Category Archives: General

POST, PUT, idempotence, and self-identification

Posted on November 17, 2011 by

I realize that the title of this posting might be a bit off-putting for non-RESTafarians, but it’s about a topic that matters to anyone building an application that uses simple web standards for updates. Background: how REST usually works There … Continue reading →

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MySQL wrapper script: variables from the command line

Posted on June 21, 2011 by

There’s a lot I like about PostgreSQL, and I’ll probably switch eventually, but for now, I’m still more comfortable with MySQL, especially its ability to update huge amounts of existing data in-place very quickly. I do have some technical gripes … Continue reading →

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Teachers, students, and online behaviour

Posted on April 12, 2011 by

This passage recently appeared in a CBC story entitled “Ont. teachers advised not to tweet with students“: The Ontario College of Teachers says teachers should avoid connecting with their students on Facebook or Twitter. They are also told to avoid … Continue reading →

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The last time I voted Conservative …

Posted on April 10, 2011 by

[Blushing update: a reliable source informs me that I misremembered the question I asked 23 years ago — updated below (different, but closely-related issue).] … (Progressive Conservative at the time) was the 1988 federal election. I’d grown up in Kingston … Continue reading →

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How can I make money from writing sonnets?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by

I’ve written a sonnet, and I think it’s very good. Now I’d like to get paid for it so that I can quit my job and live off the revenue. Any suggestions? Perhaps you’ve asked this question yourself: just substitute … Continue reading →

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The zero-home experiment

Posted on February 15, 2011 by

Yesterday a new web series launched, Sweet Tarts Takeaway. I helped to set up its web site. Too many clicks After making one mockup of the home page, we realized that it would take three clicks for a user simply … Continue reading →

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Is fluid layout old-fashioned?

Posted on February 9, 2011 by

No one would mistake me for a graphic designer — I believe that no merely visual design can match the breathtaking beauty of a properly-normalized database schema — but still, I recently found myself helping someone design a simple theme … Continue reading →

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Coming soon … something sweet

Posted on January 3, 2011 by

My sweetie has been leading a group of talented Ottawa-area actors and crew members to create a new web series, Sweet Tarts Takeaway. I’ll post again when the web series goes live in a couple of months. In the meantime, … Continue reading →

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SQL and simple polymorphism

Posted on September 25, 2010 by

SQL is about tables and sets. Object-oriented programing is about types, subtypes, and polymorphism. There are nasty, nasty frameworks available to try to move between the two worlds (say, by serializing and deserializing Java objects) — this posting, however, is … Continue reading →

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Amazon EC2 “micro instances” vs. Google App Engine

Posted on September 9, 2010 by

A note in my inbox this morning announced that Amazon’s EC2 virtual computer hosting service now supports “micro instances” for $0.02/hour ($0.03/hour if you’re confused enough to want to host a web site using Windows): Instances of this family provide … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 7 Comments