hultberg.org: Mannes blog

XML - XML, DTD:er och XSL

I was looking for something easy to read about XML. Sort of introductory. I already have a lot of practical knowledge about XML, using it in different types of projects I have been involved in, but I haven't actually read any books on the subject. This was far too easy however. Really low level and not very well written to boot.

Title: XML - XML, DTD:er och XSL
Author: Anna Östlund, Helen Hermundstad
Publisher: Docendo
ISBN: 91-7882-562-8

Don't bother reading this unless you really don't know anything about XML. If you know how to read out the acronyms in the title, you are already to skilled for getting something of value from this book.

If it weren't for the poor language I would however gladly recommend it as an introduction to someone wanting to get a first glimpse of XML.

Praktisk retorik

Socrates: The fact is, as we said at the beginning of our discussion, that the aspiring speaker needs no knowledge of the truth about what is right or good... In courts of justice no attention is paid whatever to the truth about such topics; all that matters is plausibility... There are even some occasions when both prosecution and defence should positively suppress the facts in favor of probability, if the facts are improbable. Never mind the truth -- pursue probability through thick and thin in every kind of speech; the whole secret of the art of speaking lies in consistent adherence to this principle.

Title: Praktisk retorik
Author: Göran Hägg
Publisher: Wahlström & Widstrand
ISBN: 91-46-18243-8

For millenia leaders, scholars, lawyers and politicians have tried to master the art of talking to a crowd in such a way as to win their hearts. In this book Göran Hägg teaches that art using a number of interesting and funny examples from various historical occassions.

Reading this book was pure joy. Well written, amusing and so interesting that you just can't stop turning the pages. As an introduction to rhetoric, there probably is no better read.

Throughout the book Göran Hägg mentions a number of famous speeches and acclaimed books on the subject. Some of these I really should check out:

• Cicero: Prosecution of Governor Verres, The Defense of Caelius, De Oratore (book)
• Churchill: Speeches from the years 1940-1941
• Richard Nixon: The Checkers speech

To mention a few.

Good thing to remember is the anatomy of a speech:

• Exordium (opening phrases)
• Narratio (background, set up)
• Probatio (present your opinion on the matter)
• Refutatio (counter the counter arguments...)
• Peroratio (ending, this is where you leave the audience silent with admiration)

Anyhow, really good book. I must read it again some time.

The game is afoot!

Something big is stirring in the golfing community throughout the world. Annika Sörenstam, famous Swedish golfer, will soon be the first woman in over 50 years to play against the men in the well known PGA Tour.

Why? Annika has been invited, by the organizers of the PGA Tour to play. In other words, an exemption has been made for Annika to participate (not uncommon for the PGA Tour, but normally of course the exemptions are made for other men, usually old and famous).

A few not so old famous golfers playing the PGA Tour have reacted strongly against this. She has no place in the tour, they say, she should qualify like everybody else, she can never compete with the men, nag, nag, nag, bitch and moan and sound like little children.

I wonder what they are afraid of. ;) Losing their sponsorhip contracts?

Here is a hilarious article in the Washington Post giving some extremely interesting background information on those shouting the loudest. If I were them, I would keep my mouth shut and focus on letting my clubs do the talking.

Annika on the other hand handles the criticism and skepticism with total grace. Hillary Clinton style. Smart, witty, humble and focused on the game.

Go Annika! Regardless of the outcome, you are a winner.

The Cathedral and The Bazaar

If I do a search on Google on "Cathedral" and "Bazaar" I am totally convinced that at least half of the hits on the first list page will refer to this book. Empirical test: result? Totally correct.

Title: The Cathedral and The Bazaar
Author: Eric S Raymond 
Publisher: Nya Doxa (I read it in Swedish)
ISBN: 91-578-0377-3

Reviewing this book feels kind of unnecessary. If you are looking for a good book advocating the pros of the open source movement and the background on the hacker community this is it.

After reading this book you will be convinced that open source and collaborative efforts based on meritocracy are the most important means of competition in the Internet oriented future. ;) Until you sober up anyway.

