about

who
what
where
when
why
how
comments

feeds

ATOM

RSS

categories

identity
jabber
language
literature
music
personal
philosophy
politics
public domain
society
technology

archive

current
2007-04
2007-03
2007-02
2007-01
2006-12
2006-11
2006-10
2006-09
2006-08
2006-07
2006-06
2006-05
2006-04
2006-03
2006-02
2006-01
2005-12
2005-11
2005-10
2005-09
2005-08
2005-07
2005-06
2005-05
2005-04
2005-03
2005-02
2005-01
2004-12
2004-11
2004-10
2004-09
2004-08
2004-07
2004-06
2004-05
2004-04
2004-03
2004-02
2004-01
2003-12
2003-11
2003-10
2003-09
2003-08
2003-07
2003-06
2003-05
2003-04
2003-03
2003-02
2003-01
2002-12
2002-11
2002-10
2002-09
2002-08
2002-07
2002-06
2002-05
2002-04
2002-03
2002-02
2002-01
2001-12
2001-11
2001-10
2001-09

2002-03-28

My Type

Of books and blogs.

Over the last 48+ hours I've been seriously exploring the possibility of self-publishing some of my works on paper, and of printing works by the kind of writers I've published online at the Monadnock Review. So I've been experimenting with XSL-FO, learning about typography and typesetting, reading books on self-publishing and starting a small press, and thinking about whether this is really something I want to do, and if so whether I want to do it at this time in my life.

I've come to several preliminary conclusions:

1. Typography and typesetting are practical art-forms, of which there are some beautiful examples (such as the books published by printers associated with the Arts-and-Crafts movement)
2. XSL-FO is still an experimental technology and though I like it quite a bit, it does not yet give one fine control over all elements of a page
3. As far as I can tell, Linux is not (yet) the best platform on which to attempt art-quality printing -- for instance, the font support is not advanced enough
4. In order for me to print books I would be proud of, I need to learn a lot more about fonts, layout, graphic design, and the like
5. Publishing is not cheap, since one is essentially setting up a small business and then creating a "product" on speculation, with no guarantee that one will ever sell enough copies to recoup expenses

So I think that while printing books is something I want to do, it's not something I want to do right now. It's definitely something that I'll continue to think about and plan for, though -- especially since self-publishing is pretty much the only way to get published these days.

Posted on 2002-03-28 at 19:06. File under technology.

~ link ~

2002-03-26

Meaning

More random reflections.

Thanks to my fellow progressive-libertarian blogger Will Wilkinson, I recently discovered an essay by philosopher David Schmidtz on The Meanings of Life. And thanks to my forced vacation, I've just found time to read it. Since I've known David mainly for his contributions to political philosophy (with a decision-theoretical twist), this essay was delightfully surprising and refreshing to me: surprising that an analytical philosopher would address the notoriously amorphous yet crucially important topic of the meaning of life, and refreshing that he has reflected so honestly and so beautifully. There is much I could say about his essay, but I need to let it sink into my consciousness first. The one thing I can say immediately is this: Thank you, David.

While reading David's essay, I've been listening to the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim. I love Brazilian music: Jobim, Villa-Lobos, and all the rest (well, I don't know who all the rest are, so I need to explore a bit here). It strikes me that Brazilian music is something distinctive in the world, and perhaps that Brazilian culture is, too. Many countries may be of local significance (or not even that), but then there are some countries or even cities that make a more universal contribution to human culture, either in a certain art-form or as an example of a different way to live.

I've long been fascinated by how specific such a contribution can be: Dutch painting, Brazilian or Czech music, Thai cuisine, and the like. No one talks about Dutch music or Czech painting or Brazilian sculpture, although those arts have certainly been pursued in those countries. I shudder to think what America is known for, given how zealously we export the culture of trash. To me the one thing America has created of lasting value is jazz music. I would like to be able to add as a lasting contribution that we have created a political culture of freedom (as exemplified in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights), but that more and more seems to be a thing of the past. Yet as Thelonious Monk once said, "jazz is freedom" -- future historians will shake their heads at the extent to which Americans relinquished their founding political culture, but the music will survive.

