Sunday, December 14, 2003

I added ETag and If-None-Match support to mainResponder.respond on Monster2. Is that enough jargon? Do you care? Well, it makes Scripting load faster, and it will lower my bandwidth bill, and I'm giving it to UserLand so they can give it to Frontier users (after a thorough burn-in). But basically it brings my server into the Modern Age of HTTP 1.1 in an important way.  

Every category page on Scripting News now has a white-on-orange XML icon. This means you can subscribe to a single category of Scripting News. You could also use one of my feeds, in combination with other feeds, to create a "mega-blog" on a given topic. For example, here's my category for Joe Lieberman and here's the feed. I don't write very much about him, but when I do, I route it to this category. It's conceivable that with three or four other people we could do a reasonable job of blogging his candidacy, and (key point) never have to "go" anywhere to do it. That way I can stay with a hot story like the capture of Saddam Hussein, and still make a contribution to the hypothetical Lieberman weblog. 

Jeff Jarvis says the latest news is breaking Lieberman's way. I agree. Dean shouldn't have taken the Gore endorsement. Big mistake.  

I bought another electronic toy today, a Sony thing that plugs into the cassette player in my car, on one end, and plugs into the headphone jack on my Rhomba on the other. So on a drive earlier today I was able to listen to a report on NPR and record it at the same time. And of course now my MP3 music collection is available on my car stereo. I call this feeling Living In The Future -- in the sense that I've always known that in the future I'd be listening to the same music in my car as on my desktop. I could have done this a while ago, but now I'm actually doing it. I also bought a Microsoft notebook mouse. It's very very sweet. A tiny little thing. 

Dan Gillmor: "China is adopting open-source software in a big way." 

Mike Clough: "The Gore endorsement may spur the party's ardent centrists to rally more openly behind Wesley Clark, the candidate who most closely matches the centrists' profile of an electable candidate: a strong-on-defense, progressive Southerner. This is especially likely if, as many observers believe, Clark is the preferred choice of the party's chief centrist, former President Bill Clinton." 

Weather update: The snow just started, and the heat is back on. Getting ready to dig out when the storm is over, in about 24 hours or so. 

BBC images document the capture of Saddam. 

Comments: "If you could decide his fate, would you put him in jail for life like Noriega, or put him to death, or create a special punishment for him, one that fits his crimes?" 

BBC: "Ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured by US forces in Iraq, the coalition says." 

NY Times: "Officials said they had used DNA tests to confirm his identity." 

CNN: "The arrest came with little or no resistance, a U.S. military official in Washington said Sunday. He was with a small group of aides who also were taken into custody, the official said." 

Bremer: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him." 

A spider hole is a disguised entrance to a tunnel used by the Vietcong. 

I recorded the press conference. A couple of caveats before you download the 4MB file. I began the recording about fifteen minutes into the event. Second, it's a WAV file. Haven't figured out yet how to convert to MP3. 

JY Stervinou sends a pointer to SOX, an open source Swiss Army Knife for sound files. 

A special category for news about the capture of Saddam Hussein. 

Plea for sympathy. The heater went out last night, the coldest night so far. I'm shivering waiting for the stores to open to go buy a couple of space heaters. It's above freezing in the house, barely. :-( 

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