Notes Toward a Moderation Economy is a fascinating Kuro5hin article that takes an economic view of moderation/reputation systems like /. and Kuro5hin.

Processing is a Java based language and environment that translates to Java and compiles to run on the standard JRE. Processing has syntactic sugar for a wide range of built-in multimedia and 3D run-time APIs and the rest of the language has a clear, clean syntax. If you are developing cross-platform or browser-based multimedia apps Processing should definately be in your toolkit.

Say it isn't so! After 150 years Levi Strauss & Co. is changing the fit of their classic 501 jeans. Apparently they are making the legs and rear a bit wider.

I predict Jay Leno is going to be all over this. "What is happening in this country? Are our butts so big now that even Levi's has to do something?"

Chris Phoenix has published a design for a personal 'Nanofactory'. Quote: "This paper describes the mechanisms, structures, and processes of a prototypical macro-scale, programmable nanofactory composed of many small fabricators." It seems this design could build many products, including a duplicate nanofactory. Of course it would be even more cool if the nanotechnology existed to create the first one...

I feel like a freaking idiot...

I have been waiting for more than an hour for an important call, an over the telephone job interview. I was all prepared, with software already loaded on computers, reference materials handy and plenty of caffiene. But no joy: The phone never rings. Did they forget? Did something else come up? Did they have the wrong number?

Finally I checked the telephone. The power cord was pulled out just enough that it wasn't working.

Crap!

Kathryn Cramer is reporting that SF writer Hal Clement has died.

As has been noted elsewhere, Microsoft has released the C# 2.0 draft specification. (Joey deVilla did an HTML version.)

I found this months ago, but somehow forgot to blog it: In part IV of 'A Conversation with Bruce Eckel', Bruce talks with Bill Venners about the way the Python language itself acts as a kind of 'tipping point' for programmer productivity.

Also don't miss parts I, II and III.

YAML (aka YAML Ain't Markup Language) is a human readable format for serializing and storing data. There is even an HTTP transport RPC mechanism (similar to XML-RPC) defined for YAML called OkayRpcProtocol.

I seriously think this is something which could change the Internet drastically 1. I also think it is something the 'powers that be' 2 will be very concerned about if it does gain critical mass.

1 I suspect this change will accellerate the 'Balkinization' of the Internet as users start creating private zones of the like-minded. Among other things of course.

Kathryn Cramer is raising her kids right .

Some friends came down from Bellingham and stopped by last night. The purpose of their trip was to go to a coffee 'cupping' at the home of another friend of theirs (and acquaintance of mine). And then today they are attending the Seattle Coffee Fest. All very Pacific Northwest, don't you know...

The Open Mobile Alliance has been plugging away for several years now, generating documents describing the architecture and standards for wireless applications for small devices (WAP). Thousands of man hours that are mostly going to waste because, well, WAP is dead just as soon as the next generation of cell-phone/PDA hybrids becomes the standard and there is no longer a reason not to use good old

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!!! Shit, schist, caca, merde!!!

Sorry about the language there, but I am really pissed off right now. Partly at myself, I should have backed everything up before I started. I know that. But mostly I am pissed at Microsoft...

Anita is home and today is feeling well enough to answer email and post to her weblog. Still no word on the biopsy results, but I will take my rays of sunshine where I can get them. And today we have sunshine, after several straight days of rain. Including yesterday, which broke records. For Seattle. For rain in Seattle...