I love XML

SO WHAT?

It seems the general response about XML among programmers is always a groan or disgust, just like how text based editor lovers (vi,emacs) react about IDEs.

And I still admit, now openly, that I love XML. And why is that? because it's text and a buzzword. Yeah I'd love it a little more if my adored JSON would've become a similar buzz word, but it happened to be XML since it had the W3C's name behind it.

And what's so good about it? specially about buzzwords? first let me recognize that buzzwords are something that can cause a lot of hot air masses moving around corporations, but let's be frank, if we'd take buzz words from the kind of managers that like them, they'd still find another way to be useless, it's not the word's fault.

Anyhow I recognize XML has been abused, I do NOT see XML as a database killer, I see it as a message passing form, and as a configuration form (and configurations can take many forms like a document expressed in XML).

Well what I love from XML is that it is human readable, AND strictly defined enough to be safely computer readable. True it might not always be the easiest to parse XML in code, and XPaths can be hard for the non lovers (it's close enough to regular expressions that I actually like XPath some). But it is both computer and human readable. Which means I can write my programs to interconnect via XML, and if I want or need to check that they're interconnecting correctly, or to issue a specific order by hand, I can review or create XML to do this with no special tools other than an editor and my brain. As both a sysadmin and programmer I've found myself in emergency situations where all I had was a shell with all missing commands but an old vi and a few calls, so one gets used to try and work with environments and technologies that require the least amount of components possible in case something goes wrong.

So I prefer a file format I can check or throw together quickly with an editor.

And why a buzzword? why I would've been happier if JSON had become the buzzword (it IS less verbose than xml and still very readable for programmers.), well that's because when something becomes a buzzword, everybody suddenly HAS to implement it, they need to use it. And in this case, this has brought forward incredible things, like XML-RPC... and wether you like XML-RPC or not, you have to admit we have a level of interoperability between vendors and programs that we never had before XML.

Today, no matter how antagonist a company is about integrating with others, or with another company, or how oblivious they are about letting people stick things to interoperate with their code, if they support a decent XML communication system (be it via files, pipes, commands, databases, etc) then integration is at worst a complex XST away. It's possible with a DTD or simple reverse engineering on the XML file, to work with a program with which it wasn't possible to work before without a clunky API or worse, having to pay for the API's spec, or worse yet, the program was APIless.

So what I say is, XML is a great tool for the hackers, and since I am a hacker at soul, I try to use or support technologies who help people like me, and that is the high value of XML to me, a guy without a penny or a few bucks for his own project or his companu's project now can push and pull data in and out of large and diverse applications and systems where he had no luck or possibility before.

P.s. As I said, I like JSON's syntax better, it's still programmer readable, and it's much less verbose than XML, the sad part is that it's not a buzzword and thus not so universal.

And, for my Rails and Ruby friends, I say JSON and not YAML because I do not like that easily visible structural delimitators in YAML are optional. I think that leads to troubles trying to identify a failure point. I like visually striking block delimiters like JSON's curly braces.

How Leo Laporte made me love a fat man I hate

Welcome to another issue of the all new! Improved! ... no, nevermind.

Anyhow onto the post....

This is of course, all about John Dvorak, A man that it seems all love to hate. And a man until very very recently I used to hate myself. Hate as in I hate Tom Cruise, where I personally refuse to see any movie where Mr. Cruise is featured so that he wont get by any mistake any of my money or "love" at all.. Same with Dvorak... but let me explain a little.

I recently discovered the place, and beauty for Podcasts. Originally I listened to a few podcasts, 2 or 3, on saturdays morning while I cleaned the house. In fact I never listened to podcasts as they originally where intended to, since instead of downloading them to my iPod nano 1st gen ( a blog post on this soon), I added the rss URLs to Kinoma on my Palm TX and streamed them live over the wireless at my home while I did my household chores.

Originally I did this only for the Ruby On Rails podcast, and it had the unfortunate side effect that this particular podcast moved me to code and do some work, while I was otherwise busy cleaning my home, so I'd have an idea for a project, or want to do some code on an existing project and I'd tell myself "I will do this when I finish!" and of course forget all about it. Which is good since otherwise I would've spent all my weekend coding and doing work.

So what happened is that I got a new job, a second job but which feels to me like my first (and best) job so far. For many reasons, which I will not enumerate here, it is easier for me to commute to my first job and from the first to the second, via the local Subway, called the Metro.

