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<title>ongoing</title>
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<icon>/favicon.ico</icon>
<updated>2006-03-07T23:32:50-08:00</updated>
<author><name>Tim Bray</name></author>
<subtitle>ongoing fragmented essay by Tim Bray</subtitle>
<rights>All content written by Tim Bray and photos by Tim Bray Copyright Tim Bray, some rights reserved, see /ongoing/misc/Copyright</rights>
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<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/06/Apache-Server'>
<title>The ASF Server</title>
<link href='Apache-Server' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/06/Apache-Server</id>
<published>2006-03-06T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-07T23:32:17-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Sun' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Sun' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Web' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Web' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Sun gave the Apache Software Foundation a server last year, and I kept hearing, over coffee and beer, that they were running some scary-huge number of projects on it, all independently via zones; really remarkable numbers. I kept asking them to write about it, and they kept not writing. So here’s an email interview with <a href='http://www.toftum.dk/'>Mads Toftum</a>, who does a lot of sysadmin-ing around the ASF. I don’t know how typical their workload is, but I’m an old sysadmin myself and I found this pretty interesting. Mads doesn’t blow his own horn much, but this is a remarkable installation.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Sun gave the Apache Software Foundation a server last year, and I kept
hearing, over coffee and beer, that they were running some scary-huge number
of projects on it, all independently via zones; really remarkable numbers.
I kept
asking them to write about it, and they kept not writing.
So here’s an email interview with
<a href="http://www.toftum.dk/">Mads Toftum</a>, who does a lot of sysadmin-ing
around the ASF.
I don’t know how typical their workload is, but I’m an old sysadmin myself
and I found this pretty interesting.
Mads doesn’t blow his own horn much, but this is a remarkable installation.</p>
<p><i>Tim: What was donated, and when was that?</i></p>
<p>Mads: A v40z (4 single core AMD, 16G memory) and a 3511 disk array
with 5*250G
IDE drives. I don’t have an exact date but it was right around the
release date for sol10.</p>
<p><i>How was the installation/setup? Surprises?</i></p>
<p>We had a sun engineer doing the work for us, so no real surprises
other than him using the most common root password ever.
My day job includes more than enough
Solaris that there weren’t many surprises other than a few missing bits
in x86 Solaris compared to the SPARC based gear I’m used to. The raid
array did cause a fair bit of grief, but eventually we got that under
control and I moved the zones over to it during apachecon.</p>
<p><i>What are you using it for, and how is it set up?</i></p>
<p>The setup is pretty standard - the infrastructure team runs the global
zone and try to provide most common software on request.</p>
<p>The way it generally works, a PMC can ask for a zone to run their
software - then I build a zone for them, and hand over root to whomever
they have as their admin. After that, we generally don’t hear much from
them unless they get themselves into trouble or we have to take care of
runaway processes. </p>
<p>There’s close to 20 zones now spread over different projects doing
things like automated builds, doc generation (fairly common), TCK
testing and automated tests. Spamassassin is by far the greatest CPU
hog, but there are also others using a fair bit of resources to build
docs, run gump and use mavens continuum. We’ve also got a couple of
zones that are used to develop infrastructure services like
projects.apache.org and other things that aren’t public yet.</p>
<p>We’re still stressing that it is an experimental service but a few of
the projects are ignoring that and starting to depend on their zone (I
just hope they don’t have to learn about experimental the hard way).</p>
<p><i>How heavy’s the workload? System holding up OK?</i></p>
<p>We’ve had a couple of incidents over time and I’m seeing more and more
of the automated builds beginning to overlap - ideally I’d like to find
another box to move the automated build activities out of the way. I’ve
asked to postpone a generic build zone project because I want to make sure it
doesn’t impact other projects.</p>
<p><i>Why zones?</i></p>
<p>They are the only way we can share a machine between so many projects
without placing a very high load on our infra people. Trying to sort out
20 different projects within the same machine would be close to
impossible because we couldn’t delegate privileges.</p>
<p><i>If you were doing it with Linux instead, how would you approach
the problem of dealing out the projects? Same question for *BSD.</i></p>
<p>There’s jails for BSD and similar solutions for Linux, but at the time
we were setting up the machine, none of those solutions would have given
us the same level of flexibility and virtualisation without adding extra
overhead. My guess is that we would have gone with a solution similar to
what we have, but we might have ended up with a more restricted model.</p>
<p><i>Using SMF? Like it?</i></p>
<p>After getting over the initial disgust over all the added xml cruft,
I’ve gotten as far as seeing the benefits, but SMF still needs more work
as the SMF discussions on OpenSolaris.org shows.</p>
<p><i>What do the Solaris engineers need to be working on?</i></p>
<ul>
<li><p>Better patch management (patching zones is no fun) and being able to
use liveupgrade with zones would make me a lot less worried about
upgrading from several thousand miles away.</p></li>
<li><p>resource caps / FSS integration for other things than just CPU - we
need to be able to limit other resources like memory and possibly IO
too.</p></li>
<li><p>zone migration would be good too.</p></li>
<li><p>dtrace in zones</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Luckily all these are already in the works and I expect seeing the last
3 in a not too distant future release. Other than that, there’s still
some work to be done on better hardware support in the X86 area and a
few other minor details.</p>
<p><i>CPU-limited, I/O-limited, memory-limited?</i></p>
<p>All of the above although memory problems are very rare - people
generally try to behave and don’t quite use as many resources as they
could have gotten away with. Most projects run in a single process
gobbling only one out of 4 CPUs, but recently that has been changing.</p>
<p><i>Which Apache project burns the most resources?</i></p>
<p>Spamassassin by a wide margin although others are working hard to catch
up. This is of course something I can make less evident with FSS, but as
mentioned earlier that doesn’t quite fix all our problems.</p>
<p>I think that’s about it - we’re talking a bit about moving some of our
other services to zones, but that probably won’t happen as long as we’ve
only got the one machine.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/07/Dana-on-ZFS'>
<title>More ZFS Data</title>
<link href='Dana-on-ZFS' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/07/Dana-on-ZFS</id>
<published>2006-03-07T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-07T09:07:32-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Storage' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Storage' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Solaris' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Solaris' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>I see that
<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/danasblog?entry=zfs_v_ufs_performance_for">Dana H. Myers</a> has been digging away at ZFS performance using the
only metric that really matters to the real geek: OS build performance.
The numbers are interesting... I’m surprised that compression made so little
difference, both source and object code compress quite well (I just ran a
little test: the Emacs binary compressed to 18% of its size, a bunch of Java
code to 19%.)
Maybe the fact
that it’s zillions of little files means that the file open/create overhead
dominates the actual input/output time?
There is no doubt there is a huge amount of work to be done on I/O
performance, both understanding it and improving it.
