Chipping the web – the boot
January 4th, 2007 6:11:27 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
“Water displacement, 40 th attempt” was the source of the name of WD-40, which was invented to prevent corrosion by eliminating water. But now it has so many more uses.
Yesterday I released a new version (2.1) of my tag cloud widget for WordPress. This one improves control of the cached display.
Shelley offers the most balanced view I’ve seen on the JSON vs. XML debate.
Tracy’s back with a “slightly necessary ingredient” for making guacamole, and a laugh.
I added one more bottle.
Free will is probably an illusion. But it’s an illusion we cannot escape, much like the illusions of causality and space-time. Like the concepts of “up” and “down”, the ideas of free will and causality both evolved within our limited early experience here on planet Earth. Perhaps someday we’ll transcend them in the same way that we now realize that up and down are relative to the Earth. But for now the practice of making choices defines our experience, so for us free will does exist — at least, most of the time.
Damn Interesting: The Fall of Galloping Gertie. Driving over its successor, “Sturdy Gertie”, still gives me the willies. The lanes are too narrow, and it’s always bumper-to-bumper at 50 MPH. My first time was in a 24-foot moving truck. White knuckles, yellow pants. I hope the new parallel bridge improves things.
I may not be a professional yet, but I have been called a ‘booger’ by a reliable source.
Color me amazed: who knew that something that can be described in 24 bits could get so involved? (thanks, Assaf – and thanks for the links!)
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I hate the balanced view on JSON. People have to start pissing on people who re-invent the wheel. We can’t seem to make any progress in this Internet because every decision has to be re-evaluated on a yearly basis. This prevents forward motion. JSON could someday be as good as XML. No question. Who cares? We have XML today and it works. Now I have to write a new parser because some programmers have found religion.
Actually, Shelley leans a little more towards the “don’t fix what ain’t broken” logic than what my brief note may have communicated. Quoted: “aren’t we getting a little old to continually toss out ‘old reliables’ just because a new kid comes along?” JSON shouldn’t attempt to supplant XML, it should be used for what it’s good for.
My problem is with the word leans. I want people to start saying JSON is stupid.
Heh – well, you won’t get that from me, Randy. I do think it’s stupid to evangelize on a new data format when you have something that already works, but I won’t automatically preclude JSON when designing for new work.
[...] In the year 41 the Roman emperor Caligula (whose nickname means “little boot”) was given the figurative boot via the literal knife. There? ouch! [...]
Frankly, I think both XML and JSON are completely redundant, constitute reinventions of the wheel, and generally complicate things far more than needed. Everything either one accomplishes is satisfactorily accomplished (in technical terms, though not necessarily in terms of available implementations) by s-expression and YAML notation.
Obviously, s-expression notation has been around for a very long time. One might make an argument for YAML being one of the new kids on the block, except that YAML is basically just a new formal specification for an old, informally specified data format that predates computers. What could be better than these two choices?
Also, of course, it’s easier to write parsers and generators for either s-expression or YAML notation than for XML or JSON. What’s not to love?
We have three different ways of encoding data. All three are equivalent. There’s no argument. You go with what is in massive use.
Let us not forget EDI.
OK, forget I said that.