Elliotte Rusty Harold roundly Read more
If you’re working with XML, as I currently am, XSLT can sometimes be a godsend. Something that would take ages to do in a structured, procedural way can be reduced to two or three lines of functional XSL code.
So it was with a growing sense of consternation that I noticed that adding XML namespaces to the original document seemed to break XSL’s ability to recognise elements! Consider:
<elem/>
Programmers: know your Excel!
Now I know the title sounds presumptuous, but there’s a certain methodology I’ve settled into that seems to work really well for encouraging Javascript that’s legible and safe. I thought I’d share it with anyone that doesn’t consider themselves a JS playa, in case it’s of some use to you too.
A busy few weeks, but they’ve included an import from a Blosxom blog to a WordPress blog which is worth describing. There are a couple of established methods for importing the data, and I opted for the one that seemed the most modular.
It’s one of the worst-kept tech secrets in the world, but Real Audio streams can be downloaded using software such as mplayer and then converted to MP3 format with lame. Both of these are available in Ubuntu using the non-Ubuntu package manager Automatix. The possibility of doing this conversion implies that, although the BBC offer all their programs in Real Audio and only a few as podcasts, you can in principle put any you like on your portable music device.
Mark Mandel wrote his own version of Coldfusion’s XmlTransform() function, using the underlying Java transform classes. Although one of his annoyances—that XmlTransform() won’t take any parameters—has been solved in CFMX7, XmlTransform() is nonetheless a slow operation, as the transform engine has to be cranked up, the XSL compiled, the transform effected and then everything garbage-collected, each call to the function, each request.
Creating your own arrows in OpenOffice (.org, 2.0) is a pain. There’s tutorials out there that claim to show how to create arrows from OOo diagrams, but I’ve not had much success with those. However, by taking apart an existing arrow, I’ve managed to work out the rather nasty syntax
There’s currently no plan to switch off FM stations. In fact, many radio bosses have said oh, for heaven’s sake to the very idea. There is, astonishingly, less of a plan for radio switchover than there is desire among the general public for TV switchover. So that must be some sort of record for nothingness.
Flickr is working with the Library of Congress on new project The Commons. Currently there are around three thousand photographs up there from two collections, and according to the Commons homepage they’re all copyright-free. More information in the relevant post on the Flickr blog.