But ZFS is increasingly looking like a step forward.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/06/Salem'>
<title>Salem</title>
<link href='Salem' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/06/Salem</id>
<published>2006-03-06T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-06T00:30:20-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Places/Oregon' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Places' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Oregon' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Photos' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Photos' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>On Friday morning I flew down to Portland, drove to <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem,_Oregon'>Salem</a>, and helped out with a Sun sales presentation to the state government from 10AM to 5PM. I don’t get to do many sales calls which is a pity because I love them. I probably shouldn’t queer the pitch by going into details (I will if we get the business, because it’s interesting), but I have to say that the state-government people we were pitching to had smart questions and were endearingly obsessive about the application; and I would be too in their position, it’s one of the Things That Matters. I flew home out of PDX that same evening and damn was I tired. But the State Capitol is worth looking at, so I took a couple of pictures.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>On Friday morning I flew down to Portland, drove to
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem,_Oregon">Salem</a>, and helped out
with a Sun sales presentation to the state government from 10AM to 5PM. I
don’t get
to do many sales calls which is a pity because I love them. I probably
shouldn’t queer the pitch by going into details (I will if we get the
business, because it’s interesting), but I have to say that the
state-government people we were pitching to had smart questions and were
endearingly obsessive about the application; and I would be too in their
position, it’s one of the Things That Matters. I flew home out of PDX that
same evening and damn was I tired. But the State Capitol is worth looking at,
so I took a couple of pictures.</p>
<p>It was all built in the 1930s in lovely white marble, in a style that
is really not trying to be Westminster or Versailles or DC, the lines are
clean and look good against a grey sky, which you get a lot of the Pacific
Northwest.</p>
<img src="IMG_4405.png" alt="Oregon state government buildings in Salem against a grey sky" />
<p>The Capitol building itself has a central tower with uplifting humanist
homilies chiseled into the broad faces of white marble. Nice inside too, no
in-your-face security, very welcoming.</p>
<p>Then, up on top of that white tower, there’s this Big Gold Guy, officially
the Oregon Capitol Pioneer. It turns that you can read about
<a href="http://www.oregonlink.com/goldenpioneer/index.html">Gilding Oregon
Capitol Pioneer</a> (cool site, and I like
<a href="http://www.oregonlink.com/goldenpioneer/inspection/04_faceandhand.html">this
one</a>) and I got two pictures, one each against blue sky and
grey.</p>
<img src="IMG_4402.png" alt="Oregon Capitol Pioneer statue" />
<img src="IMG_4407.png" alt="Oregon Capitol Pioneer statue" />
<p>Which do you like?</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/05/Busy-Pix'>
<title>Busy Pix</title>
<link href='Busy-Pix' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/05/Busy-Pix</id>
<published>2006-03-05T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-05T23:41:33-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Photos' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Photos' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Well, I didn’t have time to do the Friday Slide Scan, and I’m not going to fit the 5✭♫ for Monday in either; just too much happening. So I thought I’d post a couple of random—<em>extremely</em> random—pictures.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Well, I didn’t have time to do the Friday Slide Scan, and I’m not going to
fit the 5✭♫ for Monday in either; just too much happening. So I thought I’d
post a couple of random—<em>extremely</em> random—pictures.</p>
<img src="IMG_4384.png" alt="White plaster wall (detail)" />
<img src="IMG_4389.png" alt="Mysterious alien-egg panorama" />
<p>The first is just a wall on my way to work. I have <em>no</em> idea what
the second is, I found it on the camera between shots taken at a kids’ party,
but the kids were all just kids, and I hadn’t noticed any alien egg
clusters in the room.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/05/Languages-Today'>
<title>Programming Languages</title>
<link href='Languages-Today' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/05/Languages-Today</id>
<published>2006-03-05T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-05T17:24:26-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Coding' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Coding' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Java' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Java' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>I followed a pointer from
<a href="http://www.dehora.net/journal/">Bill de hÓra</a> this morning and it
cost me an unplanned hour while the rest of the family slept, on
the subject of programming languages. If you care about such things, stop
reading here or you’re about to get stuck too; but that’s because it’s good
stuff. Bill pointed me at
<a href="http://opal.cabochon.com/~stevey/">Steve Yegge</a>, somehow I hadn’t
run across him previously.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Bruce Eckel on
<a href="http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=141312">The
Departure of the Hyper-Enthusiasts</a>, which is too rich to summarize but if
you had to, it would be: Ruby is good, but not really good enough to beat
Python.
I
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2005/12/20/Languages">wrote about this before</a>,
but the conversation it started really has legs.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Steve Yegge pushes back with
<a href="http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/anti-anti-hype.html">A
little anti-anti-hype</a>, which argues that friendlier languages sometimes
beat better languages, e.g. Perl vs. Python. The piece is, he admits,
inflammatory.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Speaking of friendly languages, if Steve is right, Ruby has won,
check out
<a href="http://poignantguide.net/ruby/">why’s (poignant) guide to Ruby</a>
which isn’t just friendly, it’s a cute little puppy bouncing in your lap,
licking your nose.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Back to Steve Yegge, who irritated enough people with that
previous piece that he wrote a follow-up,
<a href="http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/bambi-meets-godzilla.html">Bambi
Meets Godzilla</a>, making the same points, but well enough
that you don’t mind.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Steve’s
<a href="http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/blog-rants/tour-de-babel.html">Tour
de Babel</a> is a really funny and entertaining romp through a bunch of
languages.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Steve’s also interested in other-languages-on-the-JVM, just like
me. Unlike me, he positively despises the Java language. Memorable quote: “Java
has lots of wonderful features, but <i>Java</i> isn’t one of them. Java’s
appeal as a platform for doing real work rests precisely on its strengths as a
platform, not as a language.” This is in
<a href="http://opal.cabochon.com/~stevey/sokoban/docs/article-java.html">JVM
Languages: Java 5</a>, from the series entitled
<a href="http://www.cabochon.com/~stevey/sokoban/">Stevey’s JVM Language
Soko-Shootout</a>, a really interesting run at a sample programming problem in
a bunch of different languages running on the JVM.<br/>
<i>Item:</i> Speaking of those languages, it turns out that
<a href="http://headius.blogspot.com/">Charles Nutter</a> who
(with Thomas Enebo) leads the JRuby project, has a blog, in
which he’s recently written about
<a href="http://headius.blogspot.com/2006/03/irb-is-go.html">Getting IRB
Going</a> which he kind of has (although it turns out to be hard), enough to
type in Swing
(!) code; and a piece which starts talking about
<a href="http://headius.blogspot.com/2006/03/jruby-progress-updates-jruby-on-rails.html">JRuby
on Rails</a>, but veers into a <em>very</em> interesting discussion of JRuby performance.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/05/Politics'>
<title>Political Wisdom</title>
<link href='Politics' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/05/Politics</id>
<published>2006-03-05T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-05T16:23:12-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Politics' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Politics' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Places/United States' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Places' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='United States' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Places/Middle East' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Middle East' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Like I’ve said before, I was in favor of taking down Saddam. But the
crumbling tower of stinking lies used to sell the war, then the nauseating
incompetent brutality with which it’s been pursued,
have pushed the cost/benefit equation way negative.
Today, on one of the TV shows, US Rep. John Murtha
<a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/05.html#a7402">said</a>: “The only solution to this is to redeploy. Let me tell you, the only people who want us in Iraq is Iran and al-Qaeda. I’ve talked to a top-level commander the other day, it was about two weeks ago, and he said China wants us there also. Why? Because we’re depleting our resources, our troop resources and our fiscal resources.”
Sounds convincing to me.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2004/12/12/BMS'>
<title>Statistics</title>
<link href='BMS' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/12/12/BMS</id>
<published>2004-12-12T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-05T09:14:53-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Publishing' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Publishing' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Web' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Web' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Almost every Sunday I grab the week’s <span class="o">ongoing</span> logfiles and update my numbers. I find it interesting and maybe others will too, so this entry is now the charts’ permanent home. I’ll update it most weeks, probably. <i>[Updated: 2006/03/05.]</i></div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Almost every Sunday I grab the week’s <span class='o'>ongoing</span>
logfiles and update my numbers.
I find it interesting
and maybe others will too, so
this entry is now the charts’ permanent home. I’ll update it most weeks,
probably.
