Archive: December 15, 2005

Thursday, December 15, 2005

1. coldtomatoes.com - Juggler (via Keith Gaughan). Woo, another game to procrastinate with.

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2. XML.com: Catching Up with the Atom Publishing Protocol (via Keith Gaughan). To read.

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3. Cute Overload! is the best site on the Internet! Via Keith Gaughan. cf. Kitten War.

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4. GoldenNumber.Net "exists to share information on the pervasive appearance of Phi in life and the universe. Its goal is to present a broad sampling of phi related topics in an engaging and easy-to-understand format..." Pretty cool site actually. Via Michael.

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5. Open Office 2.0 is an unstable piece of crap. Don't upgrade. Stick with 1.1.5 until they come out with a patch for 2.0.

   Update: Oh man, I filled out a crash report, and the crash reporting program crashed!! I forgot that had happened last time too! Piece of crap!

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6. A marine on the price of withdrawal in Iraq: The Truth On the Ground (via Glenn Reynolds):

   The proponents of the quagmire vision argue that the very presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the cause of the insurgency and that our withdrawal would give the Iraqis their only true chance for stability. Most military officers and NCOs with ground experience in Iraq know that this vision is patently false. Although the presence of U.S. forces certainly inflames sentiment and provides the insurgents with targets, the anti-coalition insurgency is mostly a symptom of the underlying conditions in Iraq. It may seem paradoxical, but only our presence can buffer the violence enough to allow for eventual stability.
   
   The precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops would almost certainly lead to a violent and destabilizing civil war. The Iraqi military is not ready to assume control and would not miraculously achieve competence in our absence. As we left, the insurgency would turn into internecine violence, and Iraq would collapse into a true failed state. The fires of the Iraqi civil war would spread, and terrorists would find a new safe haven from which to launch attacks against our homeland.
   
   Anyone who has spent even a day in the Middle East should know that the Arab street would not thank us for abandoning Iraq. The blame for civil war would fall squarely on our shoulders. It is unlikely that the tentative experiments in democracy we have seen in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere would survive the fallout. There would be no dividend of goodwill from heartbroken intellectuals or emboldened Islamic extremists. American troops might be home in the short run, but the experienced professionals know that in the long run, quitting Iraq would mean more deployments, more desperate battles and more death.

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7. hAtom - Microformats (via Phillip Pearson). I can't decide whether this is a decent idea or a terrible idea. For search engines like Technorati that often do a terrible less-than-perfect job of figuring out what's what it could help if enough people support it to make it worthwhile, but on the other hand, why not just parse the Atom feed if the site supports Atom with autodiscovery? All this does is duplicate Atom elements in HTML.

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8. phil ringnalda » No, ask what Bloglines can do to you. If I take a look over the source and it seems well written, I'll probably switch to Gregarius. To start, it seems like it has a very easy install, and it supports SQLite so it's self-contained.

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On the Iraq vote

Terrorism Unveiled: And they voted:

I've been watching the voting situation in Iraq unfold and it looks incredibly encouraging. No major attacks and high voter turnout. The Western news coverage is beginning to kick up now that it's a decent hour, and I'm excited to see more images from the country. Iraqis are voting with not only their ballots, but by their feet in going to the polls. These images, that can be very emotionally arousing, and important for the Western audience as well as the greater Arab world. Sometimes only then will some of the pessimists truly get it.

The public opinion polls (done this month) of Iraqis' hopefulness for their country are already indicative of great strides. However, not many Americans, sadly some of the lawmakers calling for a pullout, and the greater Arab world probably don't read these polls. I'm sure some do, but discount them because they have a predetermined mindset about how this conflict will unfold. They do not want to change what they've already decided is inevitable--failure. When seeing the very real brutality replayed over and over, sometimes it becomes the only reality.

We now have a counterview not of our own making.

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Power Line: Ho-hum, another Iraqi election:

Voter turnout apparently is heavy throughout Iraq, including many Sunni areas where participation is described as "steady and brisk." In Fallujah, formerly a hotbed of the terrorist insurgency in the Sunni heartland, more than 120,000 people reportedly had voted by early afternoon. Violence is said to be minimal, and the atmosphere at many polling places was festive.

Yet the defeatist Democrats would have us pull the plug (now or in a year or two) on this fledgling democracy, and turn our backs on the brave Iraqis who defy the terrorists by voting, before the Iraqi police and military are fully prepared to protect that democracy from the forces of evil -- al Qaeda and the Baathists. This from the party of Wilson, Roosevelt, and John Kennedy.

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The Political Teen » Iraqi Voter: Anybody Who Doesn’t Appreciate America Can Go To Hell (VIDEO) (via Glenn Reynolds). That kicks ass. Watch the video!

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Gateway Pundit has a roundup (via Glenn), including a shocking headline from the BBC.

Permalink | Comments? | Tags: Opinions/Politics | id 7738

10:30 (utc-5)
edited: 13:23 (utc-5)

 

1. Programming language theory texts online.

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2. Natural Docs "is an open-source, extensible, multi-language documentation generator." (via)

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Wiki pages as controlled tag vocabulary

I realized tonight (while procrastinating^[1]) that in writing my wiki pages I've been creating a controlled tag vocabulary.

So, if I still have the energy for this after finals are over, I may finally be implementing tags for my weblog and the rest of my site.

(Other things for me to look back on: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)

I could have sworn there was some wiki I came across a while back that, in addition to doing the normal "backlinks" thing, created hierarchies out of analyzing the links in its pages. I may be thinking of DiamondWiki (linked in some of those "other things" links above), but I don't think so.

Footnotes:
[1]: I remember reading a while ago a web page by a professor who said he's extremely productive while procrastinating because he uses the time he procrastinates to take care of everything other than what he's procrastinating from doing. If anyone remembers what page I'm referring to, please leave a comment.

Permalink | 2 Comments | Tags: Tagging, Wiki | id 7735

02:27 (utc-5)
edited: 03:32 (utc-5)

 

1. I enjoyed this piece and found it interesting: How to Ship Anything - Joel on Software. Problem solving!

   I can't wait until finals are over and I can stop procrastinating.

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