Xagronaut

I’m testing a variation of this centralized CSS technique for Radio Userland posted by Bryan Bell. The way I’m using this technique is to embed the code for the blogs4God.com voting form.

I was wrong (not any): Basically, any “include” you want to put in a page can be done by means of creating a text file containing the desired include in the root of the affected area (in a category folder or the root of the entire site). The file must start with a pound sign and end (I think, but maybe not) in a “.txt” extension. Then you can refer to it by name in any template “downstream” from the folder that contains the file. Just reference it in the “percent brackets,” in my case <% b4gvote %>, and re-render all affected pages. If this works (see Updates), I will begin doing a lot of “micro-content” this way. I think inline UserTalk script is allowed too, but I’ll have to veryify that.

By the way, I think the choice of using the “#” pound sign to prevent rendering files is pretty cool and clever. Specifically because any incoming request for that file will be interpreted as a named anchor in the default document (if any) for the containing folder or directory. So effectively, “www.xagronaut.com/#b4gvote.txt” is interpreted as “www.xagronaut.com/index.html#b4gvote.txt” which does not exist. So the “hidden” files would never be served up. I wonder though, if the “%” syntax with the character code for the pound sign would retrieve it…

Fun.
Update: OK, maybe not so fun. I received this error when attempting the technique:

[Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "b4gvote" hasn't been defined.]

I’m trying again, this time with the major hack of literally what is described in the link above–using the name “cascadingStyleSheet”–it may not be as lovely a technique as I first thought, but I’ll withhold jugdment temporarily.

Update #2: Lame. Yep, that was exactly the problem. Once again, the case of the “hard-coded macro name” strikes. I encountered this first in my problem with the mail-from-aggregator feature in which the templates allow substitutions, but only of hard-coded tags. The administrative interface fools you into thinking that you can completely customize the format of the email. Wrong! While the “percent bracket” syntax is still used, it seems to have an entirely different effect than other references to macros. Booooo! Hissss!

I suppose that I could always opt for server-side includes (SSI) on my web server now that I am hosting my weblog. I wonder if Radio will leave those alone when it renders!
Update #3: More tweaks…

Instead of using the #cascadingStyleSheet.txt file, my research on category lists on a post led me to this link in which Mark Paschal mentioned “workspace.blog.categories”. The “workspace” part happens to be a writable area for the user’s whim. I ended up creating a “wp text” entry in this area called b4gvote that contained the text of the Blogs4God vote code. In my page template I then reference it as <% workspace.b4gvote %>. This did the trick, and I was able to stop using the other hack.

The good news is that you can use this technique for other purposes too–reusable micro content sections, etc. Insert sigh of relief here.

Mark Paschal has a weblog and a Radio Userland tool set available under a BSD license.

I tried saving a web archive version (*.MHT) of a Microsoft support/KB site. It did not work before, probably because they reworked their site design. I was not able to pin down what changed to fix it, but my earlier comments about the site being “broken” does not seem to still apply. However, when I saved the web page and viewed it from disk, some of the styles were not preserved. The fonts that are normally small (or should I say “x-small”) were obnoxiously “normal” size.

Here’s the comment I left on my earlier post.

Well, as of 12/1, I can save Microsoft KB/support articles in MHT format again. I don’t know what changed or when, but the problem seems to have been fixed. I submitted feedback via their content links, but received no reply. I can only suppose that they either “got around to it” or that enough people complained.

Lately I’ve been thinking about all of the data pieces that I would like to track if I had a good system. But then, my data is scattered throughout a bunch of segregated systems and stored in diverse formats.

What if I had one central system to pool all of that data and manipulate it? I think an object-based data environment that allows me to add metadata to objects would be ideal. Now the persistence question is there–how will this be stored on disk? But I’m still working on that.

My thought right now is that I can mirror objects in other systems (e.g., my Outlook contacts) while still attaching other metadata not supported by systems (or at least not easily).

The metadata and object structure would have to be very extensible, with a core flexible object model. XML provides a good framework for this, but I’m looking for something a little more virtual–expressible in XML of course, but not tied to it.

The topic of the Semantic Web entered my thoughts during this time. The easiest way to create the Semantic Web (especially with today’s hodge-podge Web) is not to require your average web page producer to learn special markup. Someone else can have that job!

No! The way to create the Semantic Web is to create vertical semantic applications that draws a stable community of users to a common schema by virtue of using the same client software. At say, 10, 100, 500, or 15000 users, you have a meaningful data schema for that application space.

Capitalism is great; competition is great. But the Semantic Web pines for standardization in the midst of choice. So a standard for trust in schema mappings must be devised. Trusted mappers sign their trusted maps and other parties (robots or real) trust the schema mappings in their own applications.

This allows applications and robots to “intuit” equivalence between schemas based on a system of trust. Tomorrow, anyone can create a brand new schema. And within their circle of trust, the semantics can be honored. Establish credibility with a major schema authority, and virtually everyone can trust your schema.

