Wasington Post: "Ravens Coach Brian Billick faults last week's defensive breakdown on team's switch to Linux operating system."

WTF!?

I'm not usually one to return Christmas gifts, but I'd like to exchange this flu for something else. I don't remember having fever and aches on my list.

POTD

Why are European commercials so much better than commercials in the U.S.?

POTD

Click for larger version

Nice. I'm getting one of these. This is the iSight stand Apple should have shipped, except that it is too un-organic for them.

I just saw a commercial for Minolta (Konica outside the U.S.) cameras. Apparently, the DiMAGE line of cameras is not pronounced d-image, as I had suspected. Rather it is pronounced de-maj, like DiMaggio.

Just thought I'd share.

Check out this bitchy comment someone left on my 'blog:

New comment posted on your Radio weblog.

Commenter's name:	Melisa Nishi
Email address:	secret@littleginsu.net
Web site:	http://littleginsu.net/
IP address:	216.166.58.96
Domain name:	pc096.staff.texas.net
Commenting on:	http://radio.weblogs.com/0100627/2003/02/09.html#a536
Ummm... This quote is by Melly from OrdinaryMorning.ner. I'm Mel from Littleginsu.net. If you're going to quote someone, get it right--moron.

Wow -- out of left field. I wonder what crawled up her ass. I rational person would just have asked for the page to be corrected.

POTD

I'm too busy to do a series of images with a real theme this week, but if we had a theme, it would be winter trees.

To all the people who have found themselves here by searching on on Google for:

• gang signs


• Java interview questions


• CIA headphones


• Samsung TiVo


• eric estrada real estate


• tnt men


• riaa propaganda

Welcome. I'm sure you'll be deeply disappointed here.

Cool stuff. MusicSafari is a MacOS application that receives streams of various formats (Real, QuickTime, MP3) and save them as plain old MP3s.

Thank God for all of the wonderful French contributions to world culture.

I'm up to 198 RSS feeds in my news aggregator. Because I'm a geek, I'd like to break 200, so if anyone has any suggestions for good sites with RSS feeds, let me know. Extra credit for exceptionally geeky, bizarre, or vulgar sites. But remember, they must have an RSS / RDF feed.

I'm looking through alternatives for parsing XML using Objective C. Why Objective C? It is the preferred language for native MacOS X software, and it is a funky, mind-expanding language for someone who spends most of his time writing in Java. Here is what I've found so far:

From Apple:

• NSXMLParser: From Apple's Foundation classes, NSXMLParser provides a SAX interface. I just found out about this class because it was only added in 10.3
• Core Foundation XML: Apples Core Foundation XML classes are C-based (not Objective C), so probably don't belong here. Still, if you have simple DOM-based XML needs, it may be sufficient.

From Third Parties:

• ExpatObjC: An objective C wrapper for the C-based Expat library. ExpatObjC provides a SAX interface.
• XMLTree: An Objective C interface to Apples XML parsing library. Provides a DOM interface.
• SKYRiX XML: A interesting library, formerly maintained by the SKYRiX corporation, now maintained by the OpenGroupware project. It provides both SAX and DOM parsing interfaces, as well as a pluggable driver module that can use CFXML, expat, and libical. SKYRiX XML also implements a SOAP library (minus the transport).
• Iconara DOM: A Cocoa framework providing a DOM interface for XML parsing. I couldn't tell what underlying library was actually doing the parsing.

None of these is so compelling that I'd use it above the others. I'm curious to play with Apple's NSXMLParser to see what it can do. I've started using the XMLTree class, but I'd prefer to use something provided by Apple for something so fundamental as XML parsing.

Interesting stuff. I'd certainly be interested to hear what other people are doing.

It is a funny thing we do. Once a year, we bring a tree into our homes, in some kind of tribute to our pagan past.

Putting up a Christmas tree is an opportunity to spend time with the family, time to reflect on years past, and time to take time, doing something deliberately slow, something that can't be outsourced or subcontracted.

Each of the ornaments we put on the tree means something. Some are appropriate for the season, evoking the nostalgic sense of the holiday.

Some memorialize old pets.

Some have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.

Putting up the tree is a modern, secular ritual. A milestone or event that signals a beginning and an end. Something we take lightly at the time, but whose memory becomes infused with great meaning.