Eric Raymond is a good writer and in this book he has collected some of his writings which act as a foundation for a lot of continuously ongoing discussions  regarding the pros and cons of open source.

Check out the homepage for arguments, updates and comments.

Google to launch blog-focused search

Since Google bought Pyra, the company behind Blogger, I have been wondering what would come out of it. The purchase of Usenet that became Google groups turned out nice, but the blog-phenomenon gives so many more options and possibilities to a company with a solid spider and search technology like Google.

Last Monday the Google CEO Eric Schmidt apparently confirmed that a special Google "tab" for searching the Blogosphere will be created in the Google interface.

Well, so far so good. That is a pretty likely scenario since we all know that the Blogosphere content seriously confuses Google search algorithms. There is even a term coined for how massive blogging and interconnected linking can thwart, even change, Google search results: Googlewashing.

What's more, a special "blog-tab" in Google definitely will cement the status of blogging and the Blogosphere as a permanent phenomenon, here to stay.

But then what? Surely a company with a solid foundation spider/search/language and so on technology, all the web data in the world, great thinkers and massive amounts of money to throw at an interesting thought can come up with new and intriguing uses of the blogosphere content? It is not like people hasn't been envisioning innovative outcomes of the explosion of blogs... Mapping social networks, new types of links describing the value of the linked content, tracking reader patterns, using the TrackBack protocol for various purposes... They must make more than just filter all the blog content to a special tab? :)

Look at Blogdex. Or MetaFilter. Or the mysterious Lafayette project.

Recently I read at Microcontent News how John Hiler compared how PCs got connected to networks with how bloggers grew into the Blogosphere. Just like the way everyone owning and constantly carrying a cell phone and having access to the Internet has changed the way we handle our personal communication and social interaction (it sure has in Sweden...), the expanding Blogosphere could mean changes in the way we find, use and evaluate news and facts.

What role will Google play in this development?

A few links on the subject, to read a rainy day:

• Dan Gillmor: Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time
• BBC News: Fame or misfortune beckons for weblogs?
• OJR: Google + Blogger = Mainstream Weblog Acceptance?
• SearchEngineWatch: Puzzling Out Google's Blogger Acquisition
• Jim Ray: Future of blogging
• Burningbird (TrackBacked): Google + Blogger = What?

Leaving home. Finally.

I live in limbo. I have no home. This apartment starts to feel like a hotel: welcoming, yet not mine.

Everything is now set for moving to the new apartment. Wait. The much older apartment than this one actually, but new to me and Cristina. Feels great. I will save a load of money, and still have an almost as big apartment. Evening sun on the balcony. Great.

I handed in my contract termination to the landlord yesterday. So now I am homeless. All the books are in paper bags on the floor. The furniture is slowly folding up to become flat packages (thank you IKEA). The stuff in the apartment that makes it mine is bit by bit being tucked away, to emerge anew in new surroundings a few weeks from now.

Been reading a lot tonight about blogging, social software, swarms, interesting user experiences based on the growing BlogSphere, Google PageRank problems (never really thought of this problem)... This means something. Blogging is not a geek thing performed by tech nerds, it is more like the most accessible and fastest way of expressing thoughts and feelings we have seen ever. We have yet to see what it turns out to be.

Google bought Pyra. Nuff said. What will they do with the Blogger space of articles, surfers, links, tracks and so on? Exciting stuff. I am almost starting to feel as fascinated by this as when I first encountered email and realised the communication revolution that would come as computers and Internet would be available to all and anyone. Too bad it will be killed by spam. ;)

I really need to check out sites like Blogdex and Technorati. Must figure out what they do and why they do it. I haven't really grokked that part yet.

Idea: I wonder if I could use a separate Movable Type blog and category system to create my long desired omni-present, easily updated, searchable index of interesting links. This system could probably supply me with everything I need in a simple manner. Even storing full articles about every link, adding comments to them, keeping track of the date I stored it... ...even a ready-made way of storing a link directly form the interface of the IE browser. Must think about that. Sounds like it could work great.