So here’s the sequence:

Vertical application leads to
A community of users that agree to
A common data schema (probably XML) which becomes
A trusted schema by a schema mapping authority who publishes
A public schema mapping which is
Trusted by the “mapping downstream”

So an exchange might go like this:
Client: Hey, Semantic Web source! Do you have any data that adheres to the Simpson Geneology schema?
SW: Well, not exactly, but I do see that one of my trusted schema mapping authorities believes that the National Science Foundation’s Geneology Lexicon contains some mappable elements in this location. Would you like to try there?
Client: Why yes, that would be fine. Oh, and since you trust the National Science Foundation’s Geneology Lexicon as mappable to the Simpson Geneology schema, I will add that to my list of trusted mappings because I trust you. And in the future, I will also include the NSFGL in my list of acceptable result formats for my next request. Thanks again.

Granted, this “conversation” is protocol talk over the wire and sever and cyberspace.

And another thing. In the world of schema trust, we won’t have a mega market giant like Verisign as the main schema mapping trust authority. Well, maybe we will, just de facto, but this will be very grass roots. I myself could choose to be a schema trust authority. Anyone who trusts me and authenticates my schemas (using PKI of course) can choose to also trust the mappings that I produce/author and/or trust.

So, my vision of the Semantic Web is not one gigantic standardized pool of data that follows good markup because everyone is speaking exactly the official vertical dialect for an application space. Rather, new application spaces pop up all the time. A software developer chooses to play nice by adhering to some standards that make the data created by the application usable by the Semantic Web. Vertical application communities evolve. Circles of trust form. Somebody releases an “open source” schema equivalence mapping. Everyone else trusts the mapping. The Semantic Web bots just skip along from stone to stone across to the other side of the river and back.

OK, I’m definitely tired right now, and I know I’m rambling, but you’ll have to forgive me. At least I’m posting again, right?

I have given some thought on how to prevent SW spam. Think about it. If all it takes is a special set of tags for a certain knowledge space, anyone can plug them in. You remember the META keyword tags right? So, now smutmongers can specifically target you when you’re looking for rare bird species.

So the whole “Google magic” might be needed in the SW space as well. Well, Tim (Berners-Lee), that’s my two cents for today.

NPR Content Via RSS Enclosures and Audible.

NPR and Audible Team Up To Provide Customized Audio To You Through Their New Weblog-enabled Affliate Service

[The Shifted Librarian]

My Thoughts:

The two items above ring true with hopes of mine in recent times.  But I must say, in the past two weeks, I started listening by chance, and I haven’t been able to change the station.

Yes, NPR has earned a preset on my radio, albeit the last FM preset I had open.  I find the news content, music coverage, and cultural insight incredibly stimulating.  I can definitely see the value in having that content available at will.  Cool!

The above two items also fit nicely into a growing trend in my own life and in the culture of aggregating a myriad of heterogenous content into one place for synthesis and presentation in the format.  It follows my definition of nerdvana: “If nirvana is the state of achieving ultimate knowledge (or something like that), then nerdvana is the state of organizing all of that knowledge in a seemless, integrated way on all of your electronic devices.”

Register online for DCMI 2003 and pre-conference workshops. “Supporting Communities of Discourse and Practice-Metadata Research & Applications” in Seattle, Washington (USA) 28 September-2 October 2003 will consist of conference, workshop, and tutorial tracks. The number of available participants in the Metadata Search and Metadata Primer pre-conference workshops is limited so register early! [OCLC Research]

I just emailed Jeff Young of OCLC with a list of questions related to OCLC’s research work in standards, metadata, and other topics.  He was very helpful in his responses.  I won’t quote him here (I didn’t ask him if could), but here are coulple of links to their research projects.  By the way, if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, they have an RDF Feed with announcements.

ALCME - The goal of ALCME is to create a set of open-source tools to seamlessly integrate the components needed to build a distributed library collection management system.
ACE - Ace is an OCLC Research project investigating centralized solutions to personal collection management.
PURL - The Persistent Universal Resource Locator project that provides long-term redirection services for web resources that move around.
Dublin Core - That famous set of XML elements that seems to be popping up just about everywhere these days from RSS feeds to RDF files.
A former coworker also told me some history about OCLC helping on ground-breaking work with a major browser manufacturer on the creation of the love/hate HTML frames.

Just in case I haven’t announced it before, I’m working on my own personal knowledge management “product”/system.  It has been a brainchild of mine for about seven years now in different forms.  Now, I’m more determined than ever to complete it in some fashion.  Every once in a while I lament my continual incompleteness on the project, swearing I’d use a similar system if it existed.  (Why reinvent the wheel, right?  I want to have a life, right?)

I have found a few systems that are very close and largely effective, but none with the feature set that I envisioned.  Additionally, with the newly emerging trends in weblogging, webservices, and other data sharing, the need for integration with other systems, products, and standards becomes abundantly clear.

I have been wondering whether or not to take the Lazy Web approach and just state my feature set for someone to discover and implement, but last time I checked, I don’t quite have the leverage of being a regular stopping-off point like some of the A-listers (yeah, I’m bitter remember?).  I’m not sure that the Lazy Web has any business trying to realize my dreams, and I’m not so sure I have any business “licensing” my dreams to the Lazy Web.  Ultimately, I think that I’m way more responsible for this God-given imagination than I care to admit.

