Oh, say can you rock?
There’s trouble in a far off nation,
Time to get in love formation.
Your love’s more deadly than Saddam.
That’s why I gotta drop da bomb!
Yvan eht nioj!
Yvan eht nioj!
Yvan eht nioj! Eht nioj!
This party is happening,
It’s no mirage.
So sing it again –
Yvan eht nioj!
Y van eht nioj!
Y van eht nioj!
* England
* Queens of the Stone Age
* Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde
* The Beatles – Rubber Soul
* Alton Brown
* Briscoe and Logan
* Charlotte on Sex and the City
* Laura Prepon (redhead chick on the 70’s Show)
* Stephen King
* Gold Toe socks
* V-Neck sweaters
* Tailored Shirts
* Clark’s
* Russell Athletic sweat shirts
* Peacoats and watch caps
* iTunes
* logging to text files
* 2004 BMW 5-Series (Dark Grey)
* 2004 Range Rover (Black)
Despite earlier reports, Overload Skateshop is NOT closing – seems like an outpouring of customer support has revived the shop! Cheers!
Looking for a house in Dago – can you say “Half-a-million-dollar shitbox?”. It’s Clairemont or a Condo.
Nothing like a little crystal balling to fill up space on the ol’ crap-wide web, eh? Here goes.
– Nothing much changes. The web remains an endless supply of crap occasionally tainted with quality information. Yours truly does little to change that.
– Despite the current outsourcing fears, little happens in the 2K4 to stimulate or depress the job market. Commodity coders continue to lose their jobs, top dawgs continue to hold out for six-figure salaraies that aren’t coming back. Those with reasonable wage demands and great soft skills clean up.
– Software dev finally gets hip to the fact that no one really cares about what language the software was written in. Old tech beats new tech in the 2K4. Old problems get solved really cheaply.
– Paradigm shifters take the biggest risks and post the biggest losses as everyone realizes that no one cares about paradigm shifts.
– Despite the Longhorn hype, .NET gains no more traction in the enterprise than it has for the past 3 years.
– Wages for scripters and other non-engineering software types continue to fall, but never enough to stop us from making a decent living. C programmers continue to make a decent living without having to constantly learn new stuff.
– Internal IT projects, office automation and business process automation become the holy grail of Web Developers as public web-site development falls straight into the hands of the marketing department.
– Small-scale Web shops continue struggle and fail as they attempt to transition from overpriced Design services to IT ousourcing. Ridiculous wages and incompetent staff are mostly to blame.
– XML camps struggle to keep traction as the reality that their products are immature sets in. Web Services and RSS are the exceptions, although the latter never commercializes.
– Markup and design camps struggle to re-tool their skillsets as public-facing Web production continues to become a low-wage job. Dreamweaver jockeys finally get their due.
– ASP.NET fails to revolutionize web development. ‘Classic’ ASP / VB remains entrenched.
– PHP jobs increase while PHP wages decrease.
– CFMX doesn’t sell, but regular CF stays put.
– Java sells, but no one really notices.
– Niche software from small shops continues to threaten big software from big shops. Again, no one cares what language it’s written in.
– Cheap wins.
– Finally, people with careers dependent on pure tech – but lacking any real engineering-level skills – move to management, master a business niche, or simply die.
Back in town, here’s the recap:
Arrived to a torrential downpour, but overall weather was good – even got 50’s one day.
Christmas Eve festivites commenced at the lovely Middleville estate of Blacken magnate Moist Pigeon, where myself, Felix Tibs, and Le Creeper joined the entire Nau clan for a spirited round of holiday cheer and much cocktails. Moist himself was dressed at the height of homeless Vietnam-vet chic in duct-taped pantaloons, and coined the phrase ‘filthy blogger’, which is sure to endure for many years to come.
Festivities continued at the notorious Club G (Gunther’s Tap Room, Jack Kerouac‘s old hangout), where 5 generations of Northport High alums filled the scene. Class of 94′ attendance was nil except for Rich Li**old, who was, and presumably still is, a dick. Same haircut for ten freakin years. J Crew rollneck sweaters and completely improper running shoe / ballcap attire was out in typical display.
Christmas Day arrived with much Manicotti and typical crankiness. Yours truly dodged the madness with some high-intensity napping. Grandmas on the scene included maternal and paternal, health status: good.
Friday night myself and the wife hit up NYC. Thanks to Priceline we scored a 4-star room at the Intercontinental on 48th between Madison and Lex. Macy’s Herald square looked like a bomb had gone off, but the NYC public library always kicks ass. We plushed out with an utterly civilized meal at Chin Chin, including a greet by namesake Jimmy Chin. 75 bucks for 2 + drinks & tip – not shabby for midtown NYC. Attempts were made for a screening of LOTR – ROTK, but alas, sold out. Heineken and traipsing about NYC were a fine replacement.
Returning to the isle, more napping ensued. Inter-nerd and all-around mad scientist Xanix rolled into the Casa Lee for some pizzas and a rousing game of HeroQuest. Corral Lane gangsta Dan Cregan was all up in that piece. LOTR was screened soon after.
In typical LI fashion, ridiculous sleep schedules were the norm. Felix Tibs took top honors for being asleep nearly 20 hours a day. Apparently he was awake at some point as well. We even got to meet Le Creeperette who was sporting sassy Mucklucks.
After unknown amounts of food gorging, Sopranos re-runs, and occasional drunkenness, we returned to SD yesterday. As always the return is depressing to me, as SD seems like the most po-dunk place in the world after a few days in the land of high population densities.
Off to NY tues. Tibs too. 3 weeks of 12-hour days will not be missed.
I had the opportunity to learn some XSL this week, and was quite excited to dive on in to this hot technology.
2 days later, I was all ready to write a full piece on XSL and how much of a stinking turd it is. But after some Googling, I realized I didn’t have to, because other people already wrote that article, 4 years ago:
XSLT, Perl, Haskell, & a word on language design [kuro5hin]
XSL Considered Harmful [xml.com]
So I’ll be brief:
* XSL is a programming language, despite what you may have been told.
* XSL Stinks. Stinks Bad. Really Bad. It’s hard to use. Really hard. It’s hard to read, too.
* XSL makes easy stuff hard, and hard stuff damn-near impossible. Try munging a string or date with XSL.
* XSL exists in the weird vacuum world where XML is the be-all, end-all problem solver. This world is called ‘The World where XML is something more than text files’
* XSL is a product of the “Markup Geeks”, who seem to think that programming in a markup language is a good thing. ‘It’s Turing complete!’ Right. That’s what matters to a programmer on a crunch deadline, Turing completeness.
* XSL is a W3C spec – more proof that the W3C has gone completely bonkers.
* Pick a programming language – any programming language – and accomplish the same task in 5 minutes, in 5 lines, as a whole gob of XSL does.
I predict the quiet and unceremoneous death of XSL in the near future. Look at ASP.NET, Smarty, JSTL, CFML, Mason, Freemarker, or any simple template class to see why.*
* Hint: You can transform XML in damn-near any programming language – Javascript, Flash, PHP, etc…
Markovich is off Hollywood. Wasn’t it his company? Yet another example of the Tum Yeto “Get a Pro, Lose a Pro” syndrome…
4 hours later, Sassy figures out why his sessions aren’t working. Answer: MICROSHAFT