough day, and turned into a truly rough night.  Today wasn't as bad as last night, but it's taken me until now to even purge through the work-related things.  Now I'm almost afraid to take the lid off everything else from last night, for fear of losing control of it again.  I suppose I am indebted to try, though; we shall see….