The other question is, even if I do actually self-actualize on this particular dream, should I release it commercially or open source it?  I’ve seen way too many designs get polluted (IMHO) and drawn off course by a lack of vision.  I’m not so ready to see that happen to a fledgling idea by way of open sourcing it.  Granted, I can still release my own upgrades, but the real power comes in a cohesive mind and vision for the product.  I saw a quote that said something like, “You can’t perform a symphony without a team of people, but no team ever wrote a great symphony.”  (Or something like that. BTW, if you know the correct verbage and source of this comment, please leave a comment or click the email link.  I’d love to know.)

I’m not sure I have all of the experience to pull off the entire vision, but involving other people means some intelligent delegation and compromise.  That could be painful before the inception of the “product.”  On the other hand, that may be the only way to make this thing a reality.  Maybe it’s too big for just me.  Maybe that’s just one more reason it doesn’t happen.  Oh, and by the way, I do have a day job, a wife, and a house to worry about.  (Sorry honey, I didn’t mean anything by the order I listed those items, honest.)

I could sell the idea to an interested company, but I don’t have the confidence that I could sell them on the idea, or that they would truly enable me to drive the process and realize the true vision.  Then there’s venture capital and a business plan, but that sounds like a pipe dream to me.  And I can’t quit my dayjob for lots of reasons.  A book that seems to be helping with a better perspective on this problem is Free To Succeed: Designing the Life You Want in the New Economy by Barbara B. Reinhold.  I’ve found some practical advice in it, despite some of its pre-bust attitude (pre-September 11, pre-recession).  But I’m ever the optimist, I think.

I admire Dave Winer, Jeremy Allaire, Bill Gates and some others for actually taking ideas and making them a reality.  I always wondered how it was that these folks got to pick and choose and make their careers whatever they wanted.  The get paid to think and write about what they think.  Man, that sounds cool, but who am I?  Sorry, not trying to self-deprecate on purpose, just a habit.

I wondered what those guys have that I don’t.  I’ve got some decent experience.  I’ve got some great ideas and intuition.  I’m a great thinker.  I’ve wondered if a career with a research bent would suit me well.  In fact, that’s why I contacted Jeff Young.  I’m not sure that OCLC’s interest completely overlap my own, but it sure helps to get an inside viewpoint.  Thanks again, Jeff.

Here are some things that those guys do/did have:

• They’re not new kids on the block
• They (probably) have had the advantage of getting in early
• They demonstrated leadership (by following their own dreams and ideas)
• They were able to take risks and live with the consequences of failure
• They were/are in charge
• They are action-oriented (why not people who did something about their ideas)
• They had exposure
  They got measurable, material results (revenue, mind share, etc.)

Nope.  I definitely don’t have all of that.  Not yet.  I’m working on it.  In spite of myself.

Sometimes I hate being so vulnerable in print.  I consider retracting statements like these for fear of being misunderstood.  But isn’t there at least a certain amount of required vulnerability in the admission agreement for the world of blogging?  Oh, it’s probably not written down explicitly anywhere official, but deep down, isn’t every blogger exposing a part of himself/herself for the world to applaud or throw tomatoes?

‘Nuf said.

Take the fat out of your writing. Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge on tight writing.

…think clarity, relevance, sincerity, concision and transparency.

…always budget enough time for at least two editing passes. There is a lot less pressure to get it right the first time when you know you’ll have another crack at it.

…I highly recommend OmniOutliner) to compose and edit my emails. By never letting the text into my email client until it’s fully baked, I remove the temptation to just dash something off without reading and editing it, and I prevent myself from unleashing a nuclear flame while upset.

This has saved me from sending out a few messages I’d have regretted.

[The Job Blog]

TeamSite 0.1.0 [freshmeat.net]

A sports roster plug-in for the PHPWebSite content management system.  At first, I thought this was going to be a business-oriented plug-in.  But it’s not.  Oh, well, at least that reminded me about the PHPWebSite CMS.

Movable Type templates tutorials. It has been a few weeks since I’ve visited Mark Pilgrim’s blog, but it is always like Christmas when I do. Today’s gift was actually posted last week entitled Movable Type templates tutorial. As we begin to discuss using… [Heal Your Church Web Site]

To steal Dean’s metaphor, I have my Christmas presents delivered to my news aggregator several times a day.  I was thrilled at the relevance of this post to my current lines of thought.  Then I realized that I had reached a new milestone in blogging.  The blogs I read are about as close to a Vulcan mind meld as I will get.  I have finally tapped into the right blogs so that they are one or two steps ahead of what I need to know.

That’s the beauty of blogging.  You can connect with *someone* whose online musings echo what you are thinking.

Searching > RSS || Fagan Finder. (SOURCE:”seblogging”)-Yet another nice non technical RSS overview.
<quote>
This page is about using RSS, from a non-technical standpoint
</quote> [Roland Tanglao: KLogs]

Follow this link from Roland’s blog!  Great summary on RSS!