<i>[Updated: 2006/03/05.]</i></p>
<img src="Browser-Market-Share.png" alt="Browser market shares at ‘ongoing’" />
<div class="caption"><p>Browsers visiting <span class='o'>ongoing</span>,
percent.</p></div>
<img src="Browsers-via-search.png" alt="Browser market shares at ‘ongoing’, visitors via search engines" />
<div class="caption"><p>Browsers visiting <span class='o'>ongoing</span> via
search engines, percent.</p></div>
<img src="Search-Engines.png" alt="Search engine market shares at ‘ongoing’" />
<div class="caption"><p>Search referrals to <span
class='o'>ongoing</span> .</p></div>
<img src="Feeds.png" alt="RSS and Atom feed fetches" />
<div class="caption"><p>Fetches of the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds.</p></div>
<p>The notes on usage and source code will return in coming weeks when I get
the cycles to rewrite this whole article.</p>
<h2 id='p-1'>What a “Hit” Means</h2>
<p>I recently
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/07/Thumbnail">updated</a> the
<a href="/ongoing/misc/Colophon"><span class='o'>ongoing</span> software</a>
(but haven’t updated the Colophon I see, oops).
Anyhow, the <code>XMLHttpRequest</code> now issued by each page seems to be a
pretty reliable counter of the number of actual browsers with humans behind
them reading the pages. I checked against
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2005/12/04/Google-Analytics">Google Analytics</a>
and the numbers agreed to within a dozen or two on days with 5,000 to 10,000
page views; interestingly, Google Analytics was always 10 or 20 views
higher.</p>
<p>Anyhow, do <em>not</em> conclude that now I know how many people are
reading whatever it is I write here; because I publish lots of short pieces
that are all there in my RSS feed, and anyone reading my Atom feed gets the
full content of everything.
I and I have <em>no #&*!$ idea</em> how many people look at my feeds.</p>
<p>By the way, this was the first time in weeks and weeks that I’d looked at the
Analytics numbers, and they showed almost exactly zero change from the report
linked above. So I’m going to turn them off; they’re a little too intrusive
and I think may be slowing page loads.</p>
<p>Anyhow, I ran some detailed statistics on the traffic for Wednesday,
February 8th, 2006.</p>
<table cellspacing="3" cellpadding="2" class="wltable">
<tr valign="top"><td>Total connections to the server</td><td align="right">180,428</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Total successful GET transactions</td><td align="right">155,507</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Total fetches of the RSS and Atom feeds</td><td align="right">88,450</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Total GET transactions that actually fetched data (i.e. status code
200 as opposed to 304)</td><td align="right">87,271</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Total GETs of actual ongoing pages (i.e. not CSS, js, or
images)</td><td align="right">18,444</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td>Actual human page-views</td><td align="right">6,348</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>So, there you have it. Doing a bit of rounding, if you take the 180K
transactions and subtract the 90K feed fetches and the 6000 actual human page
views, you’re left with 84,000 or so “Web overhead” transactions, mostly
stylesheets and graphics and so on.
For every human who viewed a page, it was fetched almost twice again by
various kinds of robots and non-browser automated agents.</p>
<p>It’s amazing that the whole thing works at all.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/02/Totem'>
<title>Totem Thunder</title>
<link href='Totem' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/02/Totem</id>
<published>2006-03-02T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-02T23:22:54-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Audio' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Audio' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Music/Recordings' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Music' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Recordings' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Early this year, I <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/01/Velodyne-MiniVee'>reconfigured the video setup</a>, among other things adding a little Velodyne “MiniVee” subwoofer that worked really well, but made me think that perhaps the big Serious Music system could benefit from subwoofer love. So I added a <a href='http://totemacoustic.com/english/products/subwoofer_thunder.htm'>Totem Thunder</a>; herewith an unashamedly sicko-audiophile (but quantitative, with measurements) fragment that obsesses about music in general and Really Low Frequencies in particular; with a side-trip to a church in Paris. I’ll provide some introductory material in hopes of maybe luring innocent readers into this obsessive and expensive hobby.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Early this year, I
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/01/Velodyne-MiniVee">reconfigured the
video setup</a>, among other things adding a little Velodyne “MiniVee”
subwoofer that worked really well, but made me think that perhaps the big
Serious Music system could benefit from subwoofer love. So I added a
<a href="http://totemacoustic.com/english/products/subwoofer_thunder.htm">Totem
Thunder</a>;
herewith an unashamedly
sicko-audiophile (but quantitative, with measurements) fragment that obsesses
about music in general and Really Low Frequencies in particular; with a
side-trip to a church in Paris.
I’ll provide some introductory material in hopes of maybe luring innocent
readers into this obsessive and expensive hobby.</p>
<h2 id='p-1'>Cause and Effect</h2>
<p>It became apparent to me that the new subwoofer in the TV
system (a cute little thing, no more than a foot in any dimension) was playing
some notes that were lower than the big pure-audio system in another part of
the house could go.
Once I heard them, this was unacceptable.</p>
<p>Leaping ahead to the conclusion: With the Thunder in place, the big system
can go lower, which is nice, although there really isn’t that much music that
reaches that low-most people have never actually heard a musical note much
below 40Hz. But the good news is that the subwoofer helps out
the whole system; I can hear it and I measured it just to be sure; read
on.</p>
<img src="Forest.png" alt="Totem Forest speaker" class="inline" />
<h2 id='p-3'>History</h2>
<p>My main speakers, for the last four years or so, have been a pair of
<a href="http://totemacoustic.com/english/">Totem Acoustic</a> Forest
floor-standers.
Although the system has changed a bit over the years, I’ve only ever had Totem
speakers in it since about 1990.
I heard the original Totem Model One at an audio show in
Toronto many many years ago, playing some Purcell string suite, and fell
instantly in love. I’d still be using the Model Ones except for our living
room is large-ish, and when I played big orchestral pieces at high volume
(much harder on the system than most rock & roll), things were sounding
kind of stressed.
I basically wanted the same sound, but more of it; thus the Forests.</p>
<p>I could go on about the sound of the Forests, but I think I’ll outsource
that; have a look at the
<a href="http://www.stereophile.com/loudspeakerreviews/378/index.html">extended
discussion</a> of the speaker from <cite>Stereophile</cite>, one of the Big
Two audiophile magazines.
I think that piece is a good introduction to audiophile culture. First, Larry
Greenhill
goes on for some pages, discussing various aspects of the speakers’ sound as
illustrated by specific musical recordings; praising some things and
criticizing others.
Then, John Atkinson runs some careful quantitative tests on the speaker,
producing a couple of graph-laden pages.</p>
<p>Both these parts are from 2001. Then, there’s a follow-up piece by
Atkinson from 2005; no more tests, just listening.</p>
<p>The conclusion is consistent; the Forest listens and measures well, but the
bass extension is kind of limited. Atkinson reports that filling the bottom
of the speaker with sand (it has a compartment for this purpose) really
improves things.</p>
<h2 id='p-4'>High-End Business Practices</h2>
<p>So I sent an email to the contact address on the Totem website, wondering
what they’d suggest; I got a “we’re on vacation, next week” auto-reply, and
sure enough, they responded the next Monday,
recommending their Thunder and Storm subwoofers as good matches for the Forests,
and attached a list of the local dealers.</p>
<img src="Thunder.png" alt="Totem Thunder subwoofer" class="inline" />
<p>I was so impressed by the little Velodyne I’d bought that I was going to
check their products out too, but what happened was, I was on another errand
that took me by one of the dealers and so I stopped in. The dealer looked
like they weren’t doing that well, the place was a bit run-down and
disorganized. When I mentioned that I was thinking about the Totem subwoofers,
the guy pointed me at a floor model of the Thunder, in apparently perfect
condition, and
offered me a terrific deal—I’d checked prices so I knew. Anyhow, I ended up
taking it home, albeit without the original packaging or manual
(yes, the dealer was hurting I think).</p>
<p>So when I got home I emailed Totem and asked if they had an electronic
version of the manual, and there was a Word document in my in-basket a couple
of hours later, along with notes on how they recommended setting up the
Thunder to work with the Forests.
