2009 Jun 10, 3:36
I've made an OpenSearchDescriptionToHTML XSLT that given an OpenSearch description file produces
HTML that describes that file, lets you install it, or search with it. For example, here's a Google OpenSearch description that uses my
OpenSearchDescriptionToHTML XSLT.
I had just created an OpenSearch description for WolframAlpha at work and was going about the process of adding another install link to my search provider
page so that I could install it. Thinking about it, I realized I could apply an XSLT to the OpenSearch description XML to produce the HTML automatically so I wouldn't have to modify additional
documents everytime I create and want to install a new OpenSearch description. While I was in there writing the XSLT I figure why not let the user try out searching with the OpenSearch description
file too. And lastly I made the XSLT apply to itself to produce HTML describing its own usage.
Incidentally, I added WolframAlpha at work to replace my FileInfo search provider for the purposes of searching for information about
particular Unicode characters. For instance, look at WolframAlpha's lovely output for this search for "Bopomofo zh".
technical xml wolframalpha opensearchdescriptiontohtml xslt opensearch 2009 Jun 1, 2:03Wow, read this without expectations of what its about. This is the second identity-theft/Internet/personal-relationships story I've read. It makes me think we need VeriSign to do cert verification
for personal relationships but then I must remind myself that this must not be very common...
via:swannman identity identity-theft story psychology web blog joey-devilla 2009 May 29, 9:13"Developed in the late 1960s by Dutch physicist J. R. J. van Asperen De Boer, infrared reflectography (IRR) is a technique used to look through the paint layers. ... Many paints will appear partially
or completely transparent while others, such as black, will absorb the infrared radiation and appear dark."
art history science ir ir-reflectography 2009 May 26, 11:28"But Data.gov is different. It is primarily for machines, not people, at least as a first step. It is a catalog of various sets of data from government agencies. And the idea is to offer the data in
one of several standardized formats, ranging from a simple text file that can be read by a spreadsheet program to the XML format widely used these days for the exchange of information between Web
services. Other data is presented in formats that are meant to feed into mapping programs."
data nytimes xml government 2009 May 25, 10:19"Wallace and Gromit return-this time as purveyors of the Top Bun bakery, despite the fact that 12 other local bakers have disappeared in the previous year. Now it's up to Gromit to solve the mystery
while Wallace woos new love interest Piella Bakewell."
humor movie wallace-and-gromit animation claymation for:hellosarah 2009 May 22, 6:55"So many of our grandparents were racist, and some of our parents are homophobes. Which of our own closely held beliefs will our own children and grandchildren by appalled by?" I thought about this
too but didn't come up with as good answers.
racism via:kottke 2009 May 22, 6:37Famous people are just like me! That is, Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost) also has a blog on which he writes about and posts pictures of his visit to the Neuschhwanstein Castle in Munich (the basis of
the Disney castle). But apparently unlike me he didn't take the Bus of the Year 2005 to get to the castle.
via:kottke hurley lost tv blog germany for:hellosarah 2009 May 13, 11:21Lots of interesting notes on the company culture of Zappos. "Yesterday I was lucky enough to visit Zappos and get a tour and talk with some of their executives, including Tony Hsieh, CEO."
twitter marketing business culture zappos shoes ecommerce 2009 May 13, 10:35In my first linear algebra book they had examples of linear tranformations applied to an image of a cartoon sheep. The fist example was a shear mapping.
sheep humor amazon mechanicalturk via:swannman 2009 May 3, 10:26Seems very similar to that ShellExecute/Firefox app URL protocol handler exploit last year. "A vulnerability in the ChromeHTML URI handler allows an attacker to bypass the Same Origin Policy for any
site and also enumerate victims files and directories. When loaded in Internet Explorer, a specially crafted HTML page can launch Google Chrome with an arbitrary URI without requiring any user
interaction."
exploit security google chrome browser web url protocol 2009 May 3, 4:36Besides being an interesting presentation with real world examples off Web ideas applied to museums, the presentation itself (although its all icky flash) is lovely.
via:mattb museum flash presentation visualization 2009 May 3, 9:17
Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to
watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share
movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.
