The Stream

W3C has formed the Web APIs Working Group, as a part of the Rich Web Client Activity for client-side Web Application development. Some interesting to me deliverables are the following:

• An API specification for HTTP functionality.

  This generally means standardizing and hopefully improving the XMLHttpRequest interface. The current interface is very limited, imperfect, and yet not widely implemented.

• An API specification for persistent storage on the client.

  Cookie is an opaque piece of data held by an intermediary. Cookies are small, maximum 4kB od data per cookie including an opaque string. So of course, retrieving and caching data for rich web clients is currently very difficult and limited. This way it is also impossible for a Web application to work offline. This has to be changed.

• An API specification for drag and drop.

  Rich web clients must provide robust, interactive user interfaces. Drag and drop is a common mechanism used on desktops everywhere. Implementing it in Web application is nowadays tricky and requires a master knowledge of JavaScript, DOM, and CSS.

Other interesting areas:

• An API specification for a client interface (the Window object).
• The DOM Level 3 Events specification (in coordination with a future DOM IG/WG).
• An API specification for timed events.
• API specifications for other network communication methods.
• The DOM Level 3 XPath specification (in coordination with the DOM IG/WG).
• An API specification for monitoring the progress of resources as they are downloaded.
• An API specification for file upload.

My recent trip to New York City ;-).

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Nick Mason's Visit to Warsaw

Nick's signing my copy of Inside Out.

Photo Gallery

New keyboard shortcuts depending on context: n -- next photo, p -- previous photo, u -- up one level, t -- top (gallery index). Happy browsing.

Google Reader -- an online news aggregator. In my opinion it's really poor, especially when comparing to C... err, some readers will know what I mean ;).

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Fun with new hardware, no fun with recent linux kernels

After buying new hardware, I of course decided to start using it immediately. First of all, I repartitioned the disk and installed Fedora Core 4. The installation process went smoothly, except that the 915GM Express chipset was not fully detected by X11R6.8.2. By default, only VESA video was available, so using for instance MPlayer was a pain. Fortunately, this chipset is backward compatible and choosing i810 is the solution. There is also no problem with 1280x800 display. Next, I configured all my daily programs and copied all stuff from the old disk (by using CD-R and 256MB USB flash drive). After successful FC4 installation, I upgraded several packages, including the Linux kernel from 2.6.11 to 2.6.12 (and a few days later to 2.6.13). And then the disk performance decreased drastically. This is quite interesting because with 2.6.12 my hard drive is being seen as a SCSI device (/dev/sda) and with 2.6.13 as /dev/hda. This slight difference wouldn't matter if in the latter case my buffered disk read was not 2 MB/sec! With 2.6.12 the result is ~30 MB/sec. I'm not sure, but I think this should be a little bit more. dmesg shows:

Linux 2.6.12:

Linux 2.6.13:

weird...

Obviously, I had no doubt to not use 2.6.13 or any later until this is fixed. The rest seems to be okay. USB 2.0 works very nice with my camera and flash drive, also an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG has been successfully detected (with the firmware from ipw2200). I haven't used it in practice, but NetworkManager Applet is able to detect some local private wireless networks, so I guess it's okay. Uhm, and I don't see where or how can I suspend-to-disk or suspend-to-RAM my system. I look forward to seeing this features.

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Today's interesting read: When to Leave That First Tech Job.

Internet Operating System

I guess this is a direction which future operating systems will take in the next 10-25 years... perhaps GoogleOS ;).

• From Websites to Internet Operating Systems
• NetKernel -- Service Oriented MicroKernel and XML Application Server
• NetKernel Tour
• Introducing NetKernel

An interesting study: The Effects of Line Length on Children and Adults, Online Reading Performance.

It has been 30 years since the original release of Wish You Were Here, for me the greatest album ever. Now I'm looking forward to seeing the SACD release, which is coming soon.

Quake 3: Arena Source GPL'ed. It's fun to read such a complex source code :).

Back from 10 days vacation. It was my first vacation since I got a job. No computers, no internet, just relaxing.

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I love thunder and lightnings. This photo was taken today at 3:20 am.

I just found a funny online comic strip called Everybody Loves Eric Raymond. It is about Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds who for some unknown reason live together in a flat ;). The first episode is here.

Cell Architecture Explained, Version 2 article by Nicholas Blachford.

Today I opened my first own shop, Sunny Shop at CafePress.com :D. Music Makes Me Happy is my first product.

G8 Disappointment or Progress?

» Mixed reaction over Blair G8 deal
» Half full or half empty?
» Government defends G8 aid boost
» G8 Summit 2005, In Depth

Part V

Tai Vo's China Photo Gallery, Randurian' HK Roads Photo Gallery, Jimmy Koo's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Tom Jackson's Hong Kong 70s & 80s Photo Gallery, Ross' Hong Kong Photo Gallery, gchong2426's China 2004 Photo Gallery, Howard Sheard's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, William Bina's China Photo Gallery, Ted Ch's Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Eddie Cheung's Photo Gallery, hclphoto's Central, Hong Kong Photo Gallery, Jongky Kurniawan's Guilin - Yangshuo Photo Gallery.

EU Says No To Software Patents!

The battle has been won, but not the war. Keep that in mind. Anyway, this is a very good news today.

Wow, Bob, It Was Huge!

I think, Live 8 is now concerned as the greatest show on Earth ever. 10 concerts, 150 artists, a million spectators, 2 billion viewers, and 1 message: To get those 8 men, in that 1 room, to stop 30,000 children dying every single day of extreme poverty. Now let's wait for the Final Push! Read What to do (even if you can't make it to Edinburgh in person). Visit www.makepovertyhistory.org.

Pink Floyd's Reunion

Yesterday was a unique day :). Not only because of Live 8, but also because it was the day of Pink Floyd's reunion. It was their first concert together in over 24 years. They played Breathe, Money, Wish You Were Here, and Comfortably Numb. It was great! Unfortunately, I couldn't be there in person to see this amazing event, but I watched it on TV, and even took some photos! Check out my special gallery.

Google

New stuff: Personalized Search, Video Search, and Google Earth. Unfortunately, the last two are currently only available for MSucks Windows (in other words: useless to me). Moreover, Google Maps has hugely expanded the areas of the world that it covers with satellite imagery.

There is a theory, called Six degrees of separation, that anyone on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. Based on this theory, there is a party game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which requires a group of players to connect any film actor to Kevin Bacon in as few links as possible. I have noticed that a more general Six Degrees of ..., has recently become very popular at the Internet Movie Database. I once even participated in this game. Finally, check out the Oracle.

Totally awesome!

Well, look at this: JS/UIX, a UNIX-like OS for web-browsers, written entirely in JavaScript. My jaw has hit the floor. Incredible!

I recently discovered The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project, which is based on the idea of creating a machine-readable social networks. Thus, using FOAF RDF, one can describe oneself, things one does, creates, people one knows, etc. I like this idea, so I have decided to create my own FOAF file and make it publicly available.

Current distractions: Roger Waters - In the Flesh (Live) and Roger Waters - The Wall - Live In Berlin. Both highly recommended.

If you are interested in web programming, take a look at my wild mix of XML, XSLT, XML Schema, CSS, and the result! Just notice the client-side, interactive column sorting through XSLT and my quite portable processXML.js. Drop me a line if you find it useful.