Upgraded a VM to Fedora 11 recently.

This -- it turns out -- comes with Python 2.6 installed.

It is, however, an incomplete build. To do anything, I had to install a some additional Python packages. Specifically, the "libraries and header files needed for Python development". Also, IIRC, the tkinter package …

I cannot believe that people still consider top-down, uni-dimensional, taxonomic hierarchies useful.

This Stack Overflow question (REST: How to Create a Resource That Depends on Three or More Resources of Different Types?) repeats an assumption. Essentially the confusion comes from assuming that "URI's map directly to a hierarchy".

I think …

See this in Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/11/hairy-type.html

They're talking about NodeBox, something I'd never heard of before.

"NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a …

A recent request for an API quality check sent me into a paroxysm.

The request seemed simple enough. They had two varieties of API design: varietal M had a lot of methods, each with relatively few parameters. Varietal P had a few methods, but each had a boat-load of parameters …

Check out this blog post: http://cacm.acm.org/browse-by-subject/data-storage-and-retrieval/32212-the-end-of-a-dbms-era-might-be-upon-us/fulltext

The first issue is that the RDBMS code base in ancient. The second issue is that we keep pushing the envelope on the RDBMS model; examples include OLAP and RDF triple-stores.

Some folks want to say "reports …

A handy CNET review site: http://reviews.cnet.com/macfixit/

This is an amazing quote: "We see SQL injection as the top attack technique on the Web".

See ComputerWorld's SQL Injection Attacks Lead to Heartland, Hannaford Breaches for more on this topic.

I'm amazed because SQL injection is entirely a preventable bug. Yet, it's the top attack technique.

That's an …

I've got a ton of exercises in the Building Skills books. Specifically, my OO Design book is based on my own personal Code Kata exercises.

Plus there's the established Code Kata resources. The CodeKata page, Mark Needham's blog posting on code-kata, Rizky Farhan's Collection of Software Projects, jp.hamilton's Code …

I found this note while cleaning up. I think it's a summary of John Cleese's short movie "Meetings Bloody Meetings".

1. Plan. Why are we meeting? What's the purpose? What are the subjects?
2. Inform. Tell the attendees what, why and the expected outcome.
3. Prepare. Create an agenda, with a time line …

I wrote the first Building Skills books using Appleworks. It wasn't too bad to organize the styles around basic semantics of the subject area. It's an easy, productive writing environment. Except, of course, for internal cross-references, indexes, and tables of contents.

I converted to DocBook XML markup. The conversion was …