Monday, August 18, 2008

Embarked on a Historic(al) Publishing Adventure

Sometimes fun turns out to be a lot of work.

I have always had an interest in History. In school, all my elective classes were history classes. I love that whole karmic one thing leads to another flow of events that brought us from there to here to who knows where next.

Of course, in my life, everything usually comes back to the web, and so it is with history. I recently discovered that the great science fiction writer, H.G. Wells, also wrote a marvelous tome of the history of the world, entitled (creatively) The Outline of History. I also discovered that, although the book is in the public domain, the only text of it available on the web is a sort of unfinished OCR scan. Being a history fan, and an H.G. Wells fan, and a web developer, I obviously could not let that stand.

And so I have begun a long term project to edit together a web version of the book. This mostly entails doing some cutting and pasting, and a whole lot of trips to Wikipedia to verify spellings of archaic terms and the names of obscure kings. At any rate, the publishing of The Outline of History, Online Edition has begun. One article at a time, I will be editing and posting the entire contents of the book. It's going to take months to get it all out, and the project is eating huge amounts of my spare time. But it's so much fun!

Friday, June 6, 2008

Finally created my "me" page!

Although I have been on the web for more than a decade, I've never really had a page that was just about me. Until NOW! Mwah-ha-ha-ha! (Okay, so I'm not an evil mastermind, I can still practice the laugh. You never know.)

The All About Vince page is a collection of "inputs and outputs", things I read (or hear or watch) and things I write. At the moment, it's almost entirely composed of Javascript or Flash widgets that pull in me-data from various ports of call on the web. So far I've covered my delicious bookmarks, my Amazon wishlist, and most importantly, thanks to Google's Feed API and their swank FeedControl, all of my blogs.

There's plenty more I want to add, but the page is a Work In Progress (just like me :).

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Turned off my link splicer

If you've been subscribing to the What Vince Did Feed (you're probably the only one) to get my tasty link list, you're about to get disappointed. I have removed the link splicer from my FeedBurner feed, so you won't be seeing them here anymore.

Of course if you really want them, you can go directly to the source, my bookmark feed is here. It's just that I'm starting to build a tool that combines my feeds in various ways, and having all my links show up twice is a bit unpretty. More on the mythical feed project later, after it's launched.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Came out of hiding - mumba zuzu!

After more than three months of doing nothing but $work and (very little) sleep, I have finally emerged and re-engaged with the tiny pieces of my tiny world. (Hello World!)

I made a post over at Webquills on hash slices that I've been itching to write, because I use the things so much and I don't see them around much elsewhere.

I also dropped a note on Media Brothers about my latest muse. Kate Voegele's music has helped keep me pumped for coding through those long nights of sore eyes and tired fingers. Thanks Kate!

Also I received three emails in one day with the subject line "mumba zuzu". I have no idea what it means, but it's so fun to say that it has become my mantra this week! Say it with me now: MUMBA ZUZU!! See, isn't that fun? :)

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Discovered REAL ultimate power!

See, this is why I will never be cool (and by cool, I mean totally sweet). I'm just not plugged in to the Jungian collective subconscious. Somehow, until today I managed never to hear about real ultimate power, an Internet experience apparently so powerful and popular that it has been parodied to apply to programmers and bald Britney.

I'm going to crawl back under my rock now. Wake me at the Apocalypse.

On second thought, don't.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Made PerlBuzz!

W00t! My Webquills.net article on choosing a perl template system got linked from my favorite Perl site, PerlBuzz. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

It's funny, that article started out as just a quick little "here's what I do" note, and ended up a 1,500 word comparison of various templating systems in Perl. I'm pretty sure this is the first person to link to Webquills.net who isn't me. Maybe I'll get a little traffic now.