At Home on the Edge of a Profession. “This gigantic room full of books was indispensable to our civilization, and this one person was indispensable to this particular room of books. To me, that seemed like a lot of responsibility without a lot of fanfare. As I spent the rest of the weekend listening to… Continue reading At Home on the Edge of a Profession

“Google is now a clearinghouse for reference questions. Curious about the accuracy, cost and timeliness of the new service, I ask both Google and NYPL's Ask Librarians Online the same question, “What is the origin of the term 'shoestring' as it is used to refer to a small budget?” Each site has a requirement; Google… Continue reading

“Google is now a clearinghouse for reference questions. Curious about the accuracy, cost and timeliness of the new service, I ask both Google

Setting Priorities by Janice Fraser. Quote: “A consultant I was working with at the time gave me a TQM-style process for prioritizing initiatives. I've refined and simplified it over the years, and have ended up with a tidy little process that's easy to use. Here's how it goes” Comment: I have used such a process… Continue reading Setting Priorities by Janice Fraser

Window Pains. Gates testified monolithic OS design is a necessity today. He lied. He knows that he lied. Nothing new. Here are my predictions: Windows is already being componentized and fractured. Windows will soon become a commodity. The tradition of building monolithic systems is already dead. Finally: The notion of the government being invloved in this process… Continue reading Window Pains.

Gates testified

Uptime update. My other Zope sites that run Zope 2.5.1 beta 2 and Python 2.1.3 now have uptime of just over 8 days. ZN has its own set of issues that I have to resolve. But with Zope 2.5.1 and Python 2.1.3 it looks like Zope is once again a stable little beastie. [ZopeNewbies]

'Soul mates' do exist, if only in our minds: study [Reuters Health eLine]

S R Ranganathan life history. The Indian Statistical Institute, Documentation Research & Training Centre has a nice Tribute to Prof. S R Ranganathan with an extensive telling of his life history, including a list of his contributions to information science, publications, honors, and positions held. [ia/ – news for information architects]

Update: PHP Links and Resources. Whether you are a PHP wannabe, novice, or seasoned veteran, our freshly updated collection of resource links from around the Web will help you get your next project up and running quickly. [WebReference News]

Court Fun — Is Gates Lying or Spinning?. Can IE be turned into an API? I thought it already was? VB'ers for years have been using IE's object model. Can IE be made to be a module that can be pulled out of the OS? Of course it can. But, what is IE? Personally I always… Continue reading Court Fun — Is Gates Lying or Spinning?

Tips on Writing Portable SQL for PHP. If you are writing an application that is used in multiple environments and operating systems, you need to plan to support multiple databases. This article is based on my experiences with multiple database systems, stretching from 4th Dimension in my Mac days, to the databases I currently use,… Continue reading Tips on Writing Portable SQL for PHP