Weblog index

  • Are all FriendFeed bindings outdated?

    Is it just me or are most language bindings for the FriendFeed API mostly outdated? I've now looked at the official ones for Python, PHP and C# as well as two for Java and none of them offers the extended search facilities provided by the API , e.g. the domain search or the URL fetcher. The "real-time"-methods are nowhere to be seen, either. And if you want to at the missing functionality to some of the Java bindings, you end up running into the private-method-wall -_-.

    So far I've only found one binding for Python (albeit not the official one) by Chris Lasher that supports at least the domain-search. (A new version of it is out now, btw. :D)

    On a side-note: If you write a binding for a language, (big, big, big) please make sure that it's easy to use. It doesn't really help if a PHP binding is not in PEAR, a Java binding is in no Maven2 repository or a Python binding is not on PyPI.

    2009/06/14 at 11:45:00

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  • Not Safe For Work HTML5

    Primary link: www.w3.org

    Some feature requests are awesome, some good, some are strange and some are just weird. I'm not yet sure where to put this request for HTML5 that proposes adding a <nsfw> ("not safe for work") tag into the language specification. While it definitely has more semantic meaning than adding a CSS-class "nsfw" into each relevant node, it in my opinion doesn't warrant its own tag. If you think it through, you would also have to create tags like <spoiler>, <shoppingcart> and <answer>.

    In a comment on Jeffrey Zeldman's blog Darcy Murphy suggested the use of rel="nsfw" which is probably a really good solution for links, but probably doesn't help with inline-content. There using a class is perhaps the best way also when it comes to semantics. In either case, native support within browsers as perhaps part of some profile systeme (plus some parental control) is required to make the whole idea useful.

    [via www.zeldman.com]

    2009/06/09 at 16:39:00

    2 comments

  • inFAMOUS

    When I first saw some longer gameplay footage of inFamous for the PS3 I thought: "Crackdown + shooting electricity from your hands? I'm in". But inFamous is more than just a simple iteration or only a slight improvement over the two-year-old Xbox360 game. And with its successor still far away, there was nothing holding me back on getting this one.

    Read more about "inFAMOUS" ...

    2009/06/08 at 00:17:00

    1 comments

  • Bus voll!

    Und wieder etwas gelernt: An einem Freitag sollte man nicht versuchen, den ÖBB-Bus von Graz nach Klagenfurt ohne Sitzplatzreservierung zu nehmen. Irgendwie hatte ich naiver Weise geplant, einfach mit dem Bus um 16:39 Uhr wieder nach Klagenfurt zu fahren und hatte nicht mit dem Ansturm gerechnet, der sich mir um 16:20 Uhr vor dem Bus bot. Zu dem Zeitpunkt hatte sich vorm Einstieg schon eine Gruppe von knapp 20 anderen Leuten versammelt, die alle noch in den ohnehin schon halbgefüllten Bus wollten. Der Fahrer konnte dann eigentlich nur mehr Leute mit Reservierung einsteigen lassen oder halt jene, die bereit waren, erster Klasse zu Fahren. Naja, zwei Stunden mehr Graz tut auch nicht weh, aber dann habe ich mir wenigstens eine Reservierung für den nächsten Bus geholt (der auch wieder in der zweiten Klasse zu rund 90% gefüllt war) ;-)

      2009/06/05 at 23:59:00

      0 comments

    • Ivy: A dependency manager for Java

      Primary link: ant.apache.org

      In whatever language you are programming you eventually end up in a situation where you are working with so many libraries that you need to manage them somehow. Up until a couple of days ago, I used Maven for this when dealing with Java. But Maven might be a bit more than what you normally want. It not only manages dependencies but also comes with its own project life-cycle management system. You can use Maven for compiling, testing, deploying, generating the documentation, publishing it on a website, and so on. But at least for me, all I normally want is a simple build system. If it has some nice extras, fine, but I don't really like to be forced in some kind of life-cycle management. So basically give me something like Make or Ant and then give me something that manages dependencies. This is more or less how I discovered Ivy.

      Read more about "Ivy: A dependency manager for Java" ...

      2009/05/31 at 23:08:08

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