The foregoing may seem overly collectivistic -- after all, there is no such independently-existing thing as a national culture or an artistic school or movement, only individuals. Yet we can discern such collective tendencies as emergent properties of the individuals involved. Dutch painting or jazz music engaged hundreds or thousands of artists, most of them unknown, who provided the environment of practices and forms and techniques in which geniuses such as Vermeer and Rembrandt, Ellington and Monk could flourish and give voice to something universal.

Not, as David Schmidtz points out, that giving voice to something universal is necessary to live a life of meaning. After the fact we value most highly the great creators and achievers, but that doesn't imply that the lives they led were the most meaningful or the most happy. On the contrary, I tend to think that the degree of self-denial necessary to create something of lasting value militates against the living of a happy life. As Nietzsche says at the end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "My suffering and my pity for suffering -- what does it matter? Am I concerned with happiness? I am concerned with my work." While I grant it's possible that creating things of meaning lends life meaning (or is one way of doing so), for myself I feel that such a single-minded focus on one aspect of life crowds out the kind of balance that is necessary for fulfillment. But then again it could just be that I lack discipline. :-)

Posted on 2002-03-26 at 19:51. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-03-25

Vacation

What I'm doing on "spring break"...

Officially I'm on vacation right now. It seems that I haven't been taking enough vacation days, so I was told that my cup runneth over -- if I didn't use some days by the end of the quarter, I would stop accumulating time off. I've never had a forced vacation before! :-)

Rather than travel somewhere, I decided to spend a quiet week at home, working on various house and personal projects. There are many of the former to address, since I've been so busy in my work. As for the latter, I always have more long-term goals I want to achieve. For instance, as a step toward publishing (more particularly, self-publishing) some of my writings in the future, I've spent the last two days learning the XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) technology. XSL-FO is a fairly complicated and verbose language for creating print-ready documents from XML source files. In this way it's something of the print counterpart to HTML. The way I have experimented with XSL-FO has been to (1) create an XML source file consisting of a collection of my poems and translations, (2) write an XSLT stylesheet that transforms the XML file into a formatting objects file describing the print markup, and then (3) invoke the FOP processor (from Apache) to convert the .fo file into PDF. I've got it working pretty well: 35+ poems and translations spread over 59 A5-size pages, plus front matter including a nifty table of contents. Inevitably, I still have a few bugs to work out -- mostly related to setting up an alternating sequence of pages (left-hand pages, right-hand pages, chapter-heading pages, and appropriate blank pages) within the main text of the book. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, so perhaps I need to join the fop-users mailing list for a spell. (As if I need more mail!)

BTW, the irony is not lost on me that I, who buy perhaps two books a year, am thinking about printing words on paper with the intent that people will pay for the privilege of reading them. (Not just my own words, mind you -- my current research into publishing technologies was inspired by an email message I received from Stephen Marvin, whose novella The Assumption of Nalantei I published online in the Monadnock Review.) Yet I think there is a market, albeit likely a small one, for printed works of the kind I have published in my webzine: poems, translations, stories, and essays that are marked by passion, insight, and intelligence. Works such as Stephen Marvin's novella, poems by John Enright, translations by Leonard Cottrell, and essays and poems by yours truly.

Speaking of essays, while in Minneapolis last week I continued my project of re-reading the works of Nietzsche. I've long had in the back of my mind the idea of writing an essay comparing Nietzsche and Rand (I even have a title: The Alternating Current, which accurately describes my own feelings of attraction and repulsion for both thinkers). Yet given how thoroughly I've marked up my copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols, I'm thinking that this essay may turn out to be of book length. (Or, to be precise, the length of the books I'm thinking about publishing under the auspices of the Monadnock Press, which would be on the order of 150 pages at most.)