This night's thank you goes out to Mulleskolan. ;)

I have created my very first MT plugin!

Now the fun is really getting started. Using my limited knowledge of perl I have created my first Movable Type plugin, inserting a random fortune from www.fortunes.nu in entries created with MT.

Works like a charm. At first I really didn't know what to create, other than having a strong desire of testing the plugin facilities of MT. Then late last night it occurred to me, why not use the fortunes.nu web site to provide content to hultberg.org? Sounded easy enough, basic stuff which would let me focus on learning the new things about MT plugins that I needed to know.

Basic concept:

1. Create a non formatted page at fortunes.nu serving up a random fortune for scraping off the page.
2. Create a perl script using LWP to surf to that page and extract the fortune information using regexp.
3. Use the MT plugin facilities to create custom tags allowing me to insert the fortune content in the MT pages.

Lo and behold, it works. Of course, what should have taken me less than an hour took about three... ...since the server running my MT installation can't "see" the server running fortunes.nu directly over the network. So the plugin running in my MT installation gets the fortunes.nu page through the validation engine at w3.org. ;) Horrible workaround, but it does the trick.

Below I have attached a file containing the plugin code (without my workaround...) for anyone to download. If you use it, please tell me what you think! Also, if you add a link to the fortunes.nu web site I would be very happy. :)

I would like to send a thank you to David Raynes, whose plugin "blogshares.pl" provided me with some great information on how to write a plugin for MT.

---

Instructions: download the file attached below. Unzip it and place it in the plugins directory in your MT installation.

• Download file

Add any of the tags below to your templates to insert the random fortune content:

• <MTFortuneText />
  Inserts the text body of the fortune.
• <MTFortuneName />
  Inserts the name of the person who submitted it to fortunes.nu.
• <MTFortuneNumbers />
  Inserts five random numbers, fortune cookie style, separated by commas.

(Note: If you rebuild all of your files, all entries using the plugin will get the same fortune content. If anyone knows a way to insert an individual fortune on every page generated on rebuilding, please let me know.)

Check out the result at the bottom of this page, using this code in my template for the Individual Etry Archive:

<p>Random fortune brought to you by <a href="http://www.fortunes.nu/" target="_blank">www.fortunes.nu</a>:<br>
<MTFortuneText /><br>
:: <MTFortuneName /> (<MTFortuneNumbers />)</p>

Oh, one more thing. I am pretty open minded about the fortunes (provided by visitors) I approve at fortunes.nu. It is not like there are any obscenities or profoundly foul language in the database, but there are a lot fo not-so-fortune-like fortunes and funny little snippets of text that you probably won't get at your local chinese joint. Just so you know. I like them though. Thank you, if you have helped adding any of the fortunes. :) (And if you haven't, feel free to contribute: www.fortunes.nu.)

The legal stuff: THIS PIECE OF CODE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY ARISING FROM ANY TYPE OF USE OR CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE. SO BE IT.

Blogging gargoyle stringers...

The blogging phenomenon is doing revolutioning things to publishing on the web. Will it also fundamentally change the way people make and get news reporting from all over the world?

Rebecca Fox has written an interesting piece on how blogs may change news reporting for ReadMe. Using the cutbacks in major news media as a backdrop and comparing freelancing bloggers to Tamagochis she paints a very interesting picture of the flow of news and money when readers and reporters connect online through blog style publishing and discussions.

"Rather than let intransigent companies claim to provide our news even as they silence those individuals who do it, why shouldn't journalism undergo a paradigm shift? Blogs could reshape how we relate to those who would go reporting on their readers' behalf. Supporting the reader-driven, reported blog is the ideal way to maximize a liquid medium brimming with promise."

(Excerpt from "Tamagotchi journalism": A Working Model for Blog-based Reporting.)

Her article got me thinking in the lines of Snow Crash, the excellent novel by Neal Stephensson. In Snow Crash the author describes how a vast number of people all around the world gather information and various pieces of intel, uploading it all to "The Library" for anyone to search for and use. Whenever someone uses a piece of information you have uploaded, you get paid.