The manual revealed that the Thunder was supposed to come with feet, only mine
hadn’t.
I mentioned this in my thank-you note to Totem and
went downtown to shout at the dealer, who couldn’t find them, but said they’d see what they could
do.</p>
<p>By the time I got home there was another email from Totem saying the dealer
had contacted them about me, what was my address, they’d just send some new
feet along. Is that service or what? The high end is like that.</p>
<h2 id='p-5'>The Sound</h2>
<p>Of course, I had to start with low-bass showpieces, of which there aren’t
that many. The bottom string on a bass guitar or fiddle is 42Hz, which is
pretty darn low, and there’s really not that much music that goes south of
there.
One exception is
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enya">Enya</a>; the opening title track
from her 1988
<cite>Watermark</cite> album has some very low synthesizer, and track 10,
<cite>The Longships</cite>, has the most musically intelligent ultralow sounds
I’ve ever heard, monstrous strokes on a huge bass drum,
they shudder the air and are still sweetly melodic. If you’ve heard this song
on ordinary speakers, they just omit the big drum and it still sounds OK, but
the whole song falls into place, musically, once the foundation is there.</p>
<h2 id='p-6'>A Church in Paris</h2>
<p>My other showpiece is <cite>The Great Organ of St. Eustache</cite>, (Dorian
053479013422, 1993), featuring Jean Guillou.
By the way, if you’re a music lover and find yourself in Paris on any Sunday,
do yourself a favor and visit
<a href="http://www.saint-eustache.org/">Saint Eustache</a>, right in the
middle of town, it’s a nice church and the organ is one of the world’s
greatest, and there’s regularly free music to listen to.</p>
<img src="Great-Organ.png" alt="The Great Organ of Saint-Eustache church, Paris" />
<p>That organ is by Van den Heuvel, and it
<a href="http://vandenheuvel-orgelbouw.nl/instruments/eustache/Frameset_eustache.htm">has
its own website</a>, check it out, really.
The titular organist is Jean Guillou, and I’m a big fan; he’s done lots of
recordings, some on much smaller instruments, and he’s got lots of nuance and
grace. But when he points the big iron at a meaty piece of Bach or
Liszt or Franck, it feels like someone’s reaching in and squeezing your
pancreas, in a nice sort of way.</p>
<p>On that Dorian recording, some of the music is more interesting than others
(Guillou is a better performer than composer) but my favorite is Liszt’s
<cite>Fantasy and Fugue on the Name B-A-C-H</cite>.
Crank this up on a good system and it’s real easy to frighten yourself.
The Saint-Eustache organ has <em>three</em> different 32' bass stops
and you really can’t begin to imagine what it sounds like there in the church.
The Thunder takes you a small part of the way there, and even that’s pretty
mind-boggling.</p>
<h2 id='p-7'>Thrilling the Kid</h2>
<p>I was home alone with the six-year-old when I was setting up the Thunder,
so I called him over and said “listen to this” and played the Enya and Liszt
tracks. He literally jumped up and down with glee, grinning from ear to
ear. I’ll make an audiophile of the boy yet.</p>
<h2 id='p-8'>Ordinary Music</h2>
<p>Just like the little Velodyne, the Thunder has a circuit that turns it on
automatically a few seconds after music starts playing.
I noticed that when it
kicked in, the low bass didn’t change very much, but the whole thing
sounded... better.</p>
<p>I haven’t figured it out yet, but something good is happening. To start
with, I think that even though the sub is being rolled off about 60Hz, it’s
filling in enough sound that both the main amplifier and the Forests are
working less hard and running a little easier. Also, as I said, it’s a
biggish room, and maybe there’s some synergy there.
Anyhow, the net effect is that I’ve been sitting up late recently,
listening to one piece of music after another, without really thinking much
about frequency ranges.
Some disks that have sounded particularly excellent on recent
evenings are the James Gang’s <cite>Rides Again</cite> (on LP), Miles
Davis’ <cite>Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud</cite>, and Rickie Lee Jones’ <cite>Pop
Pop</cite>. That last one has some surprising string-bass parts; the
other two have nothing special in the low notes, but they still sound better,
go figure.</p>
<p>I love this hobby; you get to geek out and buy
beautiful objects, and the reward is music.</p>
<h2 id='p-10'>Measuring</h2>
<p>I may be a deranged audiophile but I’m also an engineer dammit, so I
decided to break out the measuring gear, which in this case is a basic Radio
Shack SPL meter, they’re under $50 and are remarkably accurate for the money.
The ones they sell
now have a digital readout, but mine is ten years old and has a funky analogue
needle that’s fun to watch.</p>
<p>It turns out that you can get test CDs to help with this. The one I use is
from <cite>Stereophile</cite>, yes, the magazine, and it has some first-rate
music on it along with the test tracks.
Among the test tracks are 30 or so “warble-tone” tracks that cover the whole
audible spectrum, from 20Hz to 20KHz.
(Both those extremes are kind of nominal, you can’t actually <em>hear</em>
20Hz so much as feel a rumble in your chest, and my middle-aged ears only go
up to about 15KHz).
So what you do is you put the SPL-meter on a camera tripod at the listening
position, play the first warble tone and fiddle with the volume and
sensitivity to get it at zero dB, then run through all the warble tones and
watch the needle.</p>
<img src="Thunder-Controls.png" alt="Totem Thunder subwoofer controls" class="inline" />
<p>With the Thunder in the system, after I’d fine-tuned its level control based
on a couple of runs, the measurements were
<em>outstanding</em>. At the listening position,
it was very flat from 1000Hz down to 31Hz, typically ±2dB, with one or two
little excursions to ±3. 20Hz was
at -6dB, and then the high frequencies, from 1000Hz or so up to the top, were
evenly depressed, -4dB to -6dB all the way across.
These are very good numbers for a home-audio in-room real-world
scenario.</p>
<h2 id='p-9'>Velodyne?</h2>
<p>The Thunder’s controls are illustrated there to your right, and are pretty
easy to figure out. They’re remarkably like the those on the
<a href="http://www.velodyne.com/velodyne/products/product.aspx?ID=14&sid=447n340d">MiniVee</a>
in the video system.</p>
<p>The Thunder has a circuit just like the Velodyne’s where it detects a
signal and wakes from sleep. There’s this clever blue LED on
the back where you can’t see it, and when the Thunder wakes up it projects an
elegant small soft blue circle on the wall behind it. The MiniVee has a blue
LED on the front for this same purpose, the exact same colour.</p>
<p>Both subs sometimes require that you briefly crank the volume a little
higher than you might like it, to wake them up. The amount of crankage
required “feels” really similar, like exactly the same.
Both stay on for a few minutes after the music stops, so you usually only
have to do this once per evening.</p>
<p>So I suspect that the Thunder actually includes
some Velodyne technology. The cabinetry is distinctively Totem, and I
assume they’ve done some work on the drivers.
This wouldn’t be surprising, there’s lots of rebranding and
rebadging that goes on in the high-end world. Among other things, a subwoofer
has to include an amplifier, and Totem doesn’t make those—their core
competence is drivers and cabinets—so it would make sense for them to have
outsourced that.</p>
<h2 id='p-11'>Smiles</h2>
<p>Anyhow, this has been a successful little project; if you’re a music lover,
consider giving audiophilia a try. It’s less expensive than gambling,
substance abuse, or philandering, and should thus rank pretty low among the
vices.
