I've recently started to approach my storage limit on my main system at home. I've had the notion for a little while now that I'd eventually like to build a media server at home and then serve the content to an entertainment center in our house so that I have my own "video-on-demand" system. Read the rest of this entry ...
Yesterday I watched in horror as one of my 14-month old sons toddled over to the door to our office, reached up and started jiggling the doorknob. I sat rooted to the spot with Jacob, holding my breath because I knew that the moment he learned how to turn the doorknob to open the door that our lives would be changed forever. I kept calling him to try and distract him so he'd forget about the door ("Joshua let's read a book....Joshua where's Mickey Mouse?....Joshua...Joshua..."), I must have sounded pretty desperate.
Thankfully he eventually wandered away from the door...this time. I guess it's time we figure out how to childproof the doors beyond simply keeping the doors closed. Little brass hooks installed at 5' should do it...until my kids learn to stand on each others shoulders...
Oh the times they are a scary...
I've actually ranted about the decline of Microsoft Office 2002 in the past, but I thought I'd quickly throw something up that I hate about Microsoft Word 2002. You know, it's weird but the more useability "improvements" they throw into a well-established piece software, the less useable the software becomes to me. Sometimes it's ok to just "leave well enough alone" and just fix bugs or improve the efficiency/speed of an application. Read the rest of this entry ...
Just a reminder that the deadline for review comments for SVG Tiny 1.2 Working Draft is only two days away (May 20, 2005).
I spent some time pouring over the document and nitpicking away, but I didn't get finished in time. Overall, the document seems in good shape. I have to cut the SVG Working Group a little slack because the SVG Tiny spec used to be a supplemental doc that was a specific profile of the SVG Full spec. However, in SVG 1.2 the paradigm has shifted such that SVG Tiny is its own complete language spec (and SVG Full will be an extension of SVG Tiny). I talked about this in the past too. Anyway, there must have been significant document merging, cutting, etc to re-arrange things so I can understand why some URLs are broken and some code samples include features that aren't even in SVG Tiny. They still need to be fixed though! 🙂
One problem I've seen with specifications (in general) is that they often contain many little errors and lack precision (i.e. are too ambiguous) and this results in more time on the user end trying to figure it out or post in mailing lists. Some may consider this anal-retentive, but I call it courtesy to the reader. Most importantly, if you're going to provide code samples or mathematical descriptions, they'd better be exact with no errors, otherwise you're just frustrating the user who has taken the time to try and understand what you're writing about. For this reason (and the fact that I can't contribute much else at this time), most of my comments are:
- typos (scattered throughout the doc)
- incorrect code examples/mathematical formulae (Sections 5.9.2, 7.7.3, and 7.7.4 have some errors in them)
- clarifications (Sections 5.1, 5.9.2, 5.9.3, 5.11, 9.3 and 9.4 could all use fleshing out)
- minor suggested improvements (Example 07_07.svg in Section 7.5 could be improved)
Submit your comments to the SVG W3C mailing list with prefix "[SVGMobile12]" in the subject. You can view archives of the mailing list (including all my comments) here. You can read my blog topics on SVG here.
I'm having a hard time with Creeping Charlie and other weeds this year. A little while ago, I talked about my desire to establish a clover lawn. I noticed just this week that the clover areas seem thicker and wider, but it's still only in patches and not consistent. Also, the Creeping Charlie is intermingled with it and I don't like its broad leaves, they are way too distracting. Read the rest of this entry ...