15 Jun 2006 lkcl   » (Master)

web sites

ajax - the lovely, lovely ajax. _why_ is it that gmail in "standard html" mode is quicker than the already-bloatware "ajax" version??

due to the use of thread-local-storage (tls.py) which my friend found, i can now associate a database connection object with each thread.

the combination of tls.py, mod_python, ajax, CSS style-sheets results in a web site with _insane_ response time. a quarter of a second i now consider to be SLOW.

given that the content is, in a lot of cases, dynamically generated, that's just... staggering.

flame wars and focus

halcy0n, thank you for pointing out what happened with gentoo. i am giving a talk at UKUUG entitled "Linux: state of play" and it is aimed, basically, at a modern-geek-version of the parable of the talents (without the religious bullshit: just the parable).

in essence, and here i agree with the other person who sympathised with you and mentioned "scratching someone else's itch", we are techies: we _can_. other people _cannot_. it is therefore our DUTY to help others.

fuck this "i'm going to do it because i can and because it will help ME" shit.

you _are_ able to help others with your skills - therefore you _should_ help others.

remember that.

oh. and be very very sorry for every time that you deliberately obstructed progress and wasted time which could have been spent helping others.

free software ethos

my basic ethos, when deciding what to do, is "how can i spend as little effort in the shortest amount of time achieving the most for as many people for the longest time?"

that basically means that you have to _think_ about your design, _think_ about where the best compromises are between maintenance and initial development time.

it encapsulates everything that a real free software programmer should aspire to - and there's only _one_ mention of "i" in it - and it's how can *I* help *OTHERS*.

poems

Star Dawn Rising - i recently posted this as a warning to some people who were blatantly cruel for no other reason than that they didn't want to listen.

what surprises the hell out of me is that nearly every person who reads this poem on allpoetry.com writes a comment about it. the expected response rate is about 20%: nearer to 90% is somewhat excessive.

i _got_ to get it translated into chinese.

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