• Assign my laptop a static IP address of 192.168.0.5 whenever it’s connected to my home WiFi (I’ve configured DHCP not to assign addresses under .11).
• Go to my DNS provider, and create an A record for dev.ourairports.com pointing to 192.168.0.5.
• In my laptop’s own /etc/hosts file, hard-code dev.ourairports.com to point to a 127.0.0.* IP address.

With these steps, the domain dev.ourairports.com will always work from my laptop, wherever it’s connected, and it will work from other devices when I am on my home WiFi (anywhere else, it will probably bring up something strange, like a router or printer login page).

I’ve played around with Docker a fair bit, but I’m still happy just running a bunch of VHOSTs for different webdev projects, and so far, it hasn’t caused me any grief.

Does anyone have better suggestions? Any gotchas I’ve missed?

Update from Dustin DeWeese: “A working Emacs 25 package is available in Termux: https://termux.com
$ apt install emacs” — this is probably a better solution than the outdated distro below.

In February 2014, I posted instructions for installing Gnu Emacs in older versions of Android. These instructions no longer work in Android L (Lollipop), because of a new requirement that all executables be compiled with a position-independent (PIE) flag. I have managed to create a new binary from Michał Zieliński’s admittedly now out-of-date patched Emacs version, and have made it available on GitHub.

In my 16 years working with data standards, I’ve found that standards almost always ask for too much and end up getting little or nothing. If we asked for less, might we get more? Do data standards have to be tightly-managed and dirigiste, or could we learn from the success of hashtags and other simple, collaborative approaches?

The blog post linked above describes the approach we’re taking in the multi-agency Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL) initiative to help improve data-sharing during humanitarian crises — please take a look and let us know what you think. You can also visit our HXL Showcase site to see interactive examples of how you can analyse and visualise examples of real humanitarian datasets with HXL tags added (the public-domain source code is available on GitHub).

Since I mentioned in a review that I’m using Emacs on my Android Nexus 7 tablet, I’ve received several requests for information about how I set it up. There is a prepackaged Emacs app in the Google Play store, but it does not work as distributed, because it bundles a broken terminal application. The Emacs binary itself is fine, though, and with a bit of manual work, you can install it to run inside a different terminal application (I use Terminal IDE below).

Note: Emacs needs a full-featured PC-style keyboard. I usually run Emacs on my tablet with an external Bluetooth keyboard; if you want to use a soft keyboard, consider installing the Hacker’s Keyboard, which has all of the modifier keys Emacs expects.

Request: Would anyone be willing to rebundle Emacs in an easily-installable form for Terminal IDE, and make this blog posting obsolete?

Installing Emacs for Terminal IDE

1. Install the Terminal IDE app on your Android device.

2. In your Android browser, go to http://emacs.zielm.com/data/ and download the files emacs.lzma, etc.tlzma, and lisp.tlzma, then copy them to your Terminal IDE home directory.

3. Launch a shell in Terminal IDE and run the following commands:

   $ unlzma emacs.lzma
   $ chmod 755 emacs

4. At this point, you should already be able to run emacs by typing

   $ ./emacs

   (though it will fail because it can’t find its etc directory). If you want, just put it somewhere on your executable path, like you would in any Linux installation.

5. Create a directory /sdcard/emacs/ (or make it somewhere different, if you’re willing to set environment variables to tell Emacs to look somewhere else).

6. Copy the downloaded files etc.tlzma and lisp.tlzma to /sdcard/emacs/etc.tar.lzma and /sdcard/emacs/lisp.tar.tzlma

7. Change to the /sdcard/emacs/ directory and run the following commands:

   $ unlzma etc.tar.lzma
   $ tar xvf etc.tar
   $ unlzma lisp.tar.lzma
   $ tar xvf lisp.tar

8. Test that emacs starts up OK now (run from wherever you installed the binary):

   $ ~/emacs

9. If all is well, you can optionally delete the tar files to save space:

   $ rm /sdcard/emacs/etc.tar /sdcard/emacs/lisp.tar

10. Enjoy Emacs in Android! You might consider doing an C-u 0 M-x byte-recompile-directory on /sdcard/emacs/lisp/ (and any other lisp directories) to make sure you’re up to date.

