Categories
Software and Programming

Reference Like It Oughta Be

Grrr. “Python”:http://www.python.org seems to have lots of useful libraries and services, for example codecs for translating between character sets / encodings, or an “HTML parser”:http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-htmllib.html (well, actually there are “two”:http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/module-HTMLParser.html – probably because the first one was too complicated).

And while this is all throughly documented, the documentation is mostly pretty confusing, because examples are thin on the ground.

So let me use this moment of frustration to point out why I think “Netscape’s Javascript Documentation”:http://devedge.netscape.com/central/javascript/ is simply *world-class*: it gives examples for everything. Practically every method of every object mentioned in it’s “client-side reference guide”:http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/1.3/guide/, for example, has sample code showing how the object or method can be created and used, and what the expected behaviour would be.

Which is probably why I’ll happily consider doing somthing in Javascript, but haven’t gotten deeper into Python than the simplest three-line script.

Categories
Oddities

Hotel California

defective yeti performs a valuable public service by researching what that Eagles song was all about:

bq(http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/000594.html). I assumed — erroneously, I guess — that everyone (including The Queen) had, while in college, attended a party where Hotel California was playing, and been cornered by a Way Too Inebriated College Guy, who insisted, with slurred earnestness, that the song was a thinly veiled paean (or perhaps “pagan”) to Satanism.* I mean, when I was in college this happened to me, like, twice a month.

Categories
Software and Programming

In brief (nanotech, XML)

Two quick links before running off home:

* LA Times speculation about Five New techologies that may help Silicon Valley rise again.

* “Tim Bray: XML Is Too Hard For Programmers”:http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/03/16/XML-Prog

Categories
Resources

Hedley’s Fine Aggregators

Jonathan Hedley offers some nice CGI thingies and aggregators, like “alterslash”:http://alterslash.org/ (summarizes “slasdot.org”:http://slashdot.org) and “WorldBuddy”:http://worldbuddy.com, which shows you the time (and sometimes the weather too) in lots of places around in the world.

Categories
Blather

The anti-smiley

Yesterday I demonstrated my vast powers of miscommunication to someone over ICQ (as I regularly do, being a great miscommunicator), and wondered if I could possibly sprinkle more smilies than usual on top of each message.

Not so, says “Anil Dash”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php?archives/005433.php, upon being taken to task for saracasm. One should fight back against the forces that enforce online understanding at the price of sacrificing our right to cynicism. He promotes the anti-smiley “:-)” , to undermine the whole purpose of defusing ambiguity.