disobey.com

I've nothing to do with it whatsoever, but DisobeyStuff.com has some stickers and a t-shirt that you should buy. Good stuff. On the other hand, if I had half a day, I'd probably CafePress my own shit. Sigh. I need a fan club.

My series of Apache articles are being re-released at the O'Reilly MacDevCenter, with edits for Jaguar, cleared confusion based on contributed comments (alliteration, baby!), and all the hems, haws and jujubees a hopelessly unsatisified writer can fix. The first article is now available and the others will follow shortly.

There's some incredibly great stories over at the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time - enough so that his Museum of Hoaxes book is now on my Amazon Wish List. Speaking of which, it's my birthday on April 25th (I'll be a quarter century old, I think). Buy me stuff and I'll sepiacam my joy.

Based on the documentation within the dblite package, I have created and publicly released a set of extras for Barebone's BBEdit. It is available here. The README:

This is a collection of DocBook Lite extensions to BBEdit 7.x (they probably work under earlier versions, too). DocBook Lite is a slimmer version of the DocBook XML standard, created for use in marking up books by O'Reilly and Associates. This package contains a DocBook Lite Glossary, split into Block and Inline Elements, and six stationery's, covering Book, Chapter, Part, etc (you'll need to "Get Info" on these files and click "Stationery Pad").

More of my BBEdit goodies will eventually live here.

I've been working with the peeps at Sourceforge, and they've recently announced and released various system-wide RSS 2.0 feeds for all their projects:

A convenient way to keep up-to-date with the SourceForge.net site, project news, activity information, and new projects is now available. SourceForge.net provides a number of RSS feeds that may be accessed using an RSS reader or aggregator (some content management systems also allow you include data from an RSS feed on your website, much as Slashdot and Freshmeat do in the right sidebar of their layout). Using these RSS feeds, you can keep up-to-date with the latest project news and file releases, Site Status updates and SourceForge.net statistics (such as top projects).

Project-specific RSS feeds may now be accessed using the "View list of RSS feeds available for this project" link on the Summary page for each project. Information about the full set of the available SourceForge.net RSS feeds (14 feeds, in all), including information on the software needed to view RSS feed data and a complete list of the options available for each RSS feed, may be found here.

For those of you who can't see the trees for the forest, I've also written and posted a quick RSS 2.0 to RSS 1.0 Converter. Just rss_conv.pl URL and you're set. I won't give further help besides that. The Sourceforge announcement was released in their newsletter on Monday - the nearest online mention I can find (with comment capability) is here.

This is of particular interest to AmphetaDesk users (my open sourced reader that uses and relies on Sourceforge services) - all the RSS feeds are "one-click" capable, as explained in the documentation (above) and seen here... just click the pill with AmphetaDesk running, and you're set.

I am, as they say, jaded. I am also terminally busy, busy with writing, coding, working, blah blah blah. Anyways, I've owned Xenosaga for the past two weeks (putting it off until I finished .hack//infection) and have thus only played five or six hours of it.

I have recently added "Gnosis Attack Woglinde" to my list of "Great Moments in Gaming". The music, the pacing, the cut scenes and how they're pulled off (with specific attention to Virgil/Shion/Realians and Gnosis/Shion/KOS-MOS) just hit a very strong nerve for me - I was impressed with the discussion on "protocol" and Shion's obvious struggle with what Virgil was saying, as well as the imminent coolness of KOS-MOS kicking ass, but in a very dramatic way. I was seriously anxious to see what would happen next, heart racing, itching, and contemplated calling into work.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

Long long ago, when the O'Reilly Hacks book series was still being formed, I started work on a collection of hacks for Apache, the popular webserver that is now shipped by default with OS X. It only seemed natural - around the same time, I was deep into my Apache Web-Serving with OS X series, so I was in that mindset.

Those hacks, of which there were eight or so, never saw the light of day until three of them showed their face in the first book of the Hacks series, Linux Server Hacks. I didn't realize this until a few weeks ago, actually, which tickles me. See, for those keeping score, I've got three hacks there, did Perl consulting for Google Hacks, and am the co-author of Mac OS X Hacks, meaning my dirty little hands have soiled the entire line of books. If you love me, you'll buy all three - they're like Pokemon.

Annyways, back to Apache Hacks - all the ones that were left to simmer in plain text have finally seen the light of day as Contributed Hacks. You'll see 'em in the right hand corner there. Some crazy stuff in there.

Saw The Vagina Monologues at a local theatre. Good show.

Redmonk's right:

"When does a Smart Mob become merely a mob?" ... I'm using an extreme example in order to bring up a point: merely having technology does not mean it will be used wisely. I think Smart Mob related technologies are a good thing, but we need to be aware of how they can be misused as well as how they can be used. Anti-globalization demonstrators are using cellphones and other wireless tools to organize themselves across local and national boundaries. What happens when these tools are in the hands of anti-Muslim demonstrators (or worse, rioters) in the US or elsewhere?

With over 250 DVDs in my collection, this article and analysis of DVD Rot is worrisome. Apparently, it's a rare phenomenon regarding poorly manufactured discs (although, I do have a lot of horror movies, which are generally low budget affairs, which could...):

What exactly are the "spots"? How did the "spots" get there? Were they there from 'day 1' or have they 'developed' over time? Are the "spots" responsible for the picture break-ups that occur immediately after the layer change in my DVD?