yonkeltron » Internet

Blogs that sort of make fun of others

Jonathan Magen — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:02:41 +0000

I have recently been exposed to several different blogs which make fun of others. I am unsure as to what this genre signifies. Perhaps I shall ask a sociologist. In the meantime, here is my list so far. Additions are welcome and will get you a mention and a link.

People of Walmart (classic)
Dear Girls Above Me
Look At This Fucking Hipster (buy the book!)
Lesbians who look like Justin Bieber

HTML5 has custom data attributes

Jonathan Magen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:16:35 +0000

So, I know that the Microformats project has has varying degrees of success in their endeavor to embed data in HTML such that it does not violate web standards. As John Resig pointed out, others have used things like XML namespacing in XHTML to achieve similar goals. The most notable usages of this technique are most likely to be found in the applications of RDFa. However, when looking at the new unobtrusive JavaScript helpers in the forthcoming Rails 3, I was tipped off to the huge scope of the new data- attributes in HTML5. The custom data- attributes excite me.

In HTML5, including any arbitrary attribute may be included in any element provided that it is prefixed with data- and doesn’t interfere with the rest of the standard. Anything. So I can do the following and have it be perfectly valid:

 Whatever

How awesome is that?

Neato article about NoSQL on Ars Technica

Jonathan Magen — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:46:28 +0000

I am very excited by some of the NoSQL stuff out there and enjoyed a recent Ars Technica article. The first page is some neat background and the second page has a good overview of some NoSQL options out there.

http://arstechnica.com/business/data-centers/2010/02/-since-the-rise-of.ars/

Messing with OpenStreetMap

Jonathan Magen — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:31:34 +0000

Some people might not see the reason for a project like OpenStreetMap when there are plenty of good mapping products and services laying around. I am not one of them. Whenever I use a GPS, I think quite a bit about it’s inner workings. How does it figure out which route is best? How does it calculate things on the fly? All of these questions usually lead me to think, at one point or another, that it depends very much on the data. While most mapping services and individual GPS devices use various algorithms for calculating routes, etc. (prob based on some weighted graph or something), they also rely on different sets of map data. A GPS can only tell you where on the planet you are, not what road you are on. For that, it needs map data. The only issue is that all of the map data used by popular services is proprietary!

Enter, OpenStreetMap. Seeded with the geographical data made publicly available by various governments and public universities, OpenStreetMap provides Free (as in freedom, licensed under CC-BY-SA) map data to anyone who wants it. The data is usually in pretty good shape because the initial measurements are in good shape. However, things aren’t perfect. Lucky for the web, OpenStreetMap.org allows users to help improve the data in a number of ways.

First, users can upload GPS traces to help improve the quality of unmapped regions such as seriously-rural areas along with bike and hiking trails. Second, users are able to tweak the mapping data to correct errors. There are a number of ways to do this but OpenStreetMap.org has an online editor which lets you overlay OSM data onto sattelite imagery so you can move those roads, landmarks and the like into the right location. In about an hour, I had cleaned up much of my hometown and began to add local landmarks, parks and buildings. It’s quite easy.

The project itself seems off to a great start and the planet shows a fair bit of activity. In particular, I like the idea of mapping parties where people get together and work on a given area. This seems like a great way to give back to the community and I plan to float the idea at the next SCOSUG meeting.

Data visualization on a web page

Jonathan Magen — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:06:07 +0000

Quickie: Two of my favorite ways to get data visualized on a web page are the Google Chart API and flot, the amazing canvas-based plotting library built on top of jQuery.

The Google Chart API provides a rediculously clever way to get high-quality information graphics which are generated on the back of the clearly-amazing Google infrastructure. You just use the URL layout provided and it sort of just works. All types of charts can be created. It’s very nice if you’re willing to take the time to piece together the URLs in the proper format. There are some abstractions, though.

Then there’s flot (which I’m told is Swedish for “pretty”). Flot is a library written in JavaScript on top of jQuery which produces very nice charts inside a canvas element. The demos are quite gorgeous and it’s operation seems straightforward enough. As a side note, Lift has a built-in flot widget.

Good talk about DSL construction in JS

Jonathan Magen — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:25:36 +0000

Neat talk, should remind everyone about the joys of doing cool stuff in the browser. Plus, it made me think about DSLs in general which is good because of all the Scala goodness I’ve been messing around with recently. The talk is on InfoQ.

The W3C has been busy: web gems of the future

Jonathan Magen — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:01:41 +0000

After reading a very cool post on InfoQ about current issues with asynchronous communication between browser and server, I looked into the HTML 5 WebSockets specification and it’s really very cool! Yes, people seem to be getting most excited about offline web-apps, client-side structured storage in HTML 5, but a bi-directional socket between client and server would be very useful, especially considering that a normal HTTP connection can be upgraded on the fly thus keeping any security like TLS. Other things in the HTML 5 specification are also very attractive so it’s worth reading the spec.

While examining the specification and browsing about the W3C site, I noticed two other things which are currently under draft.

The first is a novel way to shorten URLs used in XML documents in a system called Compact URIs or CURIE. The draft syntax for CURIEs is novel, simple and clearly full of potential. Who doesn’t want to be able to use wiki-style links such as [isbn:0827608047] or some such?

The second is XFDL, the Extensible Forms Description Language used for relibaly and securely implementing forms. Everyone hates paperwork and this might be a step in the right direction. My only question is why it’s still in draft form (since 1998) if it’s being used by brances of the military?

Finally we have XFrames, a supposedly-decent way to get around the many issues with those web pages using frames. The spec is a little hairy but we’ll see how it and it’s implementations shape up as time goes on.

There was a time when I was losing faith in the W3C as they got mired in projects which seemed far-removed from the needs of the people or altogether impractical. Now, it looks like they’ve got great stuff brewing and I’m rather excited to see where it goes.

Don’t be scared of stuff on the internet

Jonathan Magen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:23:16 +0000

Positively fantastic post by Adam Thierer over at the Technology Liberation Front about putting youth social networking and safety in perspective. It’s a very well-written and well-thought-out piece which puts out some real truths about the disparity between what kids do online and what their parents think is happening. I encourage educators, community organizers and, especially, parents to read the post and follow up on Thierer’s references. Great job, dude.

My Hacker Key

Jonathan Magen — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:35:57 +0000

It’s been far-past time to replace the Geek Code, so I’m very glad that I discovered the Hacker Key. My key:

v4sw6/7ALRU$hw4ln5+7pr5FOP$ck0ma0u8Lw2m1l7Di6e4t5NTVb8ADHKMOPRen5a2Xs0r5$p-2.38/-2.31g5G hackerkey.com

Make your own, at hackerkey.com!