There is further irony, even tension, in the fact that I'm thinking about attempting to sell printed works, especially my own works. Ever since I fell under the spell of the World Wide Web, I have had a commitment to giving back to the Internet community by making works like my philosophical dictionary, essays, and poems available free of charge. Yet of late I've begun to have a change of heart, and to think that perhaps I don't want to give everything away. Sometimes I feel as if, to quote Ayn Rand, I am casting pearls and not getting even a pork chop in return. I can count on two hands the truly insightful emails I've received about the works I've published online. Unfortunately, consumers of the wonderful code and content available on the Internet have come to expect that it's all available free of charge. Not only that, but they expect it to be perfect, and never tire of asking for more. Yet they seem blithely unaware that content and code do not appear out of thin air -- they take time, intelligence, and dedication the part of those who produce this embarrassment of riches. More and more, I'm coming to think that tipjars and PayPal donations will never fairly compensate more than a miniscule minority of those who produce what's of value on the Internet. In other words, there will come a time (and perhaps that time is here already) when the producers will go on strike.

Posted on 2002-03-25 at 19:23. File under personal.

~ link ~

2002-03-22

More on Music

Further thoughts on recording, distribution, and perhaps even making money.

I'm sitting here enjoying my favorite dessert and the music of Dave Mallett, a Maine songwriter whose music I grew up on. This morning I woke up with his song "Hard Light" playing in my head. Mallett is the kind of musician I had in mind the other day when I wrote about the impact of digital music distribution technologies on working musicians -- he isn't making tons of money as a songwriter as far as I know, he puts out a CD every three years or so, and you can still see him in concert for $7.00 on a good day. At best he's living a middle-class existence in Maine or perhaps Nashville if he's still down that way. In other words, he needs to be just as creative in making money as he is as an artist. Now, let's say there is no such thing as intellectual property, and Mr. Mallett (or a performing and recording composer such as my friend Eric Nolte) can no longer sell CDs. I guess some would say he just needs to get even more creative, set up a tipjar on his website, and start charging more at his concerts. Perhaps -- no one ever said being a musician was an easy life. And I can't disagree with Eric Snowdeal's comments on my post the other day, to the effect that the record companies (of which there are only three or four in the world, other than small independents) are bloodsucking vampires who eat musicians for breakfast. Yet I know enough musicians that I hope there is a way for them to make a little money doing what they do best, be that composing, performing, or recording.

As I mentioned the other day, I don't even try to make money from my music, and for me it's just a hobby. But music is important enough to me that I value the fact there are full-time musicians in the world. Not just performers, but more fundamentally songwriters and composers. In my own experience, it is not money that drives such creativity; but one needs money in order to live, and if one could make no money from one's creative output, one would not long be able to sustain the creative life.

Well, I don't pretend to have the answers, but it's definitely something I continue to reflect on (especially because I'm quite deeply committed to sharing information, as my websites make clear).

Posted on 2002-03-22 at 20:21. File under music.

~ link ~

2002-03-19

There's No Deal Like Snowdeal

Yet another blog to like.

Out of the blue today I received an email from Eric Snowdeal, a fellow native of Maine who also happens to be interested in Jabber and XML, and who plays guitar to boot. His weblog is pretty cool -- he certainly posts more often than I do.

Today Eric's blog contains a lot of snippets from articles about digital music. I must admit to being of two minds about recent developments in music distribution technologies. One of the articles that Eric quotes satirizes any appeal to helping musicians make money by implying that they don't need a seventh Porsche. Um, hello? This is not about enabling rich musicians, it's about enabling middle-class musicians. I'm a musician myself (when I have time), but I make my living in other ways and I don't try to make money off my music. Yet I have friends who are musicians and it would be nice if they could make a living through recording. Of course, most musicians make money through performing, teaching, and the like, not recording. But given that I'm in substantial agreement with Glenn Gould about the value of recording over performance, I wonder what free filesharing will imply for the recording musician. Perhaps tipjars and donations are the answer, but personally no one has ever donated a penny to my web endeavors (not that I'm asking very insistently). Is it time to bring back patrons? I don't know what the answer is, but if my only talent were music I'd be a bit concerned.