Anyhow, the first few days, and to isolate myself from the stupid masses (hey anybody who is not me, has a big chance of being stupid, and there ARE masses in the Metro at peak hours, you should see it, it's amazing. But I digress again). I used my iPod with the music in it to isolate myself a little and make the trip more enjoyable. Eventually, I had a brilliant idea and decided to set my iPod to sync podcasts (Why I dont sync stuff to my iPod automatically in a new installment soon), and so the latest episode of the Ruby On Rails podcast was copied over to my iPod and I tried listening it on the way to the office.

It was love at first sight... or at first listening. It was perfect. a short podcast would cover me the commute from home to Job 1, and a long one would cover that plus the commute from Job 1 to Job 2 (a short commute).

But there was a problem, podcasts, all podcasts I like, are when lucky, weekly (Leo if you ever see this, please try to convince the FLOSS weekly moderator to do more podcasts soon, I miss it.). So, to cover two commutes a day, 5 weeks a day I'd require a lot more podcasts. And thus I shoot out looking for more podcasts on directories, and off course asking my friends and colleagues on ##offrails to suggest their favorites... amazingly the only one who seems to podcast in there is Bryanl, but he offered me his OPML list, and about 60% of the casts I listen to came from him.

Now, Security Now with Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson. It has all I like in a podcast, not only a topic that I'm interested in, as a do-it-all professional, but also people who know the topic they're talking about and treat it at a decent pace, not wandering thorough the bushes doing useless dissertations and full stops (I've heard podcasts where the show hosts have had a full minute of "huh"s and "yeah"s.... it drove me absolutely insane.). Anyhow these two guys seem to know what they talk about, they can sound a little arrogant sometimes, maybe, maybe not. but instead of just reading off PR material or listing off their knowledge, they discuss the topics and analyze them, so it serves for a good reading (or listening).

Anyhow, one of the first podcasts I found for my iPod was the Cranky Geeks podcast. And I kind of enjoyed the half episode I listened to on my commute to job 1, so I checked out the podcast data at work, and found out with growing weariness that one of the hosts was Mr. Dvorak. I sighed a small sigh, and deleted the podcast from my directory altogether. Like with Mr. Cruise, I was going to give no brain-time or publicity "dollars" to Mr. Dvorak.

So up to now you might have three reactions. For 90% of programmers or people involved first hand in technology, the natural reaction, from what I've seen in the population I surround myself with, will be "He's useless". For the other %10 I've seen they don't know the guy or don't really care about him. I've not found someone yet who outright said he liked or admired John. And of course for people outside the field he'd probably be an unknown name, probably not so much. But, I'm thinking than rather than trying to explain Dvorak to the non-tech group, I'd love to try and explain Dvorak to ALL of the people who read me. Tech and non tech. even those that know him.

So what happened is this. Security Now, drove me to TWiT. Since it was done and created by one of the hosts (Leo Laporte) of a show I loved... And now TWiT is one of my 4 Favorite podcasts ever (The list at the end of this post). So, I had the "luck" of chancing an episode where Dvorak, who is part of TWiT as well, was out and not present at the show... this prepared me, since it let me fall in love with the show without prejudice, and when Leo mentioned Dvorak was out I distinctly remember thinking two things. The first thought was "Uh oh. I hope Dvorak is not a host, but an eventual guest." and the second one was "Hmm, Leo seems to know about technology in general, (and while I wouldn't call him an expert in anything, he normally gets the wide picture many technologists or companies don't, and he approaches as a very power user, which has advantage neither the users nor the engineers have, being narrow sided to their fields or positions) Why would Leo make a man like Dvorak a part of this show?".

So I listened to the show, and then downloaded the next episode, where Dvorak was not only there, but was there in full force. It was I think Ep. 112 or 113 where he took the position of the bad kid or antagonizer. And it was in this episode while listening at Dvorak AND Leo and the other guests working the podcast and interacting, that I got to see Dvorak in a totally different light, my appreciation of him changed... and now, I must admit, I like him, even if he does make me cringe sometimes.

So, what's the fuzz? well he's been famous, or infamous for a long time for coming up with hare brained or completely odd and crazy ideas, like mos famously saying apple should drop OS X in favor of Windows.

Well the problem is, I, like everybody I know who has a negative vision on Dvorak, used to take him seriously... And I don't even know how he'd react to this post if he were to ever see it, since he might sometimes say he IS serious... but now, I think he's not...

See I think what Dvorak does, is to look for sensibilities in people, and poke at them until they squirm and lash out in anger... now this could be seen as something a bully would do, or negative behavior, but I see it as very positive, for several reasons.

The most important one, is that when you rest in your own laurels, or you're single minded on following a path, having someone say something so outrageous about your work or company could work as a wake up call to what you're doing, even if what was said has no sense at all.