As with all types of trade some individuals are better at doing it than others. In Snow Crash professional stringers are called "gargoyles" and are often equipped with the latest and greates in ultra-hi-tech electronic gadgets making it easy to collect and report intel to the Library.

Clearly there is a parallell between the professional for-hire-bloggers Rebecca Fox describes in her article and the gargoyles of Snow Crash.

Perhaps specialized search engines in the future, collecting and indexing information from all the blogs in blogspace will be able to connect information hungry parties with bloggers creating content and gathering intel through a PayPal payment model?

Anyway, I think it is time to read Snow Crash again. :) Still one of the best SF/cyberpunk books I have ever read. There is quite a number of essays written on Snow Crash, googling for the title turns up tremendous amounts of information.

Living with Methamphetamine

I am apparently addicted to a heavy drug, according to a recently published dictionary of drug related terms called "Pundartugg". I am flabbergasted. Imagine that, me being a total drughead.

No, I haven't completely lost it. According to the "Pundartugg" (would probably translate to something like "crackhead speak"...) publication from Swedish National Police Academy one of the street words for the central nervous system stimulant Methamphetamine is "Cristina".

Ain't that a blast. ;) The effects of Methamphetamine on drug users seem to be exactly like the effects Cristina has on me:

"The drug works directly on the brain and spinal cord by interfering with normal neurotransmission. Neurotransmitters are chemical substances naturally produced within nerve cells used to communicate with each other and send messages to influence and regulate our thinking and all other systems throughout the body.

The main neurotransmitter affected by methamphetamine is dopamine. Dopamine is involved with our natural reward system. For example, feeling good about a job well done, getting pleasure from our family or social interactions, feeling content and that our lives are meaningful and count for something, all rely on dopamine transmission."

(Excerpt from The Methamphetamine FAQ.)

Definitely an interesting publication. Must have taken some heavy empirical studies to get all those 350 pages (!) of words and expressions down on paper...

Take a look-see for yourself: "Pundartugg, narkotikarelaterade slanguttryck".

Goth girl Nemi rocks your world!

One of the greatest comic characters in the world of Nordic comics right now has to be Norwegian Nemi, created by Lise Myhre. Nemi revolves around the thoughts and adventures of a goth girl. A whole lotta laffs guaranteed for the politically not so correct.

I really enjoy Nemi. She does the most unexpected things and certainly jokes about a lot of issues I can relate to.

I guess creator Lise Myhre (in the picture!) and I must be about the same age. ;)

Nemi has only existed for a few years but in my opinion it is already pretty well developed, consistent and mature.

And hilarious. A real riot.

Well worth a read. If you can get an album. Due to its tremendous popularity the two first albums are sold out.

Read more about Nemi at susning.nu (Swedish) or an interview with creator Lise Myhre at Swedish newspaper DN.

--- Addition: 16:58

Cristina told me about a recent article at Expressen.se: Not everybody likes Nemi. Ask Andres Lokko... ;)

Well, this could be sweet... WYSIWYG editing in Movable Type

Found a piece on the MT support forums about adding WYSIWYG editing in the Movable Type editor. Sure enough. A free download and a changed perl template later I have loads of buttons and gadgets in my editor.

Works like a charm. How did I do this? Check out the Wiki Knowledgebase.

So if this works allright I now should be able to

• make
• bulleted
• lists...

Make words fat, underlined or italic...

Center paragraphs...

Add links, and tables, and images, and... Yeah. Feels great. This will be a great help for editors not so knowledgeable in HTML.

This	is	a
table

I think I will upload my edited template to the MT Wiki. :)

Questions to check out first:

• What happens when I edit existing posts? Will they collapse since they don't contain HTML-code?
• Will the styles from the editor override my site styles? Probably...
• What happens with linebreaks in textarea? need to switch off Text Formatting by MT? Yes!

Them - Adventures with Extremists

Is there really a secret room somewhere from which a hidden elite rules the world? Are they perhaps known as The Bilderberg Group? How come so many of the different extremist organisations out there share common ideas? This book provides no clear answers, but a very interesting encounter with several of the questions and the people who are asking them...