Another topic Eric covers today is wireless networks, specifically small wireless LANs. It seems that small, community networks like these are springing up all over the place, in true grassroots fashion. Indeed, I'm enjoying a fast wireless network right now at the IETF conference, and it sure is cool. Perhaps it's time to talk with my neighbors and see if they're interested in setting one up. Bandwidth to the people!

Posted on 2002-03-19 at 19:32. File under technology.

~ link ~

Taking a SIP

In which I am baptized into the IETF standards process.

Last night I signed up for a plethora of mailing lists related to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), as well as SIP extensions for instant messaging and presence. So this morning I had tons of email to read (yes, even more than usual!). I've also been reading all of the SIP-related IETF submissions (there are a lot of them). So much to catch up on. I also need to immerse myself in the Wireless Village spec. We definitely need to map the Jabber protocols to both SIP/SIMPLE and Wireless Village. That'll take some time but will be worth the effort so that people can see Jabber is committed to interoperability. I'll endeavor to post thoughts about specific Internet-Drafts as I read them and have time to formulate my reactions.

Posted on 2002-03-19 at 19:22. File under technology.

~ link ~

Learning by Walking Around

More Twin Cities observations.

One of America's greatest philosophers once said that "You can observe a lot just by watching." (I really must get his collected works sometime.) Ever since college I've applied that insight in my own life by taking long walks around any city I find myself in. You really do learn the most about a place by hitting the streets. For instance, folks in the Twin Cities seem to smoke a lot more than Denverites. A great many storefronts are dark in this town. No sidewalk is completely free of snow. There are many more hotels downtown than I'm used to (must have a lot of conventions). No bike lanes or trails as far as I can see, but maybe I'll walk over to the Mississippi river tonight and see if there's a riverside trail. They seem to have a dearth of ethnic restaurants, too.

Posted on 2002-03-19 at 19:03. File under personal.

~ link ~

2002-03-18

My Way or the Skyway

Observations on Life in the Twin Cities.

OK, I've been in Minneapolis for all of 18 hours so far and already I have some observations to share. I took the city bus from the airport, which is always interesting (cheaper than a cab, too). In many ways Minneapolis seems like a typical American city, with a mix of nationalities (I heard at least Hindi and an African language I couldn't identify), lots of malls (including the famous Mall of America, which I shan't be visiting), a quaint regional accent (though I can't throw stones, since I'm from Maine), and generally bland food (but I did happen upon a great vegetarian restaurant for lunch -- Cafe Brenda). One different feature of at least downtown Minneapolis is the existence of the skyway, a system of above-ground walkways that enables one to get around town without ever leaving a climate-controlled environment. I'm not sure what's so attractive about that, though -- personally I prefer fresh air....

Posted on 2002-03-18 at 16:22. File under personal.

~ link ~

IETF Meeting

I'm in scenic Minneapolis this week at the 53rd IETF meeting.

I've never been to Minneapolis before, but I suppose there's a first time for everything. I'm here for the 53rd IETF meeting. Me and a thousand other protocol geeks. The SIP session this morning was not all that informative, though it would help if I'd read every SIP protocol doc in existence before showing up. I have a lot to catch up on. I'm sure I'll be blogging more about throughout the week.

Posted on 2002-03-18 at 15:07. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Adding to the Blogroll

A new blog to like -- honestly.

My fellow Colorado neo-Objectivist-type friend Diana Hsieh has a new blog (well, I'm more post-Randian than neo-Objectivist, but you get the picture). Lots of content on the ethics of honesty there, which is a hot topic for her right now given that she's using that as the topic of her paper for admission to the philosophy program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

