Note to self: do not prank call wife, pretending to be Dr. Phil.
Uche Ogbuji, Python and XML expert, observes:
I’m surprised at how little I’ve had to worry about SOAP… In several cases where [Web Services] “end points” have been suggested, ... my suggestions of a REST-like alternative are embraced…
I found myself in a similar situation just yesterday. A client was wondering how best to structure a web service request and response, given that the response contains several large images and text to be printed on a page. After a short discussion, we agreed on a standard HTTP POST instead, with the POST returning a pre-formatted PDF file.
Amidst further evidence, that he lied the people he had been elected to serve, Mr Howard observes:
“I think the public is bored, bored to death with this issue.”
I’m not bored, I’m angry. “Children overboard” shows that Mr Howard is either incompetent or lying. Rather than resign, he is doing and saying whatever he thinks has the best chance of keeping him in office, and that disgusts me.
The latest tactics seem to be to give the media something to write about, and hope that in the ensuing dearth of information they will go away. Then, in three or four weeks, with children overboard well off the radar, Mr Howard can announce the election.
Update: Well I got that wrong. Mr Howard has called an election for October 9, and will also allow two days for the senate inquiry.
Gmail invites are getting really cheap on eBay – down to about 0.40USD from around 5.00USD a few weeks ago. I finally got rid of my six invites yesterday, and today I have six more. Leave a comment if you want one.
I’m begging from help from any Melburnians out there. How does one pronounce “Prahran”? I have a client coming up from Melbourne tomorrow and a shiny new speech synthesiser to show off.
If I could add one thing to Java, it would be to add first() and last() methods to the List interface. I know it's not going to happen, for all kinds of good backward compatability reasons, but it sure would make some of my code easier to read.
Update: On re-reading the interview transscript, I made a slight correction to this post, marked below ( added text and deleted text.)
Peter Costello is widely reported as differing from the official government line over the detention of children.
This is a crock. Peter Costello is 100% on board with current government policy.
The media’s reports all seem to be based on an AAP report of a few soundbites from the ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint. The transcript should be available in a few hours, and it’s also worth listening to the interview – Peter Costello sets forth his point of view sincerely and intelligently. Audio of the August 23rd intervew is accessible from the Counterpoint home page for the next three and a half weeks.
What Mr Costello said was that he looks forward to a time when no children are in detention. However, he proposes to achieve this by continuing with the government’s policy of discouraging refugees from coming to Australia under their own steam, and by no other means. He also plans to continue the government’s current practice of placing some (but not all) families in the community near to detention centres. Mr Costello was not signalling a change in direction, merely wringing his hands in regret.
Heard over the cubicle wall at quarter to three on Friday afternoon:
Cow-orker 1: So let's say, for argument's sake, that you weren't to bludge for the rest of the afternoon...
Cow-orker 2: Oh, no, I don't want to argue!
From Australia Post's Correct Addressing Standards document:
Incorrect addressing
It is the sender's responsibility to supply a correct postal address for delivery. Australia Post does not deliver articles:
- that bear puzzle-type addresses
- ...
I sure would like to see the letter that caused the Australia Post to make up that rule.
This whole nit-picking back-and-forth about what Mr Howard did and didn’t know concerning the children overboard affair is really starting to get me down. It’s completely beside the point. In fact, I suspect it is exactly what Mr Howard wants in the run up to an election.
This is the point: Mr Howard could and should have known the truth, and he could and should have told the truth.
Mr Howard could and should have known the truth because all the key players in the military and public service knew that Mr Howard was making false statements to the public. Mr Howard claims that nobody told him that he was making false statements.
Mr Howard could and should have told the truth, because elected leaders of democratic nations are supposed to represent the citizens, not keep them in the dark, or treat them tools in a quest for power.
I am left to conclude one of four things:
Can anyone offer an alternate explanation that is kinder to our Prime Minister? I am distressed with my own conclusions and would like to believe my country is not run by an someone who is either incompetent, weak, a liar or worse. Give me an option!
Whatever the truth, Mr Howard’s handling of this matter has not displayed the qualities I would like to see in an Australian Prime Minister.
My current (paid) project involves interpreting messages that have been formatted for humans to read. Of course the format is completely documented and needs to be reverse engineered by inspecting a large number of sample messages. I've got all the sample messages sitting in a large text file, which I manipulate with Vim.
