Don't you just hate it when you click a link while you're on YouTube watching a
video. Before you realize what happened you click the back button. Normally
this will reload the page and start the video from the beginning.
But not today. It continued at the same point where I left. That's how it
should be.
This is my first post with rssCloud enabled. It's not that hard, if you've have
created the infrastructure already. The infrastructure can be found on github:
github/pompiedom-rsscloud and github/pompiedom-ping.
I really love the thoughtful blog posts and videos from people who are in the
middle of the thing they're talking about. Those people know what they are
talking about and also have a way to make a change for the better.
Christopher Hitchens was a
author and journalist and fighter against religion and absolute morality.
His articles in Vanity Fair
are both eloquent and interesting. Also see him speaking
against dictatorships and totalitarian regimes of all kinds.
Eben Moglen is a law professor,
who started the Freedom Box Foundation and talks about privacy, free software
and how Facebook is a great way to collect information and help people spy on
other people. He gives amazing talks about these subjects, which you should see
if you think this is just a bit interesting.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson and
Lawrence Krauss, astrophysicist
and theoretical physicist, both talking about the wonders of the universe, the
things we know and don't know.
These are mostly very long videos, but if you're only a little bit interesed
you should give this some of your attention.
In How to change the world
professor Moglen talks about how you can change the world if you know exactly
what you want and exactly how to do it. And if you take a look at his fight
against software patents and "spying for free" you will get an idea about how
to understand what he means by changing the world.
Still, if I see these people talk and read what they write, I don't think I
have a chance to make the same impact they had on peoples lives. You could ask,
is that necessary? And I would answer, I'm not sure. But I would hate to lose
the freedoms we have (or had).
But to get back to the title of this post, I sometimes feel like I'm yelling
from the sidelines and poking here and there, but don't have any impact, at
all.
So for me there is this way to get around this: I want to increase freedom for
people and myself. Increasing freedom is a good thing. I don't have to impose
rules on other people, I don't want to say: you have to this or that. I
wouldn't like other people telling me to do this or that.
In this presentation Kent Beck talks among other things, about a development
technique called Keystoning. Someone from the audience asks him what it is. I
didn't know it either and that means someone else probably also doesn't know.
It's really useful for bigger features and I have used it many times without
even knowing it.
What is keystoning? Change the user-visible parts last. This way the changes
seem to have come really fast for the user. You can change a lot of code,
without making a change to the user inferface.
Things that aren't alive, can't die. So if you write an article with the title
"X is dying", you should make sure that X was alive in the first place. If it
wasn't alive, you should try and be more specific about what you mean.
Possible meanings
People used X in the past, but don't anymore.
Some people still use X, but will stop in the future.
People use X, but don't know what X is.
People use X, but you don't like it.
People use X, but you don't want them to.
I don't use X.
I know someone who doesn't use X.
I'm a sad and miserable person, just hating about things. Oh, and people use X.
And every time I used people above you replace it with customers, users, developers,
companies, grandma's, moms, dads, your neighbours, or your pet.
It involves the use of words such as "space," "around," "synergy," and
"value-add" with a healthy dose of equivocators like "sort of" and "kind of"
to ensure that there is no commitment to anything being said...
Perhaps a solution can be found in a simple little sentence that gives us some
room to think. “I don't know.”
I was told that you can't say you don't know. If you don't know something, you
make something up on the spot. What happens if you have to know everything and
need to give answers to all questions and you can't say or show you don't know?
You make shit up.
So, maybe we should be more honest and just say: “I don't know. But if you
really like to know the answer I can try to find out.”
While I was doing my morning reading I came across this weblog by Jeffrey
Kegler about his parser called Marpa. My post is not about his
parser, even though it's very interesting. This post is about the way the
weblog guides and explains the work and ideas in the parser. It even includes
historical information about where the ideas come from.
It made me think about the work Simon Peyton-Jones has done on writing a
research paper. He explains that writing a paper helps your
thinking. On the fifth slide he says that instead of first doing research you
start with an idea (any idea) and then write a paper. In the course of writing
this paper you will do the research needed to fill in the blanks.
Idea -> Write paper -> Do research
I would like to contribute that when you write software you can use your weblog
to explain and crystallize your ideas to your audience. The weblog works as a
guide and shows you where you are and where you're going. It may even help
reflect on your progress and false starts.
Sometimes a story just gets an idea going. This time it was about linking and
attribution in articles on the web. On Daring Fireball, there is a good example
pointing to a bad example.
I don't understand why there aren't more links to weblogs and other places in
the newspapers. I could guess, but I won't.