Beginning with the tempest and ending in tragedies : The First Folio, the first published collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, begins with The Tempest and ends with the tragedies.

Just in time for the Geekend, apotheon gives us his resolutions along with some history and pointers on the practice of making them. Plus some link-love for yours truly. Thanks, apotheon!

apotheon also clears up the distinction between round, square, and curly brackets — er, I mean parentheses, brackets, and braces. Another set of delimiters whose misnomer can piss me off are the so-called “angle brackets”. They’re “less than” and “greater than”, people!

Dave Rogers: “We see and believe what we want to see and believe.” That’s exactly what I see and believe — because it appeals to me.

What a brilliant yet simple extension to the idea of markup (thanks, Assaf). It’s not censorship, it’s information about the content, provided by the author. Further thoughts.

Today WebZappR picked up this post in its aggregated coverage of the “Why Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword” meme. Never heard of WebZappR? Neither had I. Google it and all you get are links to the site itself, or trackbacks from their blog. I tried searching on MakeYouGoHmm, KBCafe and even TechCrunch and got no results.

WebZappR appears to be yet another TechMeme/TailRank/Megite: aggregate related stories around memes. The about page states:

With all the webbuzz going around there is a need to filter the flood of information that is published every day in order to find what is really going on.

WebZappR is going to do exactly this. This project is dedicated to find a way to filter the information overload and provide you with the most valuable information in the internet. The WebZappR blog is part of a case study that utilizes various techniques to automatically filter the content in the internet and unlike a lot of other mashups provide you only with the best of it.

We do not want to provide you with a load of information we want to do all the zapping for you and only stop at the channels that provide the webcreme for the moment.

WebZappR’s goal is to create a symfony of the existing Services like digg, del.icio.us, youtube and various others and provide you with one single pick up point for your daily surfing cycle.

Sit back and relax while we channelize the internet for you and provide you with the creme de la creme of the world wide web.
The WebZappR Crew

The operative phrase appears to be “going to”. Not sure what a “symfony” is, either (other than the name of a PHP framework).

The emphasis here seems to be more on filtering than on aggregating. It will be interesting to see what this evolves into.

But I do appreciate the link-love. Even though they only included the main URL for my blog, not the URL of the post in question — and since they didn’t include the full text of that post, it’s unlikely that anyone would be able to read all of it. I’m fine with summarizing the post, in fact I prefer it — but the link should go directly to the full post. Obviously, their crawler (or whatever discovery mechanism they use) must have encountered the content on the main page, but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where to get the permalink to the specific text in question by examining the autodiscovered feed.

And do we really need another final “r” without the “e”? That’s soo 2006, yet they bring attention to the Lone R by capitalizing it.

Anybody from WebZappR listening? Can you fill us in on your vision? What will make you better than the other meme-trackers? In hard coin, not marketing-speak please. Features, algorithm, breadth of sources, etc.

Manual maximum: using your hands as numeric digits (ha), and composing their values with your fingers (thus counting in base 6), the maximum value you can represent is 55_base6, which is decimal 35. Unless you have more than two hands. Of course, you can count in base 7 if you suffer from hexadactyly.

Will someone please tell Microsoft that they have a problem? (thanks, Randy)

Butt dialing, and the voices that no one else hears.

Full disclosure. Maybe just a little too full.

Stu Savory discusses a ca. 1800 BCE Babylonian tablet that lists solutions for the Pythagorean theorem . The ancient Egyptians also knew about the right angle relationship between 3, 4, and 5, and used it in land surveys. Chances are, though, they didn’t understand the geometric theorem behind that relationship. My guess is the same was true of the Babylonians, especially given the minor errors in some of the numbers.

My daughter asked me just this morning “what happens when you dream?” Thinking about it, it is a pretty bizarre experience.

Better not link to this.