I attended an informal talk she gave on the topic about a week ago, and it was pretty interesting, even though I thought the small audience in attendance (and Diana herself) skirted some of the tough issues and hard cases. Personally it is one of my policies in life to be scrupulously honest, so I'm not in favor of lying, dissembling, or deceipt (I always distrust people who begin any sentence with "To be honest with you..."). Yet I do think there are times when other values trump honesty. The standard Randian example (actually it comes from her slavish disciple Leonard Peikoff) is that one has no obligation to be honest when the Nazi storm troopers ask if you're hiding Jews in the attic. But I think there are situations other than being on the receiving end of the initiation of force when honesty is not necessary or advisable. The example I brought up at Diana's talk was that of a good friend who is rushing in to give a presentation to the board of the company and asks me quickly how she looks. Now, the 100%-honest reply is something along the lines of "You've got bags under your eyes and look like you haven't slept in three days, and actually now that you mention it you could definitely stand to lose a few pounds, have you thought about starting an exercise program?". Is that a helpful or caring thing for me to say? No. But it is "honest". In this situation one could argue that my friend is not actually asking me for information about her appearance, but rather for support and encouragement -- which is what I'll give her when instead of being fully honest I say something like "You look great, knock 'em dead!"

Ayn Rand once said that "The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live." If you ask me, those under her influence would do well to reflect on that insight.

BTW, it seems that Diana's husband Paul has resurrected their old GeekPress site -- back then it was something of a smarter Slashdot, now it is Paul's weblog. How many dual-blog couples exist out there, I wonder? :-)

Posted on 2002-03-18 at 14:25. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-03-16

Random Reflections

Late-night thoughts on life, the universe, and everything.

Here I am eating baklava, sipping Turkish coffee, listening to Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, and wondering where the last week went. I know I was tremendously busy, but after a relaxing Saturday I don't quite recall what it was that kept me so occupied. Rather than try to remember, I think I'll let my mind reflect at random....

First reflection: it's a beautiful world we live in, that it contains two foods so supremely suited for each other as baklava and Turkish coffee.

Second reflection: Bach's Cello Suites are sublime. I still possess the ambition to record them on electric bass. But first I need to buy an electric bass and apply twenty years of guitar skills back to my first instrument.

Third reflection: I don't want to be a citizen of the empire. Although I have not paid attention to the news since December or so, I am vaguely aware that the federal government of the United States of America is rattling its sabre towards certain nations. That government is threatening an "Axis of Evil" that includes so notoriously feckless a nation as North Korea. That government is intervening in the internal affairs of poor places like Colombia, simply because they produce recreational drugs that are voluntarily consumed by non-violent Americans, millions of whom are imprisoned each year for the victimless crime of possessing substances that the government dislikes. That government is in large measure intimidating and suppressing the freedoms of its own citizens. That government is, more and more, acting like an imperial (and imperious) power. I am by birth a citizen of the United States of America. I fear the day when by an unnatural evolution I find myself a citizen of the empire -- an empire that with overweening hubris seeks to project its power over the entire surface of the globe.

Fourth reflection: I am an individual. If you are a citizen of a nation other than the USA, I ask that you not associate the actions of those who hold the reins of power in the federal government of the USA with all citizens of the USA. I ask that you break free of overwhelming propaganda and common habits of thought and communication from governments and news media alike, which allege that "America attacks Afghanistan" or "Washington threatens Baghdad" (nearer the truth, but still false). The individual is primary, and there is in reality no such thing as "America" or "Iran" or any other nation -- there are only individuals. Some of those individuals happen to lead or work for the entity that possesses an effective monopoly on the use of force within certain commonly-accepted boundaries. But a government must never be equated with the thousands or millions of individuals who happen to be living inside the borders it controls. When we sloppily say that "America thinks X" or "America does Y", we really mean that "those who currently control the federal government of the USA think X or do Y", not that all individuals inside the borders of the USA agree with those thoughts and actions. I am an individual.

Fifth reflection: public-key encryption is a good thing, and I need to encrypt more of my email using my key. I already use encryption in Jabber (specifically, the Gabber client) and it would be good if my email messages were a little more secure than the electronic equivalent of a postcard. Google has the information I need to use GPG with Pine (my email client). Must follow up on that.

