Ian Hickson: Oh and today I started my new job at Google.

Every now and then you hit a single sentence that makes your brain explode. Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer (pdf): Like many other artists and architects working in the field of interactive environments, in cutting costs and development time we often had to resort to a "low-tech" approach, rewiring keyboards to get pressure-pad input into computers, or using the monitor with light sensors and relays to get physical output from computers.

Fat Tuesday at the RBC Center today to benefit the Red Cross. via [Raleighing] Fat Tuesday -- The Triangle Chefs Association, an accredited chapter of the national American Culinary Federation will host a benefit for the American Red Cross, Hurricane Relief efforts. The event will be held on Tuesday, September 27 at the RBC Center. Lunch and Dinner will be served by local area chefs through drive-thru lanes from 11 am - 7 pm.

My latest article is up at XML.com, "Dreaming of an Atom Store: A Database for the Web". rest atom atomstore opensearch

What is it in my nature that after hearing that the semicolon is viewed so poorly that I would want to try to use semicolons more; to promise to use at least one in every weblog entry for next month? Bah. Is "to promise to use at least one in every weblog entry for next month" really an independent clause? I think a dash would be more appropriate there. Posted by Arthur Davidson Ficke on 2005-09-20 I didn't promise to use it correctly!

I have got way too many projects going on at any one time, but one of the things that has always bothered me in Python is the lack of a good templating system and I've always wanted to write my own. I've used Cheetah but it's just a text templating facility and knows nothing of XML so producing well-formed XML with it is tricky. On the other hand TAL looks good but sits on top of a very large framework.

DeWitt Clinton has announced that the draft versions of OpenSearch 1.1 are available. Improvements include support for the Atom Syndication Format and a more flexible URI Template facility. atom opensearch a9

Three years ago I posted how I had lost 20 lbs on the Atkins diet, that was after discovering that by just switching from drinking carbonated sodas to tea that I had 'accidentally' lost 10 lbs. That was a real eye opening event for me, not only because of the weight loss but because it made me realize that my tea drinking and Atkins experience were really body hacking. Of all the things I love to tinker with, wood, software, landscaping, etc.

We are close to putting this property back in MLS as we near the end of our remodel. This is our first real flip and as such we learned a lot in the process. You always expect to learn something when you do a project this large, but one of the things we didn't expect was how attached we would get to this property. It really started out in rough shape and now it's looking great.

It's time to hit the road again. This November I will be speaking on the Atom Publishing Protocol at XML 2005 which is being held in Atlanta, GA. If you remember last year I presented at XML 2004 and was initially skeptical but in the end really enjoyed myself and I have been eagerly awaiting this years conference. The good news is that this year the conference isn't being held in Washington, DC which should make it less expensive to attend at least as far as hotel and food are concerned.

We are now the proud owners of a PSP. After upgrading to the 2.0 firmware the first order of business was to connect the wifi. After several false starts, and after upgrading the firmware on the Linksys Wireless Access Point, I finally succeeded. I was pleasantly suprised to find that the PSP web browser worked out of the box with my Sparklines Generator.

Jesse Andrews brings a bunch of threads together to observe that many of us are converging on this common idea of an Atom Store:Jesse Andrews: What we need is an Atom Store. You get an Atom Store when you combine OpenSearch, Atom (with its protocols), and a good database (good seems to require simple, fast, scalable). If you have a hammer... Posted by Mark Nottingham on 2005-08-27

Google Talk just went live. They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free - anytime, anywhere in the world. They provide a Windows client. It has a nice clean interface. It does not have advertising and annoying pop-ups plastered all over it. Using their network requires a GMail account. It uses Jabber/XMPP.

If I want to learn how to build a search engine I can read Tim Bray's excellent series "On Search". Not only is it good, but is also contains pointers into the literature. I'm looking for recommendations for similar resources on building a database. Not using a database, but building one, as if I was going to go out tomorrow and rewrite mySQL or Berkeley DB from scratch. They can either be on-line resources like Tim's or they can be dead tree recommendations.

Ouch. technorati

Atom 1.0 is a Proposed Standard. So what does Proposed Standard mean? A Proposed Standard specification is generally stable, has resolved known design choices, is believed to be well-understood, has received significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community interest to be considered valuable. However, further experience might result in a change or even retraction of the specification before it advances. Well, it also means that it will get an RFC number.

One of the questions that has come up is why RFC 3339 style dates were chosen for the date format in Atom. The simple answer is that any date that is conformant to RFC 3339 is also conformant to XML Schema, ISO 8601, and W3C Datetimes. The slightly longer answer is that all the other schemas are more complex than RFC 3339. In particular the daddy of them all, ISO 8601 is the most complex.

My latest column is up on XML.com: Dispatching in a REST Protocol Application rest

Google now supports syndication feeds for news.google.com. [via John Battelle] On the downside, the Atom feeds are version 0.3 and not 1.0. Let's hope that's just a minor oversight.

Wade Minter: I'm opposed to ID not because I hate religion, but because I respect science.