Title: Them - Adventures with Extremists
Author: Jon Ronson
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 0-330-37546-6

I got this book as a gift, from a business acquaintance, who told me that I just had to read about the twelve feet alien lizards that rule the world. With a description like that, I just had to find out for myself what the heck this was all about...

Author and humorist Jon Ronson spent a few years with people and organisations labelled as "extremists" by others. In this book Jon Ronson describes the events he partook in and the people he met. The result is extremely entertaining and very informative.

Appearing in the book are such diverse characters as Omar Bakri Mohammed (point man for the islamic Holy War on Britain), a Ku Klux Klan leader, Ian Paisley and David Ickes among others. David Ickes is probably the most interesting person from a "wacko"-perspective: he believes that the semi-human descendants of evil extraterrestrial 12-foot-tall lizards walk among us and rule the world from a secret room somewhere.

In fact, the world being ruled by a small group from a secret room somewhere, is the theme that runs throughout the book. All the extremist organisations have this theme in common. Specifically, the secret group is named "The Bilderberg Group" and actually exist. But do they really rule the world?

Jon Ronson meets with all these extremists and sets a goal to find the secret room, to locate the ruling elite group, if they at all exist. He actually reaches that goal. He finds The Bilderberg Group and at the very end of the book he penetrates (rather easily I might add) the security around one of their not-so-secret yearly gatherings and participates in one of their "rituals".

This ia great book. Jon Ronson writes well, and describes the people and organisations with great sense of humour. Some of the stories are mindboggling, some makes you laugh your pants off (like the part about the Ku Klux Klan leader who does not allow his members to say the N-word...) and some are simply sad, sad stories about terrifying events that actually took place (the story about Randy Weaver and Ruby Ridge is well worth looking into in greater detail I think).

It is simply a "must read", great material to bring along on the summer vacation or to the beach.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743233212/qid=1052062504/sr=2-2/ref=sr_2_2/102-6525440-9957713

The day blogging went mainstream

Just read this article about William Gibson, where he talks about blogging. I didn't think about it before, but he points out that start of the war in Iraq as the day blogging went mainstream.

I guess he is right. It was about that date that several of my friends, and major newspapers, and even TV started mentioning people in Baghdad and elsewhere "blogging" about the war.

Guardian: Talk time: William Gibson

New book by Gibson: Pattern Recognition.

Read a review

A guy just called and asked questions about PhonoPhoto. Interesting.

Reclaim the city? Reclaim your brains!

Reclaim the city has had another party. This time in the financial centre of Stockholm, Stureplan. Result? Destruction, mayhem and chaos. It looks like the last night at Roskilde minus bands and fun. What's the point?

Making it even more tragic, they seem to be proud of it: http://www.motkraft.net/nyheter/816.

"Kungsgatan drabbades snart av konfrontationer med polismakten, som ogillade den nyvunna urbana allemansrätten. Samtidigt fortsatte övriga festen med dans, öl, fyrverkerier, musik och frivilliga fasadarbeten."

"Festdeltagarna såg sin chans att omforma det snobbiga Stureplan till något annat än vad det var: varor från några olika butiker expropierades och i villervallan gick fönster på några fina kontor sönder."

I would be slightly more understanding if the majority of yesterday's participants made a public apology (and offered to help clean up the mess, how is THAT for activism with the goal to reclaim public areas!) and differentiated themselves from the (hopefully few...) participants that actually created the chaos and threw rocks and bottles at the police. But no. Wallow in it. Feel proud. You reclaimed the streets and walls from the dangerous capitalist pigs!

Geez. You need to reclaim your life. And reclaim your so called "movement" from the hands of the houligans. Really. I guess I am getting old, but 13 year old kids shouldn't be throwing bottles at police officials. Not in Sweden anyways... Some parents need to reclaim their children. Perhaps, after all, the police need to reclaim their right to use tear gas and water cannons. And if that is the outcome of these "parties", a more readily violent police force, what have you accomplished?

If this is the movement Naomi Klein is so proud of, she obviously needs a reality check.