Now I’m wondering where to go to get sand and lead shot, suitable for
ballasting the Forests. I’ll report on how it goes.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/02/Meta-Gartner'>
<title>The Analysts and the Elephant</title>
<link href='Meta-Gartner' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/02/Meta-Gartner</id>
<published>2006-03-02T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-02T22:51:30-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business/Marketing' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Marketing' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>In recent weeks there’s been a lot of talk about the role of analyst firms. Let’s be honest; the way the business works, pretty much nobody <em>likes</em> these organizations, but many (including me) think they’re necessary, and since Gartner is closing in on a billion dollars a year of revenue, they’re obviously selling something that people will buy. Herewith a survey of the discussion, some personal anecdotes about the relationships between vendors and analysts, and some thoughts on the future.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>In recent weeks there’s been a lot of talk about the role of analyst
firms.
Let’s be honest; the way the business works, pretty much nobody <em>likes</em>
these organizations, but many (including me) think they’re necessary, and since
Gartner is closing in on a billion dollars a year of revenue, they’re
obviously selling something that people will buy.
Herewith a survey of the discussion, some personal anecdotes about the
relationships between vendors and analysts, and some thoughts on the
future.</p>
<p>What happened was, earlier in February there was a fairly hard-edged
<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=178601879">story
in Information Week</a>, highlighting “the appearance of a conflict of interest”.
Then in mid-month, The Register gave
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/17/itanic_oracle_idc/">a pretty
severe thrashing</a> to an IDC Itanium market study.
That day, in a footnote to
<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan">his Ning post</a> (search
down for “register”), Jonathan Schwartz pointed to both those pieces,
remarking “it'd probably help their credibility if they, like the financial
analyst community, started disclosing revenues they receive from the vendors
they cover”.
Strong stuff.
Finally, James Governor wrote a big, intense piece entitled
<a href="http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001320.html">Why Open
Source Analysis Will Grow: Learning from The Sumerians</a> saying, among other
things, “Gartner is like a mainframe in 1979. Ripe for deconstruction.”
(Oh, and relatedly, I recently ran across the quite decent
<a href="http://www.bloglines.com/blog/GartnerWatch">Gartner Watch</a> blog.)</p>
<p>But it occurs to me that none of these pieces come right out and point to
the elephant in the room. Here it is:</p>
<h2 id='p-2'>Are Analysts Corrupt?</h2>
<p>It is believed by many in the industry that if you’re
a vendor and become the customer of one of these companies, then they’ll say
nice things about you. The more money you give them, the story goes, the
nicer the things you’ll say.</p>
<p>How do I know people believe this?
Because when I was a bright young entrepreneur doing
my first start-up, that’s what the grizzled industry veterans told me; and
they weren’t subtle: “You gotta sign up with Jupiter or Meta or someone and
pay them big bucks to advise you, more than you think you can afford, then
they’ll write reports saying you’re great, which nobody actually reads, but
that’s OK, you can hand them out at sales calls and prospects will be
impressed”.</p>
<p>Well, I have some personal experience. On three different occasions
I got to make the call as to whether a startup signed up with an
analyst firm.
Twice, I decided it was too expensive. Once, I did it because my VCs
told me I had to.</p>
<p>The two times I refused to sign up, I managed to get us covered and
mentioned favorably in the analyst white-papers anyhow. In the third case, we
paid a whole lot of money, didn’t get much useful advice, and the analysis
they wrote was lame.</p>
<p>So my personal experience would suggest that corruption at least isn’t
universal, and furthermore, to the extent that it exists, it doesn’t work very
well.</p>
<p>I will say that I have seen analyst white-papers
with billows of glowing prose about companies that I knew
pretty well and was convinced were obvious no-hopers.
I don’t know if that coverage was bought and paid for, but I wouldn’t be that
shocked if that was the story.
On the other hand, I’ve been wrong, have written companies off as obvious
bozos, then they’ve gone on to fame and fortune.</p>
<p>The perception of corruption, whether it’s true or not, hasn’t gone away.
Shortly after I joined Sun, I was trying to figure out why large parts of the
industry seemed hell-bent on re-creating CORBA, only more complex and less
efficient, under the WS-* banner. One senior technology strategist, not from
Sun, told me “Obvious! It’s because IBM and Microsoft paid the analysts
megabucks, <em>megabucks I tell you</em>, to go out and tell everyone that
this was where the future was, and anyone who wasn’t going that way was dog
meat.” Mind you, he’d had a few beers. But that’s not the only time I’ve heard
that particular suggestion.</p>
<h2 id='p-1'>What Do I Think?</h2>
<p>I really don’t know. The one time I did sign up with an analyst firm, it
was made clear that the package did include writing about us. They didn’t
say, and I didn’t ask, how much we could influence what they wrote.
I do believe that there is the <em>potential</em> for corruption, and that
every group of ten people or more contains someone corruptible.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I know analysts, and the ones that I know are by and
large pretty smart and pretty nice and hard-working and in my direct personal
experience, they’ve given me good coverage when I deserved it, and ignored me
when my story was weak.</p>
<p>Also: <em>Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by
stupidity</em>, and I mean collective stupidity.
Our profession has a history of galloping <i>en masse</i> off
in really bad directions (Ada, AI, OODBMS, there are more examples).
So you don’t have to believe in mass corruption even if you think, as I do,
that the analysts are mostly wrong about WS-*.</p>
<h2 id='p-4'>It’s a Problem</h2>
<p>It’s a problem for the analysts, and their customers, and for the industry,
that there’s this elephant in the room.
Because I totally believe that we need analysts. I know for a
fact that there are those who read people like me and
<a href="http://pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/">Don Box</a> and
<a href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog.jspa?blog=384">Bob Sutor</a>
and use what we say about Java or messaging stacks or ODF as serious
business input.
But dammit, we’re vendors, our paychecks depend on selling you expensive stuff!
At least with us, our hearts are on our sleeves and the conflict of interest is
screamingly obvious.</p>
<p>It seems that in a rational world, there’d be a place for professional
intermediaries; someone who has a
non-tech business to run doesn’t really have time to
drill down on whether crazies like me who are dissing WS-* are right or wrong.
They should be able to outsource that research. (By the way, no analyst from
a mainstream firm has ever raised the WS-* issue with me, which seems
a little weird).</p>
<p>If the analysts were paid entirely by technology <em>buyers</em>, the
elephant would just go away; but that doesn’t seem likely.
No, I don’t know the solution, but now at least you know about the large
invisible object in the room with peanuts on its breath, the one that
the people writing about the analyst industry are dancing around.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/01/Elena-Again'>
<title>Elena</title>
<link href='Elena-Again' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/01/Elena-Again</id>
<published>2006-03-01T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-02T00:31:09-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/People' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='People' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Last week I wrote
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/23/Remembering-Elena">love your
children</a>, pointing to a terribly sad story. Daniel, the
father of the little girl who died, has been writing
<a href="http://dearelena.wordpress.com/">extraordinary,
gut-wrenching stuff</a> since then, but not without splashes of sunshine.
I’ve been reading it and meaning to write here again saying “Read this!” and
then today Daniel reached out of the computer and
<a href="http://dearelena.wordpress.com/2006/03/01/pillow-pictures/">touched
me</a> and I just lost it for a while there this afternoon.
I may be emotionally wrecked but I can’t help thinking: TV can’t do
this. Newspapers can’t do this. Magazines can’t do this. This is sorrow and
grace shared with the world: doesn’t matter who reads it,
because what matters is that
he wrote it. Elena’s short story may well live, insofar as stories do,
forever.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/01/Free-Computers'>
<title>Free Computers (ouch!)</title>
<link href='Free-Computers' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/01/Free-Computers</id>
<published>2006-03-01T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-01T16:15:13-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Sun' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Sun' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business/Marketing' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Marketing' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>If you follow Jonathan Schwartz, you will have observed a
<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan?entry=niagara_free_trial_update">little flurry
around our offer</a> of free-trial (and maybe free-for-keeps) T2000 servers.