This morning, I found myself seaching through the file with this command:
/^\nF\d\_.\{-}\_^\n\zs.*/+
It means "Find a block of lines that start with F and a digit, then scan forward to the next blank line and select the line after that." This is how it works:
^\n |
Matches the start of a line, followed by a newline - i.e a blank line |
F\d |
The next line starts with an F followed by a digit |
\_.\{-} |
'\_.' is like '.', but also matches newline. '\{-}' matches the minimum number of the preceeding '\_.'. (If I were to use '*' instead of '\{-}', it would match to near the end-of file.) |
\_^\n |
Matches a blank line. '\_^' is like '^', but '^' only works at the start of a regular expression. |
\zs |
When the match is finished, set the start of match to this point. I use this because I don't want the preceding text to be highlighted. |
.* |
Matches the whole line. |
The '+' after the regular expression tells Vim to put the cursor on the line after the selection. This gets the cursor out of the way so that I can see the selection easily.
I wish more politicians as honest as Ross Cameron. While admitting that he had been “unfaithful” to his wife he says:
I think people are entitled to have a more unvarnished view of who I am if I’m asking them to vote for me.
And:
I don’t want people to feel like I’m using Christianity or my kids to get re-elected.
While I don’t applaud Mr Cameron’s infidelity, I do applaud his choice to not spin or lie his way around this issue.
This link violates the ATHENS 2004 Organising Commitee for the Olympic Games Website Hyperlink Policy, not least because I haven’t mailed a (paper) letter to Greece asking permission.
Google also violate the policy.
Update: (via Simon Willison)
The story of Giuseppe Dom Barbaro would make a great movie. Since last Saturday:
And, to cap it all off:
This is, of course, not mentioning that his 19 year old son goes to trial on Monday, “facing 18 charges of supplying a prohibited drug”.
I flew down to Melbourne this week to install the first iteration of a project for a customer. The little test lab had three PCs, three nice LCD screens, two keyboards and one mouse. Rather than looking for more hardware, I did the geeky thing and installed Synergy.
Synergy allows multiple computers to share the one keyboard and mouse, which is more convenient than having three sets to juggle. As you move the mouse off one screen and onto the next, keyboard input focus follows. Only took half an hour to download and set up.
It also earnt me a serious techo-cred with the customer.
No blog post on Synergy would be complete without a pointer to this post.
I also tried coLinux this week. CoLinux is User Mode Linux for Windows. I can now run Linux apps like CUPS on my laptop, while still listening to mp3s through WinAmp. Takes a few hours to get one’s head around the config, but once set up it Just Works. Very nice.
I sit at a group of four cubicles. So far this week, I have managed to claim three of the cubicles – one for my laptop, another because I need a computer within parallel cable distance of a printer, and the third because I have some software running on the print server. As soon as I can work out how to evict the occupant of the fourth cubicle, they will all be mine.
Having secured proprietorship over all four cubicles, I’m going to run a floor to ceiling wall around them all, put in a door, have an interior designer do something about the decor, get myself a comfy new black leather chair and perhaps a hire a personal assistant. I shall then schedule a meeting with my boss to demand the payrise that goes with the prestige of being the only person in the entire company to rate a personal office.
I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of the Free Trade Agreement, and was wondering exactly what “evergreening” means. I found this defintion, through the cunning strategy of typing “evergreening” into my shiny new Google search bar:
One form of evergreening occurs when the originator manufacturer “stockpiles” patent protection by obtaining separate 20-year patents on multiple attributes of a single product. But many other evergreening strategies exist…
- The European Generic medicines Association
Apparently, in the U.S. – and in Australia, after we “harmonize” our patent laws – a company can take out separate patents on 18 different aspects of a single medication. The result is a legal tangle that makes manufacture of generic medicines risky and expensive.
Three British citizens, recently released from Guantanomo Bay have made serious accusations concerning the treatment of themselves at other prisoners during their imprisonment. Alexander Downer, Australia’s foreign minister responded (from the August 5 ABC video news):
These three people, who have made these allegations, who have been in Guantanamo Bay, wouldn’t – on the face of it – be regarded as objective observers. So we’ll just have to wait and see whether they’re pushing a political line or whether there’s any substance to these allegations.