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Weeds
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You don't have to be a stoner to enjoy this humorous and dramatic satire featuring a widow trying to raise her children and deal pot in suburbia.
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Avatar The Last Airbender
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An American animated series that's an amalgamation of various Asian art, history, religion, etc. that maintains a great story line.
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Paprika
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If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and
writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and
reality.
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Grindhouse Planet Terror
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I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.
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Outsourced
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A refreshing romantic comedy that still has a few of the over played tropes but is easy to enjoy despite that.
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The King of Kong
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A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high
score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the
villain.
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Primer
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I've mentioned Primer before, but I put it on
here again because its really good and you still haven't seen it, have you?
movie personal netflix 2009 Apr 23, 6:25"To create a deep link, append the following to the end of a YouTube video URL: #t=1m15s. This says to link to the time 1:15 - you can replace the numbers before the 'm' and the 's' with anything you
like."
reference video blog google youtube api url fragment link 2009 Apr 23, 2:22Review of mime sniffing based XSS attacks with recommended protections for both web sites and browsers. Also, surprising to me since I rarely see it in this sort of a paper, thought and stats on the
compat. affects of their recommended changes for browsers. Very happy to see that in there!
web security ie browser xss sniff mime firefox chrome safari html html5 2009 Apr 15, 7:38The Improv Everywhere's "Best Funeral Ever" April fools prank is reported as news and then runs into copyright issues: "The biggest fools of all were the CW 11 news team who reported on the funeral
as if it actually happened... I of course uploaded their story to my personal YouTube channel to show the world their lack of journalism skills. Tonight I got a copyright notice from YouTube
informing me that Tribune ... had filed a copyright claim against the video and that it had been removed."
copyright humor video prank improv-everywhere funeral via:boingboing 2009 Apr 14, 4:17Open source Java barcode reading library used in an Android app. The app lets you take a photo of a QR code and navigate to the URL inside (among other things).
zxing barcode qrcode qr google android mobile opensource api java library 2009 Apr 14, 9:26
I've made a QR Encode accelerator around Google Chart's QR code generator. QR codes are 2D bar-codes that can store (among other things) URLs and have good support on mobile
phones. The accelerator I've written lets you generate a QR code for a selected link and view it in the preview window. In combination with the ZXing
bar-code scanner app for my Android cellphone, its easy for me to right click on a link in IE8 on my desktop PC, hover over the QR Encode accelerator to have the link's associated QR code
displayed, and then with my phone read that QR code to open my phone's browser to the URL contained inside. Its much easier to browse around in the comfort of my desktop and only send particular
URLs to my cellphone as necessary.
technical boring accelerator android barcode ie8 google qr code 2009 Apr 13, 12:20Cat door that opens only for the owner's cat's collars containing particular RFID tags. When opened a photo is snapped and twittered. "Best use of Twitter, the Tweeting Cat Door"
rfid twitter cat humor programming geek diy automation 2009 Apr 10, 9:48
A while ago I promised to say how an xsltproc Meddler script would be useful and the general answer is
its useful for hooking up a client application that wants data from the web in a particular XML format and the data is available on the web but in another XML format. The specific case for this
post is a Flickr Search service that includes IE8 Visual Search Suggestions. IE8
wants the Visual Search Suggestions XML format and Flickr gives out search data in their Flickr web API XML format.
So I wrote an XSLT to convert from Flickr Search XML to Visual Suggestions XML and used my xsltproc Meddler script to actually
apply this xslt.
After getting this all working I've placed the result in two places: (1) I've updated the xsltproc Meddler script to include this XSLT and an
XML file to install it as a search provider - although you'll need to edit the XML to include your own Flickr API key. (2) I've created a service for this so you can just install the Flickr search provider if you're interested in having the functionality and don't care about the implementation. Additionally, to the
search provider I've added accelerator preview support to show the Flickr slideshow which I think looks snazzy.
Doing a quick search for this it looks like there's at least one other such implementation, but mine has the distinction of being done through XSLT which I provide, updated XML namespaces to work
with the released version of IE8, and I made it so you know its good.
meddler xml ie8 xslt flickr technical boring search suggestions
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