Hmmm… I was all set to post up the H.P. Lovecraft ebooks tonight that were sent to me, but when double-checking the publication dates online I found this:
Please note that Lovecraft’s fiction is still considered to be under copyright by Arkham House, and any texts presently available on the web without their consent are in violation of that copyright.
Found this on The H.P. Lovecraft Archive. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so I’m holding off on posting the Lovecraft ebooks for now.
It was an utterly beautiful day today here in Central Oregon, right around 70 degrees and sunny all day. Raked some leaves, played with the kids outside, just gorgeous. And the best part is, I didn’t have to be stuck at work on the first nice day of the year :)
Coming up in the next day or two, some H.P. Lovecraft Palm Reader ebooks, four of his short stories. The cool part of it is they were created by someone else who wanted to donate them for hosting, Leandro Liñares. Once I’ve verified that the stories in question are in the public domain, I’ll have them posted. Stay tuned.
SharpReader is outta here. Last night’s crash wasn’t a fluke; after I downloaded the latest version and restored my feeds, I went back and added two Amazon feeds and sure enough, it crashed again. Turns out the URLs for Amazon’s feeds are too long for SharpReader to handle.
The worst part is, after last night’s second crash, SharpReader wouldn’t even start back up at all—not last night, not today, nothing. So, it’s gone and I’m done with it. Won’t be going back.
Right now I’m playing with FeedDemon. Seems pretty nice so far.
Grrr… SharpReader, the news reader I use to read RSS feeds, just crashed on me, and lost all my feeds—data and URLs. After I’d added four of the new Amazon feeds. Shit.
Oh, well. Fortunately, I had a recent backup of the OPML for my feeds, so I was able to get them back quickly.
Routed via Slashdot comes the story of the disposable paperboard computer, which can “can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data.” It even has a generous 32KB of memory.
After reading about this, I couldn’t help but thinking that we’ve already had disposable, paper-based computers around since, well, forever. It’s called pen and paper.
And hey, if you throw in one of those sweet old-school PeeChee folders (why the hell can’t I find a web page for those things?? Other than online school supplies lists, I mean), you’ve instantly upgraded: not only your storage capacity, but processing power because you’ve got all those conversion and multiplication tables and various references at your fingertips!
Another piece of news everyone pointed to yesterday: Amazon is now offering RSS feeds. A list of all their feeds can be found at the Amazon.com Syndicated Content page. Looks like they’re offering feeds for each top-level category in their hierarchy. The next logical step, of course, would be to offer a personalized RSS feed of your recommendations…
Forgot to point to this the other day: Opportunity finds evidence of water in Mars’ past. Probably you’ve all heard this by now, but it’s still incredible.
“Liquid water once flowed through these rocks. It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. “We’ve been able to read the tell-tale clues the water left behind, giving us confidence in that conclusion,” he said.
… Rasmus Lerdorf, that is, the creator and godfather of PHP. He’s got an article on the Oracle Technology Network titled “Do You PHP?” that’s definitely worth a read. Here’s a sample:
What it all boils down to is that PHP was never meant to win any beauty contests. It wasn’t designed to introduce any new revolutionary programming paradigms. It was designed to solve a single problem: the Web problem. That problem can get quite ugly, and sometimes you need an ugly tool to solve your ugly problem. Although a pretty tool may, in fact, be able to solve the problem as well, chances are that an ugly PHP solution can be implemented much quicker and with many fewer resources. That generally sums up PHP’s stubborn function-over-form approach throughout the years….
Despite what the future may hold for PHP, one thing will remain constant. We will continue to fight the complexity to which so many people seem to be addicted. The most complex solution is rarely the right one. Our single-minded direct approach to solving the Web problem is what has set PHP apart from the start, and while other solutions around us seem to get bigger and more complex, we are striving to simplify and streamline PHP and its approach to solving the Web problem.
The guy just oozes common sense. Here’s another bit about PHP that he wrote on the PHP-DEV mailing list about two years ago, one of my favorites that just sums up beautifully the philosophy of PHP:
The golden rules of PHP are to keep the WTF(*) factor low and the POTFP(**) factor high.
(*) What The Fuck
(**) Piss Off The Fewest People
No two ways about it: he’s one of my heroes.
I’ve been terribly lax lately in responding to my emails that are ebook requests. I’m awfully sorry about that; I’m responding to some tonight, but if you sent me a request for an ebook and haven’t heard back from me, I apologize.