So now, I consider most of what Mr. Dvorak says, not to be literal, or true, but, like some sort of comedians that will tell you an outrageous joke with a straight face, or like Asimov who wrote his famous scientific "research" on Thiotimoline, I see Dvorak's works as a form of serious irony, a way to critique a system or technology by taking a route about it that's almost so outrageously wrong to be possible.

And with this, once I changed my view on him, I think he's a valuable tool, even when he touches topics I'm sensitive on, I try now to see beyond what he says, discard his solutions or opinions in part, and try to analyze what points he's attacking, to try and decipher why.

So, I still listen to TWiT, and I will continue to, not only with Dvorak being in it, but also because he's in it. (And with Leo, a guy that almost drove me insane when I saw a video of him using a t-shirt with a Tux in it, and who acts as a counter balance to Mr. Dvorak).

So I ask of you this. try to see beyond the mere words, and try to see the intention behind them, what I perceive to be the true intention. Maybe it'll change your vision too. Maybe not, I'm not an evangelist, I just want to share my discovery.

And, as promised, here is the list of the 4 podcasts I could NOT live without right now:

1) TWiT: This Week in Tech, a weekly dossage of trends in tech, basically the news you read about in boing boing, slashdot and other sites, commented upon by some nice people including Leo Laporte

2) Security Now: A weekly review not exactly on oopses or common mistakes, but more centered on technologies, and general ideas in security, specially as applied on your digital life, more oriented to power users and developers.

3) Escape Pod: A weekly sci-fi podcast, reading one sci fi story every week. The moderator has shown to be very similar to me in tastes and ideas, and it complements my nightly reading with some good weekly stories, some of these are or should be classics of the genre.

4) Software Engineering Radio: Incredibly technical and deep for a podcast, even bordering on reading code on the air. They treat topics central to programmers with guests who are experts on the topic. Very enlightening and as a programmer, something I really enjoy and learn from.

Steer My Deer

Ok, mini poll comming up.

Let's say you're a friend or an aquaitance.

Let's say you've been forced to come here and respond. (I wont fool myself about self volition visitors. not yet.)

Let's say you've idly read around the blog some.

So, say to me... what do you want to see next? I mean, I'm about to try and revive this blog since carter and tshine for wathever reason in hell told me I should write more...

Well ok I will... my question is.. should I continue on pointless rants about society here?

Should I just show my odd self with my quotes, things I like and things I hate? should I go more to the programming side, show technical articles on stuff I'm doing or into? should I become both? a raging Dvorak frothing at the mouth about technology and trends?

Leave me your feedback your choices on the comments.

I am a very varied person, so wathever you may want I might be able to provide. Yeah even perverted and scary stuff though it's not what I enjoy sharing the most with unknown people whose shock I can't enjoy.

See you all. And leave comments.

Quotes

"it was 300 something BC, they where all crazy" -- Me explaining Alexander to Juan

Tell me when

WHEN!! WHEN!!!!!

Read this news item and then tell me:

HAVE YOU ALL GONE FUCKING INSANE OR WHAT?

I mean, we're even talking fucking Jimi Hendrix here! What a great irony, a man of the 70's, set for peace, love, understanding..... and suing the fuck out of everybody that liked his music? Go to the fucking hell already all of you american record industry.

I severely pray that you all crash down, that all this mindless shit returns to you threefold and eats you alive, to see you in the street beggin for mercy and a few coins.

But no, that happens to decent people who are too good to stab others in the back and to earn their money by fucking people repeatedly.

Fuck you hatemongers, pigs, leeches, useless shit, I hope you starve, I hope humanity excecrates you from our ranks, and lets you to rot under the sun.

Nothing, NOTHING can justify idiocies like this, nada, no ammount of RIAA propaganda will justify that a fucking bunch of assholes steal the music of a talented and giving man, rip it off it's meaning, twist it, and then use it as a weapon to pillage decent people from their livelihood.

I don't know what else to say. Go to hell, get out of my view, you're not human, you're not animals anymore, you're just reflections of pure evil incarnate into roting moving bodies. Fuck you.

Picture(96)

Picture(96)
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Aquel, que robare a quien nada tiene, doblemente maldito sea.

He, who steals from whom that has nothing, doubly cursed be.

Pull the plug.

Ok I've lost my head over many things, many times, but each time more and more I find myself loosing my head over corporations and policies in USA.

And I think it's time to pull the plug. I seriously think it would be possitive to start emigrating decent people from USA to the rest of the world, and let the country rot into nothingness.

