New python toys

Bob has released PyObjC 1.2, which lets you build Cocoa apps in Python. I made my zero configuration IRC app with this last year - I must check out the new version.

Bob is also looking for a blogging tool that lets him automate markup
- he should try Ecto, which Ado added a great new feature to - it will call your Python code to filter the text before posting (also perl, shell or AppleScript).

New year's resolutions

My New Year's Resolution is to blog more.

St Luke's News

A while ago I overhauled the St Luke's website, and added a blog, but it was only tonight that I finally got together with Michael Penfield to show him how to use it. St Luke's Chapel News will have regular updates from now on.

If you're looking for an Anglican service in Silicon Valley this Christmas Eve, do come along - it is a little gem of a church in the Los Altos Hills, and has the services that feel right to the expatriate English like me.

Shiny new beginning

Congratulations to Adam and the ops team for the efficient and successful move of all the Technorati servers to their new home.

This gives us a solid hardware foundation to build new Technorati services on for the future, and Joi has news of some.

Obfuscatory marketing

I'm disappointed by Ed Felten's 15 line p2p app.
Ed is a great communicator, and a smart programmer, but in this case he has abdicated explanation for a sound-bite.
He could have written his minimal p2p app clearly and used it to teach, but instead he fell into the Obfuscator's trap of optimising for lines of code, to make a marketing splash.

Peer to Peer communication is a natural part of programming these days; writing code that looks as cryptic as that fails to make the point clearly.

Squared Circle

Flickr's Squared circle tag. It's pretty, but there is this odd feeling that there is a joke here I'm not in on.

charming leakage

When I saw Suw's announcement that she and Chris had met and were in love I was happy for them, but not surprised. Sure, I had seen them talk in chatrooms, but the real clue was some information leakage from iChat AV.
It's presence information shows you when people are online, and when they are available for audio and video chat. So for a couple of weeks beforehand, I would glance at my buddy list and whenever Suw & Chris were online, they'd both have their A/V icons dimmed, as they were together, video-chatting. Congratulations.

Ocean's boiled to order

I was asked last night where the phrase 'Boil the Ocean' came from in Tantek and my presentation on lossless xhtml - Can your website be your API?

I wasn't sure, so I searched a bit, and found this:

Will Rogers’ response to a reporter’s question on how he would deal with the Nazi U-boats:
"Boil the ocean."
"But how would you do that?" the reporter continued.
Without a beat Rogers replied, "I’m just the idea man here. Get someone else to work out the details."