If you read the comments, it’s become apparent that our systems for supporting
this kind of marketing promotion, uh, need some work.
I’m really glad that Jonathan did this, because I know from bitter experience
how bad we are at offering hardware freebies, and this will force us to fix
it.
Particularly right at the
moment, it seems to me a no-brainer that scattering a few of our Opteron
and Niagara boxes in the direction of some worthy OSS projects and startup
companies would be about the most cost-effective marketing imaginable.
On lots of occasions I’ve gone running excitedly to the product groups saying
“Hey, it would be really great if we could get XXX a server to try out!” and
the reaction is along the lines of “Well yeah, but how would we do that?”
It turns out that when you’re a big public company, if you have a defined
process in place for doing something, it’s easy and efficient, and if you
don’t, you’re in SNAFU territory.
Lots of other good stuff in those comments too, check them out.
In particular, I happen to know that Wikipedia already has one of
the free-trial T2000 boxes, and that’s a <em>very</em> interesting
application, so we’re going to work with them see how fast we can make it
run on that box. Sun is full of Wikipedia fans.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/03/01/Alex-Waterhouse-Hayward'>
<title>Picture of a Switchblade</title>
<link href='Alex-Waterhouse-Hayward' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/03/01/Alex-Waterhouse-Hayward</id>
<published>2006-03-01T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-03-01T15:33:23-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Photos' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Photos' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Life Online/People' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Life Online' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='People' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>My favorite photographer,
<a href="http://alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/blog.html">Alex
Waterhouse-Hayward</a>, has launched a blog, and very beautiful it is.
Alex is a writer, too; consider
<a href="http://www.alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/2006/03/nicols-guilln-and-switchblade.html">Nicolás Guillén and the Switchblade</a>,
from whence: <i>“You will need this sevillana (switchblade) and so that it will
open swiftly I am giving you this little bottle of whale oil. Whale oil is the
best... ”</i></p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/28/Paul-on-EFF-EMail-Atom'>
<title>On the EFF, Email, and Syndication</title>
<link href='Paul-on-EFF-EMail-Atom' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/28/Paul-on-EFF-EMail-Atom</id>
<published>2006-02-28T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-28T20:39:56-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Internet' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Internet' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business/Internet' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Business' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Paul Hoffman’s
<a href="http://lookit.typepad.com/lookit/2006/02/paul_quoting_pa.html">The future of some email may not use email</a>
is a short but closely-argued piece which is fairly harsh to both AOL and the
EFF, and says smart things about email and syndication. Worth a read.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/28/iPod-Hi-Fi'>
<title>Hi-Fi?</title>
<link href='iPod-Hi-Fi' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/28/iPod-Hi-Fi</id>
<published>2006-02-28T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-28T17:45:35-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Audio' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Audio' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>I gather that on stage today, Mr. Jobs freely flung about the word
“audiophile” while pitching the new
<a href="http://www.apple.com/ipodhifi/">iPod Hi-Fi</a>.
Well, I’m one of those: wrote for the mags, have gear from obscure British
manufacturers, turn off a fridge thirty feet away to listen. I’ll look
forward to giving the Hi-Fi a listen. It seems fantastically dubious that
something 43 cm wide, with a listed bass floor of 53Hz (the bottom string
on a bass is 42Hz), weighing 6.6kg, and costing $349, could actually produce
“audiophile” sound. But you know, it’s not impossible; if they design for
truth and accuracy as opposed to fake-bass thump and scary volume, it could
turn out to be pretty useful.
In which case, it’d be a complete waste to play your average
iTunes-store-sourced lo-rez lossy-compressed MP3 through it.
But you <em>can</em> get audiophile sound out of your iPod, and for quite a
bit less than $349.
Go out and buy one of the good in-ear headphones from Etymotics or one of
their competitors (I use the Shure 3C) and, most important of all, get your
music off CDs and use lossless compression. The D/A in an iPod is
really not bad at all; if you send all of the music through it and play it
through first-class transducers, you’ll be happy.
(By the way, is it just me or is this thing butt-ugly?)</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/27/Three-ongoing-Years'>
<title>Thirty-six ongoing Months</title>
<link href='Three-ongoing-Years' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/27/Three-ongoing-Years</id>
<published>2006-02-27T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-27T12:48:03-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Feb. 27, 2003 saw the
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2003/02/27/Hello">Hello world</a> post here at
<span class='o'>ongoing</span>.
Three years? Seems like thirty. This, when I post it, will be fragment number
one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two. I’d calculate the word-count, but
that would take some real work, and my time in front of a computer is full,
full with things I want to work
on and <span class='o'>ongoing</span> fragments I want to write.
Thanks, 1,762 thanks, for reading, and to my co-workers and family,
especially <a href="http://www.laurenwood.org/anyway/">Lauren</a>, thanks for
putting up with the side-effects.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/27/Pale-Sun-Crescent-Moon'>
<title>5✭♫: Pale Sun, Crescent Moon</title>
<link href='Pale-Sun-Crescent-Moon' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/27/Pale-Sun-Crescent-Moon</id>
<published>2006-02-27T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-27T00:52:19-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Music/Recordings' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Music' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Recordings' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Arts/Music/5 Stars' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='5 Stars' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Three tracks from this 1993 album by the <a href='http://www.cowboyjunkies.com/'>Cowboy Junkies</a> earned five stars, pretty good for pop music. Plus there’s one from <cite>The Trinity Sessions</cite>, but let’s leave that for later. There are a lot of Cowboy Junkies albums, and they’re all good as far as I know; I find myself ashamed that I haven’t bought any for a decade or so, so I’ll fix that Real Soon Now. Read on for an appreciation of good songs, good singing, good playing, and good words. <i>(“5✭♫” series introduction <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music'>here</a>; with <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music#p-1'>an explanation</a> of why the title may look broken.)</i></div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Three tracks from this 1993 album by the
<a href="http://www.cowboyjunkies.com/">Cowboy Junkies</a> earned five stars,
pretty good for pop music.
Plus there’s one from <cite>The Trinity Sessions</cite>, but let’s leave that
for later.
There are a lot of Cowboy Junkies albums, and they’re all good as far as I
know; I find myself ashamed that I haven’t bought any for a decade or so, so
I’ll fix that Real Soon Now. Read on for an appreciation of good songs, good
singing, good playing, and good words.
<i>(“5✭♫” series introduction <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music">here</a>;
with <a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/01/23/5-Star-Music#p-1">an
explanation</a> of why the title may look broken.)</i></p>
<h2 id='p-1'>The Context</h2><p>Some lyrics:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>I heard a man in a crisis falls back on what he knows
best<br/>
a murderer to murder, a thief to theft<br/>
and I don’t want you to think that this is some kind of deathbed confession<br/>
but running’s what I do, when put to the test.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>That’s from <cite>First Recollection</cite>, one of those five-star tracks,
and establishes that the CJs’
music tends to be kind of sad and has lyrics that are worth listening
to.</p>
<p>I remember like yesterday when they suddenly got noticed in 1988, with
<cite>The Trinity Sessions</cite>, a record that all of a
sudden had a bunch of blues lovers, romantics, and
audiophiles pointing in the same direction.</p>
<p>I listened to that CD more than anybody ought to listen to anything, but
how could you not? The songs had wonderful tunes and naked heart-to-heart
lyrics sung beautifully with a ton of feeling. And masterful playing,
especially that moaning, snarling guitar. Plus incredibly clear, honest,
detailed, caressing audiophile sound.</p>
<p>Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote in 1990 or so for
<a href="http://www.theabsolutesound.com/">The Absolute Sound</a>, the
ultimate obsessive high-end audio magazine. I had a short-lived gig with
them around then, writing about live music, the ideal which all that
high-priced hardware usually miserably fails to capture.
