Drapetomaniac

Shoes is a tiny toolkit for writing cross-platform desktop applications. You can get started learning in just a few short steps. The download also comes with several example apps.

This Friday, we will have a ShoesFest at the Austin Jelly. Newbies (like me) welcome. Action will take place virtually on irc at irc://irc.freenode.net#shoes and #sneakers for beginners.

I will be working on a Microformat generator to easily create location and retrieve geocoding for locations.

This is why when journalism, media and entertainment merge with technology, they need experts in technology - but they technologist shouldn't be left alone.

"Users grade 'Hancock'"... "Find out what users have to say."

I saw this as soon as I opened up Yahoo on July 2. Can you imagine being called a "user" while in line at the movies? "All users here ot see Hancock, the line begins here!" Or perhaps more appropriate for news readers? "Dear User, To renew your subscription...."

Programmers and technology oriented folks might feel comfortable running the news systems, but when it comes to creating the smallest bit of content you can see how a warm phrase like "readers" can easily be turned into the sterile and accurate "User."

At least we can hope it wasn't a writer that put the headline there.

The singular version of this domain came open, so I've gone to one singular drapetomaniac. I also spend part of the afternoon upgrading mephisto and setting the new domain up using mod_rails passenger on Dreamhost instead of using fastcgi. If there are fewer crashes under passenger, I may look more into making my own templates mephisto and creating a plugin or two.

Internet Explorer Cannot open the Internet Site - Operation Aborted.

I wrestled with this message yesterday. It seems specific to Internet Explorer. Many have experienced it using the Google Map API, but mine was using the Squeezebox for Joomla.

The example used domready to avoid the problem of trying to append the body before it was ready in the browser.

For me, the fix was to move the script to the bottom of the Body for now. This is a bothersome problem that really seems to be a timing issue in IE.

I've been growing frustrated over the slowness of my firefox browser, but at the same time I know it's chock full of tools. Still, in the back of my mind I remember the glory days - "Just use Firefox, it's faster."

My extensons include: Firebug, Operator, Delicious Bookmarks, Web Developer, YSlow, EC2 UI, Selenium IDE, Moz CC and a couple of others.

That said, I installed Firefox Beta 3 and noticed an immediate speed difference. Of course, this needed Nightly Tester Tools to activate all my extensions.

With extensions aded back in - the Speed stayed.

Ironically, I had started using Safari last week as my "thin browser." For browsing to sites I just wanted fast on. Now with Firfox 3 installed, we'll see if I need Safari for anythign other than testing again.

I filed a bug with Joomla about not accepting email addresses like testthis+symbol@example.com during install. My explanation was "e-mail systems accept this." The initial response was "just because some systems accept it, doesn't mean it is valid."

True enough. Then again, if you restrict an email address, it doesn't mean that restriction is valid.

I'm usually more specific in reporting bugs, but frankly I was ignorant as to whether or not it was valid when I filed the bug.

Plus symbols are valid.

RFC 822, 3696, 2822 and 2821 all refer to the standards for e-mail addressing. RFC 822 was passed in 1982.

3696 summarizes:

"Without quotes, local-parts may consist of any combination of alphabetic
characters, digits, or any of the special characters

! # $ % & ' * + - / = ? ^ _ ` . { | } ~

period (".") may also appear, but may not be used to start or end the
local part, nor may two or more consecutive periods appear."

Some good blog entries in plain English:
Email Address Format Myths
I Knew How To Validate An Email Address Until I Read The RFC
How to Find or Validate an Email Address

I have seen a lot of one line e-mail validators. If you want to see how off these are, check out Paul Warren's partial example.

There seem to be more e-mails coming from Tagged.com. "You've been tagged by..." The first one I got was via a mailing list that wasn't set up properly - one where anyone can e-mail the whole group. I then started getting tagged by strangers.

EWeek did a good walk through of how the program harvests your e-mail after it's aggressive presentation to get people to sign on using their gmail or yahoo identity. It then uses that to scrape your e-mail box and send massive amounts of e-mail. I have seen several people now complain after the fact because they weren't aware they gave away their credentials - or at least found a momentary moment of trust where they felt comfortable doing it.

The more bothersome part is that it is a very profitable business targeting teens.

If you have any inhibitions about sending friends invites for new social networks, don't click on "you've been tagged" messages because you won't have much of a choice once you start their sign up process.

Social virus?

I've registered for the Community Media Summit. Anyone interested in community and citizen media should attend. A lot of media is still in a turning point in how they operate, the mediums they use and the tones they take - not to mention the ever pending oligarchy. Even if you're not involved now, come to see what others are doing.