Cobwebs and Rainbows, Round 3

Web 3.0. Like 2.0, but meaningful and integrated (as opposed to unqualified punyformats and mess-ups). And sensible (whatever that means.. "think Scandinavian Ajax" — to cite my boss at V.).

I'll be damned if that revolution won't finally take us from the information age to the knowledge age. Of course, this would mean yet another technological shift — one I've been longing for for a long time. Let's see (disregarding "Enterprise Web X" here; sorry Java and whatNot- uhm.. dotNet):

Web 1.0

Perl + random flatfiles and some raw SQL (websafe black, white and blue)

Web 1.5

PHP + SQL (off-black on white, green and blue hues, some orange)

Web 2.0

Rails + generated SQL (pink on white, huge fonts, lots of attitude — think adolescence)

Web 3.0

Python + RDF (color is not an issue)

Or I'll die trying. Truly. Die. Trying. (Well at least I may end up drinking as much in my thirties as I did in my twenties. Cheers.)

Then for 4.0, I suppose fully OWL-enabled reasoners and modernized but still brutal OCaml could be fun.

[I'm not utterly serious here, but a bit. Please don't take too much offense.]

Ode To Keepers of Yaks

I am the Yak Shaver
The digression gangsta
I cannot concentrate-ah
I'm living it badd *word it up*

[there would be more verses but right now I'm off to a bookstore shopping for synonym books in urban language - on the way of course realizing I should order one online and become occupied by downloading the latest Opera to my phone so I can view the online shops better - then realizing my battery is low and divert to an electronics shop to get an USB recharger - all in due course for my promising career as a lyricist of course]

The art of Yak Shaving must never be lost to the world. It's my way of life (do the detriment of any spare time of course).

Fvyyl Indeed

Oh. My. God. I had no idea.

From now on, I shall only do pynff-based OO. Or BB, as it were.

#!/usr/bin/env python
#-*- coding: rot13 -*-

qrs whfg_n_fvyyl_rknzcyr():
   cevag "Bu, ubj fvyyl guvf vf.".qrpbqr('rot13')

vs __anzr__ == '__main__':
   riny('just_a_silly_example')()

Yes, it runs fine. Try it. (Note: in Vim you can use g? on selected text. Just so you know.)

It Didn't End at Betelgeuse

Since I'm not in space (well..), I guess my screams can be heard. Looking at this relative size comparison of celestial bodies, I find it quite sublime when Betelgeuse zooms into view. Then at the end, staring in disbelief at the Cephei gargantuans, I feel something of the numbness of overloaded awe.

By means of Wikipedia it seems at least the Cephei stars produce carbon at the end of their cycle. Then they will eventually fall into themselves becoming a very much present nil in space. Habitat of outer cephalopods and whatnot. Since they are carbon progenitors, such things were probably also our own primordial origin, sickenlingly long ago.

I like awe. Without it, how can one have a clue?

Oort To Got Itself Updated

Version 0.3.1 of Oort is out, with some fixes, cleanup and new stuff. See the release history for details. (Also, note that Oort now resides at http://oort.to/).

I've been using RDF a lot lately (in work with legal information for the swedish government), which gave me opportunity for more real-life testing of this toolkit. I hope you find it of value too.

The base technologies of Oort — RDFLib, Genshi and Paste — have gotten updates lately too. Be sure to check them out.

Scala Genau!

Scala. Having heard about it for a while (and since I already indulge some in functional programming language explorations from time to time), I decided to check it out a little closer. I saw some stuff on Google Video too. It looks pretty smart. Perhaps even so nice that stuff like Jython, JRuby, Rhino (js) and Groovy (how you doin'?) could seem a little less of an obvious "next step". (And I've been using Jython to alleviate the pains of Java The Language for years..) Now, that sentiment is likely a result of my recent interest in OCaml though, so take it with a pinch of salt. But if the main man behind it can use it to Pimp my Library, I mean.. sweet. And, oh, seriously.. If this doesn't sell it, I can't say what would:

Our P+R department has recommended we popularize our language with a charts-compatible techno-dance-trance song.

So they did: "Scala - genau!"

That made my Saturday.

Alas, There is No Escape

I ought to resign my other programming language explorations and let my sanity be sapped by this: Lovecraft.

Now, should there not be an abundant amount of semicolons in that language? And of course endless oneliners with meaning conveyed through arcane convolutions of expression; going on and on like some overzealously nested functional language programming style where the meaning must not be divided into parts for the sake of avoiding stilted repetition and unrythmic stanzas of short bursts of statements — or am I wrong perhaps, ignorant of the truth behind the veils and not knowing what I say to thee?