The piece was about a concert (in 1991 I think) at the
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Place#Former_attractions_and_venues">Ontario Place forum</a>,
which Wikipedia tells me no longer exists.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Cowboy Junkies are an odd case.
Their approach, in the beginning, was risky in the extreme—minimal miking, sad
songs played slow.
But so many people liked it that it's become a straitjacket for the band,
one they've struggled with only limited success to escape from.
Aside from the lovely <cite>Trinity Sessions</cite>, their only
other really memorable record is the first, <cite>Whites Off Earth
Now</cite>.</p>
<p>I hadn't seen the CJs before, and I found it pretty
safe, nothing to write home about.
This may seem picky—the songs were beautiful, Margo Timmins’
voice could melt stone, the band is really tight, the whole evening was
very pleasant.
And only pleasant, until they played <cite>Sweet Jane</cite>.
I've always had a soft spot for that tune, and on that
night, for that song, somehow it all got serious.
The band made space between the notes for deep wells of silence.
Margo sounded like her heart <em>would</em> break.
Unusually for her, she reached back for more, and then for
more again, on the wordless vocal bridge—she and the audience
seemed at one, deeply moved.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Margo” is
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Timmins">Margo Timmins</a>, who
sings and has two brothers in the band.
Of course, they proved me wrong by making lots of great records after
that.</p>
<img src="Pale-Sun-Crescent-Moon.png" class="inline" alt="Pale Sun, Crescent Moon, by the Cowboy Junkies" />
<h2 id='p-2'>The Music</h2>
<p>All the songs on this record are good. I’ve written about
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2003/01/31/Cold%20Tea%20Blues">Cold Tea Blues</a>,
one of the earliest pieces here at <span class='o'>ongoing</span>.
<cite>First Recollection</cite> has those scary lyrics, and behind Margo’s
heavenly melodies, some orchestral guitar rumble that any hair-band axeman
would be proud of if he could play them, which most couldn’t.
<cite>Ring on the Sill</cite> has some melodic turns that would be a Top
Forty hit in the hands of any number of manufactured-for-the-season
<i>idoru</i>, but then goes on to rip up your heartstrings in some other
directions.
<cite>Pale Sun</cite> is a lament about the Deep Southwest and its rusting
cars and crumbling, betrayed, aboriginal people; but there’s a note of hope in
the lovely melody and the words too.</p>
<p>Then there’s <cite>Floorboard Blues</cite>, which probably deserves five
stars for evoking a fear I’ve heard in the conversation of a hundred different
women, but has a happy ending, and along the way says:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>He’ll be slicing tiny crescents from your heart<br/>
without laying that sweaty palm on your cheek.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>And did I mention that the electric guitar playing is outstanding?
And the sound
quality is about as good as there is? If you listen to this record (or any of
the band’s really) on a high-end system, it will put you in danger of
developing a really expensive habit.</p>
<h2 id='p-3'>Sampling It</h2>
<p>It’s everywhere. In this case, I feel that it would be morally OK for me
to recommend that you go pirate a few of the tracks, because if you have any
musical taste or ethics, you’re going to end up buying a few discs. So why
not save time and just go pick up <cite>Pale Sun, Crescent Moon</cite>?
You’ll like it.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/26/Olympics'>
<title>Olympics Out</title>
<link href='Olympics' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/26/Olympics</id>
<published>2006-02-26T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-26T18:00:52-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Sports' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Sports' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>I sure enjoyed them; ski-ing and bobsledding and, well, anything run
against the clock gets old pretty fast, but the hockey and curling and
speed-skating are good entertainment, especially that short-track stuff.
Our women hockey players were hot stuff; there was the cutest picture
of big star Hayley Wickenheiser with her gold medal looped around the neck
of her little kid; how come you never see pictures of the men like that?
I thought the opening and closing ceremonies both made excellent TV,
even though the over-wrought Renaissance costume-drama bits
really didn’t do much for me.
I thought the short Vancouver segment at the closing hit the
spot OK; there are probably a hundred million people now who think Canada is
native elders, circus acrobats, and Avril Lavigne. You could do worse, I
suppose. But you have
to hand it to Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, a quadriplegic, who pulled off a
nice extended wave of the big Olympic flag with some deft wheelchair
rotations.
Watch for me in the crowd in 2010.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/26/Sass-Blog'>
<title>Storytelling</title>
<link href='Sass-Blog' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/26/Sass-Blog</id>
<published>2006-02-26T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-26T11:07:23-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World/Life Online' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='The World' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Life Online' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Recently,
<a href="http://pomosprachspielen.blogspot.com/">Postmodern Sass</a> wrote
<a href="http://pomosprachspielen.blogspot.com/2006/02/ich-bin-kein-blogger.html">Ich bin kein Blogger</a>,
calling out an argument that there is no such thing as blogging.
I think the evidence is against her, but then again, Sass herself
has been doing something with the form that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Her blog is filled with extended, interlinked, multi-part stories; nothing new
about that. But every time she posts a story, she goes back to the previous
episode and updates it to add an “in the next chapter...” link. Latch onto a
few of the stories in her
<a href="http://pomosprachspielen.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_pomosprachspielen_archive.html">Year
One Archives</a> and see how they run backward and forward.
I think this is
a good idea and quite a few of the multi-part blog narratives out there,
including some of my own series, would have benefited from richer
linkage.</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/25/NetBeans-Annoyances'>
<title>NetBeans RFEs</title>
<link href='NetBeans-Annoyances' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/25/NetBeans-Annoyances</id>
<published>2006-02-25T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-25T15:45:41-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Coding/Java' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Coding' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Java' />
<summary type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>What happened was, I got coder’s block; facing an icky part of my Sigrid/Zeppelin side-project, I procrastinated for weeks because all of a sudden everything else became more interesting. Well, I’m supposed to talk about it at <a href='http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/'>Java One</a> and I’ve refactored large parts of it to the point where it doesn’t work any more. So I’ve increasingly been spending my time slaving over a hot NetBeans 5.0. There is absolutely no better way to find out the truth about software than actually using it to get real work done. Note: I’m doing all-POJO low-level infrastructure, so I don’t know the first thing about JSF’s and Layouts and Web Services and all that stuff. Having said that, for what I’m doing, NB5.0 is <em>fucking good software</em>. Among other things, it’s really really fast on my PowerBook, and <a href='http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001324.html'>speed is a feature</a> (although to get the most out of it you need a <a href='/ongoing/When/200x/2005/06/02/Big-Screen-NetBeans'>bigger screen</a>). Yes, the Ultra 20 is faster on compiles, but I’m having trouble getting it on VPN so it can talk to CVS, and for interactive on-screen work, the difference isn’t significant. Anyhow, I’m keeping a running RFE list; for those not in the software biz, that stands for Request For Enhancement; they arise when a customer says “Your stupid software is broken, it should do X” and some hard-ass manager with his eye on the ship date says “That’s not a bug, it’s an RFE.” If I were a Good NetBeans Citizen I would go find the right web forms and submit bugs and RFEs and so on, and maybe I will. But right now I’m in a hurry and (muahahaha) <em>I’m a blogger!</em> So I’ll just use this post as a place to track ’em. The rest of this is only of interest to IDE interface geeks and NetBeans phanatics.</div></summary>
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>What happened was, I got coder’s block; facing an icky part of my
Sigrid/Zeppelin side-project, I procrastinated for weeks
because all of a sudden everything else became more interesting. Well, I’m
supposed to talk about it at
<a href="http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/">Java One</a> and I’ve refactored
large parts of it to
the point where it doesn’t work any more. So I’ve increasingly been spending
my time slaving over a hot NetBeans 5.0. There is absolutely no
better way to find out the truth about software than actually using it to get
real work done. Note: I’m doing all-POJO low-level infrastructure, so I don’t
know the first thing about JSF’s and Layouts and Web Services and all that
stuff. Having said that, for what I’m doing, NB5.0 is <em>fucking good
software</em>. Among other things, it’s really really fast on my PowerBook,
and
<a href="http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001324.html">speed is a
feature</a> (although to get the most out of it you need a
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2005/06/02/Big-Screen-NetBeans">bigger
screen</a>).
