June 2003
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25 » An alternative to RSS?
Wouldn't it be great if there was a new, open system to syndicate, archive and edit weblogs, that didn't rely on the muddle that is RSS? Well it appears that Sam Ruby and many others agree. By using a wiki, they have begun to formulate a plan for introducing one. I totally support this endeavor.
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19 » Happy Birthday to my darling wife
Deborah, my beloved wife, celebrates her ... er ... 21st birthday today. I would like to say a few words to her, so please indulge me.
You are the Sun on my back, because you are warm,
You are the stars in my sky, because you are bright,
You are the ice in my Coke, because you are cool,
You are the sportscar in my garage, because you are seductive,
You are the grilled onions in my cheeseburger, because you are delicious,
You are the suit in my closet, because you are smart,
You are the caramel in my candy, because you are sweet,
You are the pepper in my dinner, because you are hot,
You are the flower in my garden, because you are beautiful,
You are the love in my life, because I adore you.To my warm, bright, cool, seductive, delicious, smart, sweet, hot, and beautiful wife - I love you with all my heart.
Simon X X X
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15 » Jolly good show!
73 years after their last victory, I am delighted to see that Bentley have won the Le Mans 24 Hours, with their cars finishing first and second. Tom Kristensen, Rinaldo Capello, and Guy Smith dominated the race in the number 7 car from start to finish, completing 377 laps of the 13.6km circuit. Johnny Herbert, Mark Blundell, and David Brabham finished in a strong second, with the Audi of Emanuele Pirro, J. J. Lehto, and Stephan Johansson rounding off the podium positions.
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14 » I propose a 25% increase in day length
During the last few weeks, I have had almost no life. I have been completely and utterly immersed in writing papers, building pages, and doing homework assignments for school. I have had no time for an personal projects whatsoever. Even writing in this blog, a source of contentment for me, has been neglected in favor of the school workload.
So my work is done? No. I still have much to do. I hope to be able to return to a normal service around the beginning of July. In my next semester, beginning in the middle of July, I will be studying ASP and ActionScript for the first time, and these will doubtless require my full attention. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to do what I need to do.
What is happening to Internet Explorer?
So much has happened since I last posted. Perhaps the most depressing news, however, is the death of Internet Explorer for Windows as a standalone product and the slaying of Internet Explorer for the Mac. The latter product was the first of a series of great browsers that had fine support for XML and CSS, and the former has a completely dominant market share at the moment. The news that they are to be no more effectively freezes the foward progress of web standards development until the release of the next Windows operating system, which may be late in this decade. That means that devlopers and designers must continue to butcher their code to provide support for Internet Explorer users.
I have to say that I think Microsoft's strategy is truly bizarre. After spending countless millions on battling with other browser vendors and governments to grab almost 90% of the market share, they are now going to sit on their hands for years and allow everyone to catch up. But will other vendors actually do it? The news that Microsoft will be giving free seven-year licenses to AOL TimeWarner to allow them to integrate Internet Explorer and Media Player into the America Online client might mean the end of Netscape and (God forbid) Mozilla. With nothing (sorry, Opera, but you're just not big enough) to drive Microsoft to improve its product, web development will be stuck in a timewarp.
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01 » Limited Schedule
Forgive me for not posting more often, but I've had to scale my blog time back a little bit to fit in with a heavy workload at school. Expect fewer entries until the end of June.