Focus Pocus

A belly-laugh can SO brighten a gloomy day

2007/09/21 10:24:08.350 GMT+2

"Every time they introduce some new, crippled standard the industry kind of looks away in embarrassment, like Sony is the oafish guy at the party who is parked in front of the meatballs tray eating directly from the dish." Great writing from: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2007/09/iphone-ipod-contain-or-disengage.html

My Amazon Wish-List

2007/07/18 10:10:49.863 GMT+2

So do you want to buy me something? What? No? Unthinkable! :-) Just in case, here is my current Amazon Wish list. Wonderfully eclectic, I think it represents who I would like to be very well.

Do you have my dongle? (dingle-dangle)

2007/06/19 17:21:54.114 GMT+2

At the London Hackday last weekend, I forgot my Macbook Pro external video display dongle on-stage. After the event was over I went to collect it, and a friendly staff member waved something white at me asking: "Is this what you were looking for?". I gratefully grabbed it and high-tailed it out of there.

Problem is, it is the wrong one. I need a DVI->VGA (it has a wide plug on the one end) and this one has a small plug on the other end, so someone else has the same problem as me, but reversed.

Do you have my dongle? What a nice word, BTW. If so, please get in touch with me, maybe we can snail-mail an exchange.

flickrapi.py using JSON

2007/06/17 17:53:18.826 GMT+2

As part of my effort for Hackday London, I have modified the flickrapi.py module to use JSON format calls in stead of XML. If this is interesting to you, please give me a shout. The plan is also to extend it to work better with Web authentication, it is very much geared towards Desktop mode at the moment.

Presentation Stress

2007/06/17 17:04:31.738 GMT+2

So, I have just finished my presentation at Hackday London. Cannot remember a single thing that I said! My stress levels shot through the roof when I realised that my screen was not set up mirror the display, but I had two screens. Turning around to try and navigate AND speak into the microphone is impossible. Furthermore I had sent a wrong URL to the hack registrations, linking directly to the source in stead of an explanatory page.

Oh, bugger.

At least the weekend wasn't a waste, as we now have a very useful Greasemonkey script to add ICONCLASS machine tags to Flickr images. Will still come in very useful in the future. I need to finish the authentication part, but at least the display part is working at this point.

To see it in action, start with this pic, or try and do a search for images tagged with ICONCLASS machine tags on Flickr.

London Hackday - Folksonomies Reloaded

2007/06/13 13:10:13.199 GMT+2

This coming weekend I will be in London for the Yahoo/BBC Hackday. Very excited about this, and really looking forward to making some good stuff.

I am planning on making a connection between the ICONCLASS thematic classification and Flickr machine tags, and if time allows throwing in a Greasemonkey script to make it all come together. Even though I am raring to go on this, have to restrain myself to not start already to stay with the spirit of things. (and day-job and kids also help in the time-slurping to stop me from spending too much time on other things)

Anyone else interested in Cultural Heritage computing, image database, classification systems (folksonomies), machine tags, microformats, semantic web-ish stuff, please give me a shout.

My eerste Potgooi

2007/06/08 17:00:57.342 GMT+2

And in the spirit of getting acts together, herewith my first potgooi. Of course it doesn't quite qualify as a Podcast, for technical reasons. And a large part of the world can't understand WTF I am saying because I speak Afrikaans. But it is mostly just testing at this point.

Many dead fishes

2007/06/08 10:10:25.915 GMT+2

It has been waaaaay long since I have posted anything here.

Part of the reason is because I have been meaning to switch over to Wordpress or roll my own Markdown/Genshi/Python/Atom solution. If you do not strike while the iron is hot, nothing gets done of course.

I will be going to Yahoo Hackday in London on the 16th June, so this could inspire me to get my act together and report on what happens there.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

2006/09/27 23:44:13.168 GMT+2

I have been allowed into the Beta program, (probably along with the rest of the world) and I haven't been so exited by some technology for AGES. The possibilities are making my head spin round and round. This will be SO useful it is just not funny. Especially since I recently visited a business partner who had questions about server availibility, backups etc.

Die kraaie gaap

2006/07/28 11:00:26.810 GMT+2

Dis die warmste Julie in mense heugenis hier in die Nederlande.

Nou die dag sit ek en Andrew in die tuin en rus na 'n groot inspanning. Ons was hard aan die werk en het lafenis gesoek en ons handewerk beskou. Daar is min dinge so lekker soos 'n koue bier na 'n enorme swoeg en sweet sessie. As daar nog 'n tuinslang sproeier sy fonteintjie heen en weer beweeg dan is die saligheid kompleet.

Duskant ons het die hele dag al 'n klein kraai-wyfie rondgespring en wurms gejaag wat uit ons gegrawery te voorskyn gekom het. Sy was erg mak, en het nie weg gevlieg as on nader gekom het nie. En haar bek was so snaaks wyd oop. Wonder ons maar of sy siek was, en toe tref dit my: "Dis so warm dat die kraaie gaap!". Maar of course. Dis waar die uitdrukking vandaan kom, en hier het ons die bewys in lewende lywe.

Ek like taal. :-)

En vir mense wat meer wil weet, is 'n goeie sleutelwoord om in Google te gaan soek: gular flutter