Want to know what pissed me off so much now? you can even ignore www.alternet.org for a while if you wish, what about you read the EFF reports some? people are not people in USA, they're shit, Corporations are good, corporations are god, soulless entities are good, and individuals are shit, to be stepped on, spitted on, used, repressed and then thrown in to a ditch to die.

Stuff like the push into all devices by law of a technology you can't see or have public acess to. It's beyound dvd and css, you could always say "then do not buy DVDs" and you'd be right. But then under the cry of "Piracy!!! piracy!!! LOOK stop staring at the kids dying of fucking hunger in the streets, stupid as a wall because there is no education, instead see that I SAY and thus it's the UNDENIABLE TRUTH that if we don't force at gunpoint every person to purchase lots of media shit from us and pay us each single time they watch it over and over addicted to the USELESS SHIT we produce then it'll be the ruin of all persons and the country!!! quick!!! all the population wants to steal all the money in the country! ban ALL technology but the one we produce!!"

it's pure shit.

What's the trouble for all the rest of the world with this? since I live away from madmerica? Well because A) Many countries hold madmerica's word to be law, and follow it with eyes closed, thowards the cliff.
B) Given madmerica's short history of prosperity and economical bounty they hold a sizeably big ammount of the technology being made in the world, and the rest of the technology makers usually follow suit to madmerica to be able to access the ample market.

Given this, it's what I say, we need to salvage every worthy mind we can from USA before it implodes into complete stupidity, so that the world doesn't looses all the technological potential it means when it comes down.

.....
You know, I feel sad.
Once I used to enjoy Jhonen Vasquez very much for it looked to me to provide a caricaturized exageration of what I hated in the world so I could laugh at it.

I am not sure it's an exageration anymore, it's turning more and more scaringly real. What the hell is going on here? I mean, they're fucking directed thowards a "Brazil" (Gilliam's movie) society, eyes closed, mouth smiling, and screaming "I wunts my reality tv, fried chicken and freedom to shoot my neighborgh now!!"

Go ahead, sue yourselves into extintion.

The madness of corporations

A new meme, the madness of corporations, this should be an easy topic, the larger the corporation, the harder it is to keep it under any semblance of order or logic.

As an example, this is a conversation between two persons (a friend and an aquaitance) I just presenced on IRC:

g1powermac> well that just sucked

Plugh> what, g1powermac?

g1powermac> I got a notice for UPS who can't find the street address either

g1powermac> and whatever the package was got sent back

Plugh> That's nice. :-(

g1powermac> some samples I ordered were shipped back, but I have no idea what samples

Plugh> How did UPS ever manage to let you know stuff was sent back?

g1powermac> got a postcard from them

Plugh> They can't find the address so figure they can't deliver the stuff but they still send something to this "nonexistant address" to let you know what they did.

g1powermac> yup

Plugh> Does that sound as stupid to you as it does to me?

g1powermac> yup

* Plugh shakes his head

---

Need I say more?
...

Things I Hate

- People who call our tech department, because they need the help of a tech, and then proceed to disbeleive any response you give them, or, once you are finished they insist to keep half an hour reciting random icons in theyr system, in the chance that you forgot something "vital"

New topics

From now on, You'll see a few new repetitive topics on the Blog, they will all be titled the same, and work in a similar fashion. These are:

- Things I hate
- Things I like (To balance the previous one).
- Things that happened (funny or weird stories).

Moby

Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby Moby,

Did I say Moby? no? damn, I tought I said Moby.

Anyhow, are you Moby? If you are Moby, I just wanted to let you know that your Journal, and the writings in your CDs have inspired something in me that has needed inspiring for a long, long time.

Thanks dude, you're cool.

And if you're not Moby, I'm sure you're cool as well, but saddly I don't know it.

Why don't you tell me how cool you are?

And so I sit to write.

And so again, after a long time of saying nothing to the world, I sit down to write on my blog. At times I do ask myself if there is any logic to this, any ulterior reason that justifies siting and pouring a long, convoluted and hard to read rant on electronic media (and beleive me, this entry will be a rant as well, but the ideas in my head are half baked as of this point, so I'll cook them while I write them down), back to the topic of usefullness... Well, who knows, maybe nobody will ever visit this blog, maybe I'm writting in the wrong language since my closest friends in real life have a poor handle of english, maybe someone will stumble on this, or many someones, maybe I'll inspire, or maybe I'll leave no glory behind in these bits.

But someone at google decided to gift me some bytes in a metal plate, coated with a magnetic component that has been researched and built by humans for a long time, and well, I'll use these bytes they've given me.

