There are a lot of interesting optical illusions “shown here”:http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/saishin-e.html. It also gives details of some places to do further reading on why our brain perceives these images in a particular way. Some of them are rather bizarre, and begs the question of how visual perception *really* works. Time to do some reading, I guess.
Just came across “flood”:http://httpd.apache.org/test/flood/ via “this Linux Journal article”:http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6691. There’s another introductory article “here”:http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/10825_2216741_1. From the descriptions, it shows promise as a testing tool for web applications. It can parse page responses and grab data from them to use in future submissions. Cookie handling. Proxy access. It can coordinate testing across multiple machines and tie together all the data afterwards.
“Syncato”:http://www.syncato.org/ is a new and *very* interesting piece of weblog software.
It uses Berkeley DB for the backend—which I think is a very good choice as long as care is taken with signal handling etc., so as to close databases properly when shutting down. Many of the problems I’ve seen with BDB have come from old environments being left behind after a crash and being reused—so I hope this code cleans the environment when starting up as well. Does it use a transactional environment?
What else? A REST-based API, as one would expect. XQuery-enabled, thanks to using the Berkeley XML DB add-on. Written in Python, so in theory it should be easy to modify and extend.
Difficult to install, perhaps, though Rick Bradley has written an “install script”:http://www.rickbradley.com/code/syncatomatic/
A question on the side: why don’t more people use Berkeley DB? Okay it doesn’t have a “real” SQL language, but it is extremely fast, and far more capable than I suspect people are aware of.
+A correction, before somebody points out the obvious, this is a general framework for editing and accessing XML fragments, which _just happens_ to find a use as a weblog-enabling tool.+
“The Master Narrative in Journalism”:http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2003/09/08/basics_master.html
bq. To understand better the mind of the mainstream press, pay close attention to that phrase, “the story” when listening to journalists talk about their work. The story is not only what a daily reporter gets, it is journalism’s way of “getting” the world, of naming, packaging, and punctuating events. The Enron Story refers not to news accounts about the company Enron, but to an episode in corporate criminality that largely eluded the press when it happened but afterwards became big news.
Hopefully I’ve made Pauline a bit happier with me—photos from my trip to Amsterdam are now up “here”:http://www.lyranthe.org/gallery/amsterdam2003
Next up (soon) should be photos from Oslo, I guess! Keep visiting…
What are we going to do about Verisign? Well CPMS (Critical Path Messaging Server) will have an option, defaulting to off, to use A records to route mail. So by default we will ignore A records, and Verisign will have no effect on our routing of non-existent domains.
I’m still annoyed at Verisign, but I think people are going to route around their brain-damaged changes quickly enough. Silly people, I hope ICANN take some action in response to the land-grab.
Anime/manga I’ve seen recently, and thought was rather cool:
* Chobits
* Angelic Layer
*General thoughts:* _Chobits_ is cool, anything CLAMP touches seems to turn to gold, I don’t know how it works like that. Make sure you like shojo first though. _Chobits_ is good in both anime and manga. _Angelic Layer_ is best in anime form.
Both of the above series make you go “awww how cute”! In the case of _Angelic Layer_, there was at least one scene where I felt like rubbing away tears, so these stories are *good*. Not as generally accepted as _Spirited Away_ but more fulfilling in some ways.
What are these stories about?
_Chobits_ is about a guy who finds a human-shaped computer (persocom) in the trash, and brings it home to see if it still works. Over the series, the story covers the difference between humans and computers, the value of a soul, and that the most important thing in a relationship is the recognition of the uniqueness of the other person, no matter what kind of person s/he is.
_Angelic Layer_ follows a girl who enters a competition, fighting with miniature robots which take their instructions for movement from their owner. As a CLAMP novel, it also explores complex relationships—romantic and frends—through the story.
Both stories are refreshing and fun, and *not* in any way like _Pokemon_ or any other crap series that youngsters seem to somehow like these days.
Sheila’s birthday today—well actually on Friday, so we had a rather good night out in Little Caesar’s Palace, followed by Reynards (well it was guaranteed to have seats!).
Weird things: some people sitting down at our table, snorting cocaine. Like, wtf?
Good things: we’re all probably going to go skiing together Christmas week in Livigno. Well - Linda, Robert, Sheila, Andrew and me anyway. Any more takers? Names must be in by Monday morning 11amish 
And can I just say, Verisign annoy me almost as much as SCO, right now? I wouldn’t be so annoyed if web sites and browsers used SRV entries, so only web browsing was affected. But they don’t, so Verisign are affecting (in a major way) all applications which use A records in DNS for what is, after all, just one possible application. Considering what I work at, the possible issues with email have a relatively high position in my set of worries… bah.
I guess that was a long gap without entries—well I had a lot to do in work, and a fair amount outside too. Anyway, it always seems like my postings come and go in little (or large) groups, hopefully this will be the start of a more regular set of posts
Well I have a new job, so I’m no longer in a Technical Support position, but rather a fully fledged developer (again). This time, in a systems programming role (C development) rather than PHP programming (spit). Fingers crossed, all will go well!
Oslo summary: it’s a very interesting combination of city, town and country. Nice place to visit, I love the fjord. Expensive city though! Save up before going on holidays, or else go with work, or else go there to live…