There’s an abbreviated version of the quote in this story.
I’d have to agree with Mr Downer, these are people who could well have an agenda to push. However, in the absence of any credible, objective observer at Guantanamo Bay, or any credible reason as to why objective observers have not been allowed into Guantanamo Bay, and armfuls of credible, objective observations from Abu Ghraib, what are we supposed to believe?
I’ll be in Melbourne next week. Anybody fancy getting together on Monday night for a quiet red cordial? Leave a comment, or email me: alan dot green at cardboard dot nu.
My mother and step-father became the subjects of a newspaper article after lobbying their local council.
Residents Alan and Lyn Hancock addressed councillors at the July council meeting outlining concerns with traffic on the road and the lack of speed zones and warning signs.
ABC present three Midnight Oil videos from a 1983 concert at the Capitol theatre. Garret’s on-stage use of a megaphone in “Armistice Day” brought a smile to my face, and the drum solo from “The Power & the Passion” is also worth a watch.
It’s all in support of a newly released Oils CD and DVD.
So long as he has the necessary timbre, Tedious is an obvious candidate for the Voiceover IT position I wrote about on Monday - he even writes his own material. Here he sets forth a new story from the IT world. An excerpt:
Dick has a telephone.
Jane has a telephone.
Spot has a p2p file sharing application.
Bad spot!
Write Tedious, write!
I've been researching Text to speech (TTS) software lately. There is a wide range available, some of quite good quality. I imagine that high quality TTS will become part of consumer operating systems sometime in the next ten years or so.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of web-based TTS software demos around. Here are my personal favourites. Enjoy!
I can say Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Hobart, without sounding stupid.
Rhetorical also have "Valley Girl," the only TTS voice I know that can say "Like, y'know?" and "Well, duh" without any coaching.
The Lesser Waddling Penguin can reportedly reach speeds of up to nineteen kilometres per hour. At such velocity however, even the slightest miscalculation can be fatal. Ooh! That has to hurt!
All your base are belong to us!
Hello? Hello? I see. Someone will attend to it shortly. Please call again!
PS: Just wondering - has anybody out there used the Natural Voices SDK with the Java Speech API (JSAPI)?
Fifteen years ago, it seemed that every second software salesman was trying to tell me that their product was going to make programmer’s lives so easy, they wouldn’t even have to be programmers anymore. Fortunately, with the fall of 4GLs and the rise of OO, there came a welcome easing of the “end-of-programming-as-we-know-it” sighting rate.
Now it seems to be on the up again. From the Jetson brochureware site:
Jetson reduces the most difficult and tedious aspects of J2EE development to simple tasks that even non-Java developers can perform…
Excuse me while I go all cynical; I cannot work up even a flicker of open mindedness about this. It would be brilliant if Jetson really did enable non-Java developers to thread their way through J2EE’s thick wads of standards, interesting vendor implementation decisions, and best-practice-whoops-no-thats-an-anti-pattern techniques, but it’s ice cubes against a volcano.
But wait! What is this? No! Maybe – just maybe – Jetson have a secret weapon. They say:
Jetson is the first of a new breed of J2EE Development Tools… [emph mine]
That’s right! They’ve been breeding tools. Jetson is the very first of the genetically engineered development tools! I wonder how they made it? A mutant hybrid of Rose, JBuilder and Subversion? Igor! Bring me the CASE tools!
A friend forwarded me this job ad:
- $$$$$$TOP$$$$$$
- Start Immediately......!
- Looking for Career Progression......!
SNR VOICEOVER IT DEVELOPER $$$$TOP$$$$
Hmmmm... I've always wanted a voiceover position, but I just don't have the right timbre.
The new version of my bloging software, KangaPy is built with:
The CherryPy version took about forty hours to put together, though much of the code – including the entire database layer – was recycled from the previous version, based on Twisted. The code base shrank, partly due to using HTML templates instead of putting it into the Python code, and partly because programming with Twisted’s deferreds is naturally verbose.
Since the end of April, the Twisted version of KangaPy has worked very nicely indeed. At one point it had served well over 250,000 hits on about 150 minutes of CPU time – not bad for my first Python web application, and a testament to Twisted’s inate robustness. I certainly hope CherryPy performs similarly.