Yes, the Ultra 20 is faster on compiles, but I’m having trouble getting it on
VPN so it can talk to CVS, and for interactive on-screen work, the difference
isn’t significant.
Anyhow, I’m keeping a running RFE list; for those not in the
software biz, that stands for Request For Enhancement; they arise when a
customer says “Your stupid software is broken, it should do X” and some
hard-ass manager with his eye on the ship date says “That’s not a bug, it’s an RFE.”
If I were a Good
NetBeans Citizen I would go find the right web forms and submit bugs and
RFEs and so on, and maybe I will. But right now I’m in a hurry and
(muahahaha) <em>I’m a blogger!</em> So I’ll just use this post as a place to
track ’em.
The rest of this is only of interest to IDE interface geeks and NetBeans
phanatics.</p>
<h3 id='p-2'>No Green JUnit Bar</h3>
<p>I’m quite sure that 40 years from now I’ll be sitting in an old-folks’ home
in a warm climate somewhere, sipping a gin-and-tonic and whining about how
NetBeans still doesn’t do the green bar.</p>
<h3 id='p-3'>Keymapping</h3>
<p>Near as I can tell, you can map pretty well anything NetBeans does to
pretty well any key.
Suppose, just for example, that I wanted to map “Move Down” to control-N (yes,
I know about the Emacs keymappings, but I don’t want that, I just want a bit
of Emacs salt-and-pepper on the defaults). You get a screen that looks like
this:</p>
<img src="Keymap.png" alt="NetBeans keymap customization dialogue" />
<p>Where, do you suppose, you might find “Move Down” in here? Good luck,
you’ll need it.
I always end up going through all the sub-menus one by one by one, swearing
louder and louder; it turns out that in this case, what I’m looking for is
under “Other” and rejoices in the name “Insertion Point Down”.
Feh. I’m not sure what the solution is.</p>
<h3 id='p-4'>Find Usages</h3>
<p>You’ve got your cursor in some method declaration and you hit the key for
“Find Usages”. Does it go and find the usages? No, it does not; it puts up a
dialogue like this:</p>
<img src="FindUsages.png" alt="NetBeans 'Find Usages' dialogue" />
<p>Surely “Search in Comments” is a preference? And why a tick-box for Find
Usages when I’ve just said that’s what I want to do? This dialogue
should be junked, just go and find the damn usages already.</p>
<h3 id='p-5'>Auto-Completion</h3>
<p>I haven’t used Eclipse or Idea or Visual Studio recently, so I’m not really
aware of the competitive standards, but NetBeans’ auto-complete feels really
excellent to me, maybe because the 5.0 version is better than the 4.* version
which was better than the 3.6 version where I started. It usually gives me
more or less exactly what I need.
Having said that, there’s one enhancement I’d like and one egregious botch
that needs fixing.</p>
<p>The enhancement is this: sometimes the suggestion list is too long, and I’d
like it to be shorter. Most of the time, I find that I’m calling methods from
the package I’m in, or the project I’m in, or one of the projects I have
open. Let’s call those methods “Local methods”. How about, when I type
auto-complete, all it suggests are local methods; and if I want the whole list
including java.foo.bar.baz.*, I hit the auto-complete key
<em>again</em>; of course, if there’s nothing local to suggest when I hit
auto-complete the first time, it could go to the big list.</p>
<p>Here’s the botch: suppose I type<br/>
<code>MessageBuilder mb = new</code><br/>
and hit the auto-complete key. NetBeans says “No suggestions”. Do ya think I
might just possibly want a <code>new MessageBuilder()</code>, just maybe?
If I take it a few more keys:<br/>
<code>MessageBuilder mb = new Message</code><br/>
the auto-complete shows me everything in the bloody Java universe that begins
with <code>Message</code>, of which there’s quite a bit. There’s even quite a
bit that begins with <code>MessageB</code>.
The right thing to do is obvious, I’d think.</p>
<h3 id='p-1'>Brackets and Semicolons</h3>
<p>Suppose I type:<br/>
<code>foo = frob(new Bar(3 + baz(27</code><br/>
NetBeans will helpfully fill in the end-brackets so what I see on the screen
is:<br/>
<code>foo = frob(new Bar(3 + baz(27)))</code><br/>
with my cursor after the 27. Then if I type ‘;’ NetBeans hops over the
closing braces before inserting it and I’m left with a nicely-completed
statement.</p>
<p>Now, if I type
<code>foo = frob(new Bar(3 + baz(xyzzy[27</code><br/>
the same thing happens, NetBeans shows me<br/>
<code>foo = frob(new Bar(3 + baz(xyzzy[27])))</code><br/>
<em>But</em>, if I now type ‘;’ it gets left inside the square brackets,
which are treated differently from round brackets. Boo. Hiss.</p>
<h3 id='p-6'>Quotes in Comments</h3>
<p>When you type a single or double quote, NetBeans helpfully puts in two,
just like it does with brackets.
<i>Even when you’re in a comment.</i> So if you’re writing the Javadocs and
want to
be helpful and say “Don’t call this unless...”, well you can figure it out.
This one may just be a buglet, because I think it didn’t used to do this.</p>
<h2 id='p-8'>Chatty</h2>
<p>When I hit F9 for “compile this file” I see:</p>
<pre><code>init:
deps-jar:
init:
deps-jar:
compile:
<span style="color:red">To run this application from the command line without Ant, try:
java -jar "/Users/twbray/dev/NetBeans_projects/Sigrid/dist/Sigrid.jar"</span>
jar:
init:
deps-jar:
compile:
jar:
Compiling 1 source file to /Users/twbray/dev/NetBeans_projects/Zeppelin/build/classes
compile-single:
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 1 second)</code></pre>
<p>Is all that really necessary?</p>
</div></content></entry>
<entry xml:base='When/200x/2006/02/25/Jemplate'>
<title>Jemplate</title>
<link href='Jemplate' />
<id>http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/25/Jemplate</id>
<published>2006-02-25T12:00:00-08:00</published>
<updated>2006-02-25T14:48:52-08:00</updated>
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology/Web' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Technology' />
<category scheme='http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/What/' term='Web' />
<content type='xhtml'><div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<p>Someone named “Ingy döt Net” (who turns out formerly to have been Brian
Ingerson of Perl and YAML fame)
wrote me in response to that
<a href="/ongoing/When/200x/2006/02/14/AJAX-Performance">AJAX Upside</a>
piece, pointing to
<a href="http://blog.ingy.net/2006/02/jemplate_a_template_toolkit_fo.html">Jemplate — A Template Toolkit for Javascript</a>.
It looks profoundly clever.
Hold on... Ingy is
<a href="http://blog.ingy.net/2005/11/the_ingy_formerly_known_as_bri.html">legally
changing his name to his domain name</a>. Well, OK then.
<i>[Update: Jeremy Dunk writes to point at the
<a href="http://trimpath.com/project/wiki/JavaScriptTemplates">TrimPath
JavaScript Templates engine</a>].</i></p>
</div></content></entry>
</feed>