Sixth reflection: weblogs are fun. I don't disagree with those who say that weblogs are important -- Shane McChesney offers not one, not two, but three reasons why, yet notice that he intelligently labels these as 1 and 2 and 3 of "n", because there are a lot more reasons than three (recording your thoughts forces you to think things through, writing begets better writing, decentralized blogging undermines the authority of the major media, etc.). But for me, one of the main values is that blogging is fun. Does one need further justification than that? Call me a hedonist if you like, but I've long thought that there is a lot to be said for an enlightened hedonism of the kind espoused by Epicurus.

Posted on 2002-03-16 at 20:09. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-03-08

Weekly Roundup

A summary of this week's events and accomplishments.

When it's Friday evening and you're done working for the week, it's time to reflect on what you've accomplished recently and what remains to be done. (Well, maybe it's just time to relax, but I don't do too much of that these days.) Over at Jabber, Inc. I hand in a short list of weekly accomplishments every Friday, and I may start doing that in my weblog, too. First, here are some raw numbers (counting from last Sunday -- I'm never really sure when the week begins):

• Posted 11 messages to JADMIN
• Posted 7 messages to JDEV
• Posted 2 updated revisions of the jabberd howto (more work required to bring it up to date -- not to mention my half-finished revisions to the Jabber User Guide)
• Processed and published 2 JEPs, with 2 or 3 more in the queue
• Submitted 1 JEP to the Jabber Council -- my proposal for streamlining (well, disbanding) the Jabber Interest Groups
• Ran 1 meeting of the Jabber Software Foundation (here's the log)
• I also finished coding a voting bot and started the voting process to accept new members into the Jabber Software Foundation
• Oh yeah, and I converted the JSF news page over to XML+XSLT (of course!), and added links to recent news items and JEPs on the JSF homepage (check out that JSF RSS feed, too)

But the big fun of the week came in some discussions we had on the various lists. Mike Lin re-introduced the issue of the Jabber trademark. Feeding off some discussion in our weekly meeting and my voting report, Harold Gottschalk asked what JSF membership really means, and wondered how members can contribute more. Some folks on JDEV proposed a new architecture for our gateways to the closed IM systems, to which I replied that Jabber is not about bridging to closed systems but about building an open network.

To me, all of these issues require a lot of thought and, dare I say, leadership. In general I cleave to a studied neutrality with regard to many Jabber issues, and I don't want to push people in one direction or another (this is in line with my generally libertarian attitude, which I once expressed as letting go of ought). Yet I do have strong opinions about where the Jabber community is today, where it needs to be, and how we can get there. So perhaps I need to start sharing my opinions more freely and forcefully -- though, as always, expressed reasonably and with due respect for the ideas of other members of the Jabber community.

And I also need to, as Jer would say, keep grunting -- doing the necessary but unglamorous work that keeps us moving forward.

Speaking of which, here are some additional projects I've started working on:

• For a long time I've wanted to publish interviews with prominent Jabber developers so that people can get to know the team. I'd forgotten about that idea until this week, when Justin pointed me to the KDE website. They have an interview area on their website, which I'd like to emulate for Jabber. So look for monthly interviews beginning soon!
• I think we really need to encourage innovation within the Jabber community and spark some interest in coding up fantastic software. In a recent post to JADMIN, I broached the topic of having the JSF award prizes for best software in several categories. I am definitely going to work up a proposal for this. If you have ideas for categories or prizes (xboxes and flat-screen monitors seem to be popular items), let me know. Perhaps we wouldn't even need categories, just tell people we'll have three grand prizes or whatever and here are some of the kinds of things you could code up (but leave the rest to people's imagination).
• Well, and there's always that new Jabber-based Headline Service I'd like to code up. Hmm, I'd better stop talking and start working....

Posted on 2002-03-08 at 20:40. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-03-06

XML + XSLT = bliss

This new blog format of mine (XML + XSLT) is a blast.

I love being able to type './gen.sh 2002-03' and have my blog site be automatically updated -- RSS included.