FWIW (popularity being only one measurement), here are the top ten posts for 2006 on Chip’s Quips (and for all time, since I started this blog last January), ranked by unique visitors, according to Google Analytics:

1. Tag cloud sidebar widget for WordPress, because my sidebar wasn’t long enough
2. Revolting peasant metaphor
3. “Share” should mean “share”, not “copy”
4. What does bear poop REALLY look like?
5. WordPressed for cache?
6. The vapour trail to clouds 2.0
7. Morphean morphology
8. Mammoth projects
9. RSS to e-mail services: feed me the meat (I don’t eat reptiles)
10. String theory of programming

I found it interesting that 4 of the top 6 (#1, #3, #5, and #6) concern widgets for WordPress.

#2 tied into the most widespread blog debate in which I have participated.

#4 answers a question that remains quite popular on Google, for some strange reason.

#7, #8, and #10 relate to software development.

Only #9 involved product reviews.

I’ve never been fond of New Year’s resolutions. When I see a deficiency in my life, I don’t need to wait to fix it on January 1st. I can wait for any date. Usually I let it slide right on through winter and into spring. So instead of listing resolutions, I’ll enumerate a few items I’ve already been working on (since sometime after last spring) that I hope to actually do something about in 2007 (or beyond), in no particular order:

1. Morning exercise. I did pretty well on my walks with Halley throughout the year until a few weeks ago. Then came the big snow storm, followed by the wind storm and the children’s winter break. When I don’t have to get the kids ready for school in the morning, it’s easy to rationalize sleeping in, and then suddenly I don’t have time for anything. Back to the regimen on Tuesday.
2. Alcohol. Daily. No, seriously, we’re going to knock off the wine for a while. Not so much because it’s a New Year as for the fact that it will be after New Year’s Eve, and we need a break. This whole holiday season we might as well have been shooting up ethanol. If in vino veritas, then we’re about to drown in veritas. As Jack Nicholson said, we can’t handle our truth — so there’ll be dry days ahead, not sure for how long. Then we’ll attempt moderation again. “Again” referring to “attempt”, BTW.
3. Transparency, honesty, openness, and all that crap. If you have to talk about it, you aren’t doing it — which is why it’s on this list.
4. Money. More cash is always nice, as long as I can sell service instead of soul.
5. Doing more of what I love. As long as I don’t run number 4 down to zero. Blogging. Reading great books. Getting to know great bloggers. Writing. Creating free software. Learning new things.
6. Spending time with my family. Almost too much of that lately. Nah, you can’t get too much of that.
7. More time alone with my wife. Anyone know a good babysitter on Bainbridge Island? I’m probably asking the wrong crowd …

How about you? What are you working on, or planning to start working on, as we enter the 2007th year after the backwards-projected, imaginary beginning of our current calendar?

“Resolution” is from the Latin stem resolvere (“loosen”). It became applied to the act of solving a problem by reducing it to its parts. As such, it could also refer to the final decision in a meeting — the manner in which the question was resolved. The habit of making such decisions final led to “resolution” taking on the meaning of “holding firmly” — the opposite of its original, alternative meaning. So which way will it be for you?

Sweetness: Walter Payton, the famous running back for the Chicago Bears who wore #34, was nick-named “Sweetness”.

Turns out honesty is the best policy. Who knew?

If it isn’t interesting to some people, then where do the page views come from? You can police your own domains, but please don’t try to “clean up” the Internet. We’re not China, and we don’t want to be. Besides, I enjoy Randy’s posts.

I hear you, Seth.

IMHO, there is little question that humans have evolved. We are not the same creatures we were even a hundred years ago. The question is: has it been for the better? Answer: define “better”.

Phil Factor provides his automated prophesies for your new year. Written in SQL. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just inspect the liver of a goat or something, Phil?

I’m always up for some handy neologisms. I especially like “Google delay” and “lateroluddite”.

No stealing the mellow! Anyway, mellow has an infinite number of sources, especially if you’re willing to take risks.

Ha, Doc, I scored 60! I’ll keep talking if I want to.

Funny how you never realize a person’s worth until they’re gone (via Scoble).

In fact, death can improve just about anyone (thanks Armchair Anarchist).

