Xagronaut

I sometimes wonder what the ultimate culmination of all of these seemingly disparate open source technologies.  While that remains to be seen, here is yet another instance of two (actually three) popular open source technologies coming together.

‘pyperl’ is an extension module that bridges the gap between Perl and Python. It allows Python code to invoke Perl code and operate directly on Perl data and permits Perl code to do the same to Python code and data. This provides for almost seamless integration between the languages and thereby greatly expands the library of modules available to each of the languages.

ActiveState and Digital initially developed the pyperl extension Creations as the foundation for supporting Perl in the Zope application server.

[O'Reilly]

I certainly haven’t researched these (PyPerl, Zoperl) very much, but they have at least made my open source mental watchlist.

Here’s a page with quite a few promising tutorials on Radio UserLand, including a bit on how to use the staticSites tool to build a static website.

Evidently there is a technique in which a small piece of Javascript is embedded in a hyperlink on a webpage.  The hyperlink can be dragged onto the toolbar of the browser and executed later.

The cool thing is that the bookmarklet has access to the HTML DOM of the document currently in the browser and can modify or read the contents of the document.  The hyperlink Javascript does not have to be huge.  It can append the current document’s DOM with a reference to a script stored on a server that can be much longer and more sophisticated.

I’ve wanted a way to blog pages I find without always needing to type up all of the stuff that goes around it.  This way I could grab the page title, address, and maybe some metadata as well.  Or how about harvesting the hyperlinks on someone’s blog to analyze the intersection with others’?  You could almost begin to draw some conclusions about interests and community based on who links to who.  (Not that I’m smart enough to pull code like that off.  I’ve never studied AI algorithms, so I’d be reinventing the square wheel, I’m sure.)

Jon Udell gives a great example of a bookmarklet that allows him to request books that he finds on Amazon from his local library.  Now that’s integration!  The concept of an agent connecting two diverse entities is called an intermediary.

Paul Thurott many aspects of the upcoming Windows release, including a database-based file system???  That sounds a little far out for my taste.  Just because you can…

It just seems like too much of a paradigm shift without enough justification.  If what we’ve been doing all this time was so wrong, then why did they wait until now to do something about it.

If you use an email program capable of using rules to filter your messages (like MS Outlook), AND you use Yahoo! Mail’s Bulk Mail (read “spam”) feature, you can set up a rule that handles Yahoo! spam.

When Yahoo! Mail filters messages into your Bulk Mail folder, it adds a header to the message.  If you set up a rule that looks for special header text of “X-YahooFilteredBulk” you can route your Yahoo! Bulk Mail to your own local Bulk Mail folder.  At least, you know in advance it’s probably spam, and it clears out your regular Inbox to some degree.

I found this blurb about an open source weblogging software package by linking from connexions.  Anyway, it’s new to me.

What is Greymatter?

Greymatter is the original opensource weblogging and journal software. With fully-integrated comments, searching, file uploading and image handling, completely customisable output through dozens of templates and variables, multiple author support, and many other features—while having perhaps the simplest installation process and easiest-to-use interface of any program offering this level of functionality—Greymatter permanently raised the bar for weblogging and journaling, and it remains the program of choice for tens of thousands of people around the world.

Thanks to Franklin Covey for the “hot tip” on Easy Byte’s RTF-2-HTML control.  It is included with their PlanPlus product in the Program Files area.  So far, I am really enjoying the PlanPlus product, but I have this nagging question about where my data is stored, and if I can get access to it programmatically to integrate it with other data sources.

Blogging is cool, and journaling is cool, but I need a catch-all mobile solution that allows me to record things and decide later whether they are for public blog consumption or not.  It also needs to synchronize with the desktop and provide a unified access point (hopefully a web interface).

I found an interesting open source project that fills a hole in the Microsoft strategy for MSDE.  It’s a third-party open source web application that enables much of the same functionality that comes with SQL Server Enterprise Manager.  It is available in C# and VB.NET on the ASP.NET Enterprise Manager page at SourceForge.