And just as I write, I sit and think, I'm thinking many things, in an effort to legalize our collection of music and still be able to enjoy MP3s on the go, Juan and I are buying CDs in the legal, used, at Amazon and similar by the bulk. And today we received a bunch of CDs including Moby's hotel, and reading the booklet I discover something very interesting, and that is that I agree with Moby in many points and ideas, what he exposes in his booklet has meaning to me, makes sense to my mind, and besides being thoughts that I have nurtured and fed maybe under diferent faces but with the same soul, I see I share many things with Moby, and there are boud to be a lot of other details and aspects I do NOT share with Moby.

And there are a lot of tastes and aspects that I share with my friend Ray from IRC (hey there, I plan to send you this link when I finish this. So you can enjoy to see yourself mentioned somewhere in the internet again, and taking some more bytes for communicating your existence to the world.), and there are a lot of ideas and things I do NOT share with Ray, and this repeats with every one of my friends, and with many if not all of my admired figures among the stardom in all it's forms and manners.

So what's the message here, after a long and winded rant around it? well that for most of my childhood and a good part of my adolescence (or however the fucker is spelled, no I'm not going to spellcheck it.) I felt alone, uncomprehended and weird.

One thing that I tend to do is forget things, I've forgotten I'd pressume to quantify, about %80 of my childhood memories... Only a few remain to me, hidden under the rubble that is my conscious mind, and these I recover from time to time, not necesarily when I search for them in an act of self volition, but in a semi random manner when theyr indexes are triggered by a similar memory that links to it. One of the memories that I have just temporarily recovered, and that I will loose again until in a fit of boredom and forgetting ONCE AGAIN to read "the joy of tech" in my idle moments, I come back here trodding these hallways of memory, and reading this (if I get down this far) I'll remember this memory again, and the memory is, ladies and gentlemen, that I spent a long time in my childhood, as far back as I have a recollection of rational tought, trying to piece, to explain to myself why as a rational being I was unable to share feelings, toughts, emotions, and basically why I lacked a mental conection with other human beings. In these times I felt a lot of despair, I tought I'd never be comprehended or understood in full or even in part, and I basically felt like I was surrounded inexorably, and unbearably by an invisible barrier, a wall that separated me from the rest of humanity.. And I wondered if anyone else experienced what I did, if anybody else felt similarily shrouded, secluded, left behind... Uncommunicated...

And these days, having forgoten this very important column of my being, this that once took so much of my awarenes, that drove me so powerfully emotionally and rationally, I look back to my week, to my month, and I notice that more and more I've been having an increasingly recurring event of finding myself not so unique anymore, not so shrouded or separated, but that there is actually a glimmer of hope that some people if not understand me completely, at least understand some notion or idea behind me, or some part of my mind is shared with them, in a close enough manner that I feel at long last, that I am not alone.

Now I only need to sit down one day, and repeat this to myself, until not only I beleive it, but until I internalize it, and it becomes a common feeling more than tought, something that accompanies me daily, at every moment....

Afterall, remembering at long last the long anguished moments in my childhood I spent so earnestly hurting about the idea of being alone forever, trapped in my mind not being able to connect with anybody else and share it.... I can tell you, being alone sucks.

And not being alone is great.

My only problem, is that once again I take this too far. I read Natasha's wonderfull expressions of everyday life (See her comics here), and more than sharing the feelings and feeling wonderfull for sharing so much with her daily life and ideas, I feel desesperate to open my mind, and to somehow let her feel, know how much I appreciate not being alone, once again I wish I'd be living in some form of unified Ghestalt society, so much like Asimov's idea of Gaia, as exposed in the dying spasms of his Foundation saga.......

At leats I have my pup, Juan, whom I feel I do share a mind with, whom I closer to than anybody else on this world and who is my cane in moments of difficulty, and whose cane I sometimes expect to be and be able to help...

I'll keep trying to find a balance between sharing everything, and just paying company... afterall, trying to open your mind completely to someone is in a form, selfish, since your toughts get precedence over that person's, and more than an interaction between humans, you get one trying to impose his whole mind on the other....

Well this rant has gone long enough, and has begun to twist in the corners and get confusing and abstract, until my next time, be well, and, might you find your own happyness as well.

Lady and the tramp.

Lady and the tramp.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

She did the doggie.

Doggie style.

A building.

A building.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

I dont know why, but i liked this building, so i snapped it and i share it with you.

He is.

He is.
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Cool baby.

Picture(3.jpg

Picture(3.jpg
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

A new quote

"I have a green thumb, everything on my fridge is moldy." -- Me

More fun

More fun
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

Desk fun in virtual cambodia.

It's fun to work

It's fun to work
Originally uploaded by AwenAnam.

In "cambodia"