I’m really gonna miss good ole Marmaduke.

Lager legend : Rolling Rock beer has the mysterious number 33 printed on the back of the label, due originally to a communication error.

Joseph responds to my tag on the infamous and insuppressible “five things” meme.

How come I never discovered Dave Rogers before yesterday (via Shelley)? Screw subscriptions, I need an aggregator that will feed me the ideas that are just beyond the event horizon of my mind, wherever they come from. Good stuff from a self-proclaimed authority on nothing: “…you don’t so much ‘change’ yourself, as you, perhaps, ‘uncover’ yourself.” Subscribed. Oh, and thanks for the link.

99 Bottles of Beer: 1046 variations on a theme. This Perl version is pure genius and a work of art. From apotheon: Acme::Eyedrops is the real stroke of genius here.

Steak tartare for the wife tonight, but none for me (thanks, apotheon).

Assaf on voodoo programming.

RFC 1925 – The Twelve Networking Truths. I like (11a) (thanks, Doug).

Only in the web age can a pun like this work in a general news title: “Roaster writes new java script”, about a unique coffee venture here on Bainbridge Island.

I got my check and deposited it already. The first time I’ve ever received more than a dollar from a class action settlement. This time I got enough for dinner.

Rest in peace: Gerald R. Ford and James Brown.

Space: 32 is the decimal value for the space character in ASCII and related character encodings such as ISO 8859 and Unicode.

What to do with all that spam… Cleaning out my Gmail spam bin this morning, I noticed a link near the top of the page that led to this recipe. Wait, There’s more!

Better not say too much.

Shelley led me to Olduvai George, a most interesting blog on paleontology with illustrations by Carl Buell. Subscribed.

According to Randy, Microsoft is trying to hire an “open source evangelist”. Sounds like the foxes are hiring a chicken guard.

And here’s the pecking order (thanks, Assaf).

Chris Boese tagged me with the “five things” meme, apparently not realizing that I had already posted on this and even tagged her. Oh well, another reason to post, and a chance to tag five more people.

But I’d like to make these five things a bit more interesting, so I’ll follow the suggestion of Dave Rogers (via Shelley) and attempt to name five things that I don’t know about myself:

1. I don’t know what I want to do with my career. I enjoy software development, but that doesn’t entirely satisfy. I love to write, but I could never completely give up creating software. Keeping my eyes open for the write opportunity.
2. Regarding both writing and software development, I don’t know exactly how well I perform either activity. Sometimes I’m very proud of my work, and at other times I wonder if it isn’t all just stupid and pedestrian. Other people are usually complimentary, but the very fact that I get little constructive criticism makes me suspicious of the validity of this feedback.
3. How well do I remember my own past? Can’t say for sure. My memories often seem crystal clear, but I’ve internally repeated these stories to myself so many times that I certainly could have made embellishment into fact.
4. Am I a good and honorable human being? Very uncertain. At times I feel and act in ways that may seem noble, and at other times I could be exceptionally petty and deliberately cruel. But I’m beginning to think that question may be irrelevant.
5. I don’t know if I believe in God. But I’m proud of that one.

I like this meme, because I’m becoming more radically agnostic every day, and not just about religion. Many questions do not need a premature answer, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say that we don’t know. I learned this lesson from debugging software: you don’t find the answers so much by constructing theories as by questioning your assumptions. When everyone wants to pull us into their camp, we should fight for our right to uncertainty. As Franklin said:

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

Now to tag five more people: Armchair Anarchist, Joseph, TDavid, Stu, and Chris again, just for spite . I won’t saddle you with the (now I realize how) difficult task of answering the unknown. You can just tell us the five things other people probably don’t know about you, if you’d prefer.

Via Shelley:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Grace Lord Sterling the Bibulous of Leighton Buzzard Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Hey, I learned a new word: bibulous. I’ll take definition number 2, Monty.

My other name yields:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Grand Duke Chip the Convincing of Deepest Throcking Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Convincing? I can’t even convince myself.