They aren't mathematically eliminated.

Going into the last week of the season, the Texas Rangers aren't yet mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.

I don't even know where to start. I will say that I'm saddened that watching the Angels game on local TV showed just how empty the Ballpark is. I know, I know. The Cowboys were on Monday Night Football. But, come on? They have a chance and it's the last week!

All I can say is thanks for the wonderful season. I never expected this, but perhaps I should have. Wow, and Yay! Let's hope they pull it out...

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What would I do with $1,000?

Watched the Benefactor tonight. It's Mark Cuban's latest idea (vehicle?). Cuban gets tons of brownie points for resurrecting my poor Mavs from the era of Quinn Buckner. On that alone, I'll watch his show...

Anyway, in last night's episode, he gave the contestants $1,000 and said, "Be a star." So, I asked myself, "What would I do?" with the additional caveat that I'd need to go outside of my 'comfort zone.'

There are two things that completely scare the crap out of me. Well, actually one. It's selling myself. It's something I've never been quite comfortable doing. And, perhaps $1000 free-and-clear would give me enough confidence to go out and sell who I am in both my professional and personal life.

Or not. It's not like it'll happen. (See, that's what I mean.)

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Perhaps there's a need for my research after all.

Bill de Hora said (via Steve Loughran):

"The most advanced thinking that doesn't involve throwing out the Web is probably Rohit Khare's PhD thesis, which suggests an "eventing", or push style extension to the Web model. An early example of this approach where the server calls back to the connected client instead of the client initiating each time, called mod_pubsub is available as open source. One of HTTP's designers, Roy Fielding, is rumoured to be working on a new protocol, that could feature support for easing of the load on servers."

Oh, wait, I know those guys. Oh, yah, that's my research group! Wait, that's my research!

My only comment is that I'm not involved with Atom as much as I have could have been, but I definitely am well aware of MONITOR and WATCH extensions that both Rohit and Roy have proposed. (My interest isn't the syndication aspect, but in the protocol.) They both solve the same problem, but in markedly different ways.

My current endeavor is bringing the current generation of Serf up-to-speed as an extensible HTTP library. Once that's in place, I plan to use it as a platform for writing a new protocol engine for httpd. But, alas, I want to go about it the right way.

One side note that I think bears on this discussion: I haven't seen a lot of use of conditional GETs by the feed aggregators. They seem to be remarkably behind-the-times on this. It's an easy way to save bandwidth. But, yes, a notification system like as described in MONITOR or WATCH is what is ultimately needed. I don't think anyone who seriously spends time doing this stuff thinks otherwise. However, there are 'right' ways to do this. Ideally, Apache HTTP Server can help lead the way on deploying such a solution the 'right' way.

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The obligation of Tikkun Olam

Three years ago today, I was visiting Georgia Tech. I was supposed to fly to visit Carnegie Mellon that afternoon. I had just checked out of my hotel at about 8:45 that morning and stowed my baggage with the bellhop when I saw the television in the lobby.

Well, you can figure out what I saw on television.

It took me until Friday to get back home to Southern California. I didn't make it out to Pittsburgh until the following April. The professor I was to visit at CMU was en route from London and was diverted to Newfoundland (where he stayed for a few days). Not to mention one of the three planes crashed in Pennsylvania.

For those days when I was stranded, I'll never forget the kindness of those people at Georgia Tech who put me, a relative stranger as a propsective PhD student, up not knowing how long I'd be there. If I ever have the chance to repay that generosity to anyone in similar straits, I will certainly do so.

And, perhaps that's a lesson to learn while we look back and wonder how we can repair the world - tikkun olam.

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Tell Adobe to bring FrameMaker back to OS X!

Participate in an Adobe Survey on FrameMaker. As someone who has been addicted to Frame for a number of years now and uses a Mac, I'd strongly suggest that all Mac OS X users tell Adobe that you want to see FrameMaker brought back to OS X as a native app. The survey runs until September 10th, so act now!

I can't even express how happy that'd make me. FrameMaker is so superior to Word, it isn't even funny. As a writer, FrameMaker just makes intuitive sense and there still aren't any comparable solutions out there. (KWrite with KDE comes close, but still isn't really a viable option.)

More info on FM on Mac: How to influence Adobe.

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