(Why is RSS so cool, you wonder? Because it's content syndication. People can subscribe to it and know when I've updated my blog. If we still had an RSS Agent in Jabber, you could even receive a special message of type "headline" when my RSS file was updated to contain a new item. Unfortunately, we no longer have an RSS Agent. Makes me want to write one in C++ using Dizzy's JECL code. In fact, I think that I will write such a component. It'll give me a good excuse to vastly improve my C++ skills, and provide a valuable addition to the Jabber community to boot.)

My work-friend Ben was asking me about XSLT today (the magical stylesheet language that I use to transform XML into formats like HTML and RSS), so I promised him I'd post links to some examples. I've used XSLT on a number of projects, including:

• JEPs (xml | xsl)
• My resume (xml | xsl)
• The Ism Book (xml | xsl)
• My weblog (xml | blog2html | blog2rss)

Posted on 2002-03-06 at 21:35. File under technology.

~ link ~

Jabber Evolution

The Jabber protocols and community continue to mature.

The fun continues in the Jabber community. I mean that in a positive sense -- we're learning how to work together, moving forward on many fronts, and growing in important ways. Here are some examples:

• Our recent IETF Submission, which I was deeply involved in but which really came about as a result of prodding by James Barry.
• Our discussions in the Standards JIG regarding recent Jabber Enhancement Proposals.
• The steady growth in traffic on the JADMIN and JDEV mailing lists. It's tough to keep up with it all, but that's better than having no discussion.
• The fact that we're revisiting some thorny issues like the Jabber trademark and the development of standards for Jabber compliance. Jabber Council member Mike Lin just sent a great post to the members@jabber.org list laying out the issues surrounding the trademark. I trust that we'll be able to sort all that out.
• I think we've learned from our mistake with the early formation of so many Jabber Interest Groups, and I have just submitted to the Jabber Council a proposal for streamlining them.

Now if only there were little more code being developed, but I hope to do something about that as well, before long....

Posted on 2002-03-06 at 20:48. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Thin Books

What is the ideal size for a technical book? I'm beginning to think that thin is in....

As noted the other day, I've been impressed with Shane McChesney's Skipping Dot Net site. He argues that the best books are thin books, and I must say I find his argument persuasive in my own life right now -- I'm too busy to read anything big and I need an author to focus on one topic and cover it well. Shane's thoughts are echoed here, here, and here. The topic is of more than academic interest to me, since I'm under contract to write a book myself (about Jabber, of course). If you feel strongly about the length or focus of tech books, let me know!

Posted on 2002-03-06 at 16:06. File under technology.

~ link ~

2002-03-05

Got RSS?

A bunch of my Jabber friends (no, I'm not naming names) have gone whole hog over Radio, the blogging app and a whole lot more from UserLand Software.

One of their favorite features is the automatic generation of an RSS file for content syndication (specifically, RSS 0.92). Not to be outdone (and seeing that there is no Radio for Linux), I have converted my blog to a custom XML format and I've written two XSLT stylesheets, one that outputs HTML and another that outputs RSS. Thus those of you who care about such things can now subscribe to my RSS feed. My new XML format consists of one file for each month (the archives were getting a bit full of per-day files anyway), each file consists of multiple days, and each day can contain one or more stories -- each of which in turn has a body, a title, and an ISO-8601-compliant timestamp based on which I generate the link to the HTML page fragment for the story's location in that month's blog page. So once I write an entry such as this one, I run the current month's XML source file through two XSLT processes and voila: a new index.html page and a new RSS feed are generated. (Actually I just type one command and a little shell script does the rest.) Pretty crazy, eh?

Posted on 2002-03-05 at 20:24. File under technology.

~ link ~

2002-03-02

Skipping to Mingus

Listening to Mingus and reading countless entries at Skipping Dot Net, the ironically-named weblog of Shane McChesney.

