• Most of my major writing tasks are done. I still have one work related writing gig to do about XML at Microsoft which probably could benefit from getting input from regular developers/IT folk about what they'd like to see in such an article.

  • On a more fun note, I've outlined a paper called What is Object Oriented Programming? and have lined up a few folks from school to take a look at it. I'd also like to get some K5 people to review it once I actually start putting pen to paper. I thought about emailing trhurler, codemonkey_uk, ucblockhead, tmoertl, and jacob but then realized I might miss some other people who've provided good feedback in the past and decided to just ask for reviewers in my diary. So if you'd be interested in reviewing the first draft of this paper post below with contact email and I'll add you to my list of potential reviewers. I plan to submit it as a K5 story when done.

  • Tagata Jinja is a Japanese fertility festival that is chock full of sculptures of giant phalluses. Self conscious doesn't even begin to describe how I'd feel if I attended the festival in person.

  • In a 24 hour period around Thanksgiving Day Slashdot editors posted six duplicate stories. Even for them that most be some sort of record. One of the replies in that thread also talks about stories that end up getting posted three times instead of the usual two. I've seen this before as well. Slashdot ran at least three versions of my interview with Miguel ( 1, 2, 3).

  • I saw The Spy Who Loved Me and The Man With The Golden Gun over the holidays. I was reminded as to why I disliked GoldenEye so much. Golden Eye completely broke from what I considered staples of James Bond cinematic tradition. In the Roger Moore and Connery days Bond used to average three chicks a movie and would use every gadget Q gave him no matter how ridiculous (In From Russia With Love even a suitcase booby trapped with talcum powder and 20 gold coins ended up getting used). Contrasted with the politically correct, chaste and product placement filled Bond that was GoldenEye I decided to take a hiatus from watching Bond. Without Bond laying the mack down and using all sorts of outlandish gadgets then its just another action movie with bad puns. Have I missed anything in the intervening movies?

  • Browsing Gordon Weakliem's blog I spied an entry about comments on my recent XSD article. Always being one to seek out feedback I checked out the blog post on codaland he referenced. Unfortunately instead of useful critical feedback all I saw was a flamebait ad hominem comment and a rant about how XSD sucks. This was dissappointing given that I would have loved to respond to critical feedback about the article since everyone whose given me feedback about it has either really liked it or hasn't read it beyond the introduction.

  • Does anyone out there have the September Issue of Web Services Journal? Or are there any subscribers to their online content? I answered some questions they sent to me a while ago which got turned into a Point/CounterPoint with someone named Mark Herring. A quick Googling for "Mark Herring" and XML comes up with Mark Herring, Director of Marketing for Sun[tm] ONE Studio. I'm very curious as to what eventually got published.
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