As to Mingus, I like what I once described to someone as his post-Ellington compositions -- on the disc I'm listening to (the Ken Burns jazz collection, borrowed from the Denver Public Library) that would include things like "Haitian Fight Song", "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", "Peggy's Blue Skylight", and "Solo Dancer". I can do without tracks like "Original Faubus Fables" and "Eat That Chicken", but at his best Mingus is someone I like quite a bit (I also borrowed a few Thelonius Monk discs from the library today, as well as the incredible solo piano recordings by Mary Lou Williams, on which I've commented previously).

As to Shane McChesney, not only does he understand open-source software, he also understands what it means to keep the customer satisfied. And he can write! To top it all off, he gets Jabber and he sees where it fits into what I like to call the open-source ecosystem. Check out that second link, because if Shane is right that "The Interesting Stuff Happens In The Intersections", then there are a lot of interesting projects out there to be pursued in connecting Jabber to important technologies like Zope, Python, weblogging, open-source databases, RSS (where have you gone, RSS-Agent or Meerkat-Transport?), SOAP, and XML-RPC. We in the Jabber community have a lot of work to do!

Speaking of the Jabber community, we've had a valuable exchange in the last 24 hours on the JADMIN list, in a thread entitled open source or a candle in the wind? As might be expected, I jumped right in, describing my perspective on things Jabber. We definitely need to improve, but for me the main thing is finding more contributors and getting good coders and thinkers excited about integrating Jabber with the aforementioned technologies. We also need to consolidate some of our gains, for example by creating some core standards for Jabber clients as well as documenting our protocols. Our IETF submission was a big step forward but there is much more to be done....

Posted on 2002-03-02 at 21:52. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-03-01

O'Reilly Proposals

I just submitted two proposals to speak at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this summer.

I spoke at last year's conference but I was filling in for someone else so I didn't prepare a talk ahead of time (besides, my talk was more informal, merely an overview of what was happening in the Jabber community). Here are the two proposals I submitted -- send me feedback if you think they can be improved upon, since I have 24 hours to make changes...

Saving Time and Money with Presence and Instant Messaging

Knowing when someone is available and being able to communicate with them immediately can save you time and money. These two concepts -- presence and instant messaging -- are beginning to permeate the electronic world. For example:

• Cell phones are used for exchanging short text messages.
• Company directories show the availability of each employee.
• Distributed work teams use online "conference rooms" to meet in real time.

This talk focuses on open-source presence and instant messaging technologies that can help organizations cut costs and make teams more productive, without compromising security.

That's the first one -- it's intended to fit in with this year's theme of "Do More With Less" (really, that's the theme of the conference!). The second one is more strategic:

Open Source, Open Standards

While open-source projects can truly thrive only in an environment of open standards, reality is not always so clear-cut. Where the software ecosystem is controlled by closed implementations, open-source projects can survive only at the margins, mainly by reverse-engineering the closed protocols (e.g., Samba). Where open standards rule, open-source projects can attain effective ubiquity (e.g., Apache). Where the situation is more complex, there is an opportunity for open-source projects to drive the standards process (e.g., Jabber). In this session we will explore the dynamics of open source and open standards, focusing on how open-source projects can be successful no matter what environment they find themselves in.

We'll see if the good folks at O'Reilly find either of those interesting. :-)

Posted on 2002-03-01 at 15:16. File under jabber.

~ link ~

identity...

my back pages

me
home
music
jabber
poems
journal
essays
dotplan
résumé
ism book
contact me
colorado blogs

my group blogs

albion's seedlings
extended conversation
floss foundations
microid development
planet jabber

jabberites

adam nemeth
daniel henninger
google talkabout
hal rottenberg
jeremie miller
kevin smith
mickael hallendal
ralph meijer
remko tronçon
robert quattlebaum

techies

barry leiba
bob wyman
eric rescorla
fred stutzman
future pundit
mike linksvayer
paul hoffman
the speculist
steve o'grady
stowe boyd

wonks

cafe hayek
chicago boyz
the futurist
instapundit
joel kotkin
marginal revolution
michael barone
rand simberg
rants and raves
samizdata

i use...

i support...

i listen to...

fighting censorship...

current threat level...

flying the flag...