The surprising part (for me) is that Evernote is exactly what I would have designed if you’d asked me to design a note-taking/idea-organising app. From my POV, the app did everything right:

• Search works
• You can group notes by subject or by tags
• You can share notes
• The smartphone app works offline and syncs when you’re back online
• It organises media like pictures the same way it organizes text notes
• The UI is simple and uncluttered (at least, it was back when I was using it)

Maybe the problem isn’t Evernote, but the idea of taking notes at meetings. I have piles of old engineering notebooks from past consulting gigs, and I doubt I ever went back and reviewed 0.5% of them after I wrote them.

I guess this is a good lesson for information architecture and tech design. I started with a process that didn’t work for me (paper-based note taking) and assumed that if I added some tech pixie dust to it — web apps, search, tags, smartphone app, etc. — it would suddenly change and become functional. That didn’t happen, because it almost never happens, and it’s not Evernote’s fault.

The US government’s data.gov home page on 1 October 2013.

You are welcome to use this as a chance to rail against the juvenile hijinks in the US Congress, but I think there’s a far more important lesson: if you depend on any centralised data source, even one run by the world’s richest and most-powerful government, it can fail and leave you cut off.

1.1. Limitations

Like all technology-related architectural designs, this is a vision of how XXX could work, not a blueprint for how XXX will work — we will change much or all of this architecture during the implementation, some in minor ways, and some in major ways, as we discover more about the problem space, change our priorities, and work around the strengths and limitations of the people and technologies involved. The architecture in this report points the way for the implementation team at the beginning, and captures our initial understanding and goals. The XXX team will endeavour to keep the specification up to date as the actual architecture emerges during implementation.

Further reading

Neal Ford, “Evolutionary architecture and emergent design: Investigating architecture and design.” IBM developerWorks, 24 February 2009.

Martin Fowler, “Who Needs an Architect.” IEEE Software, July/August 2003.

Eric S. Raymond. “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.” Version 3.0, 2000.

If you work anywhere near IT, you’ve probably been confronted with Everett Rogers’ Bell Curve on more than one eager PowerPoint slide deck, explaining how the presenter’s new standard, product, or initiative will move through the five audiences of Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards. There’s even a book, Geoffrey Moore’s 1991 Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, about how to move your product from the Early Adopter to the Early Majority (mainstream market) stage. After a (very) small amount of background reading, though, I’m starting to wonder if people are misuing Mr. Rogers’ curve, confusing the ideas of “innovation” and “product.”

You can’t invest in an idea

In 1962, Prof. Rogers, along with two other original collaborators, was studying how new practices spread among farmers in the US Midwest, not how, say, a new model of harvester found its market. In other words, they were studying what people do, not what people buy.

Does it matter? Consider the 1995 Netscape IPO, which started the dot.com bubble. The World Wide Web was a genuine innovation — a new way of doing things (building on existing technology) — and by 1995, it was clear that the Web was going to be important. However, people confused Netscape’s browser (a specific product) with the Web itself (an innovation), and assumed that by investing in the company that made the browser, they were investing in the Web. However, the two were not inseparable — Netscape’s browser tanked, while the idea of the Web grew stronger and stronger. Later, investors would pump up Apple’s and Facebook’s stock in a similar way, assuming that by doing so, they were investing in the innovations of mobile computing and social networking. Apple in particular has been able to deliver revenue to justify some of its stock price, but as it loses more and more of the smartphone and tablet market to Android manufacturers, the difference between innovation (mobile computing) and product (iPhone/iPad) becomes very clear.

Despite all that, most of the time I see people using Rogers’ curve, they’re using it for a specific product, project, or initiative, not for new ideas or practices. Does it make sense in that context, or are we being as lazy and confused as the 1995 Netscape investors? Rogers based his 1962 book on over 500 studies of how ideas spread; it would be interesting to see if there’s similar research to back the claims of over-eager sales VPs and project managers.

The open-source Android application Andor’s Trail is a top-down role-playing game, sort of like Colossal Cave or Zork with pictures (for my fellow old-timers). I tried it out on my Nexus 7 tablet and enjoyed it — the story line isn’t finished yet, but over two years, the community has built a strong and engaging game. But that’s not the point of this post (we already know how open source works).

This morning, I was in a coffee shop with just my phone, and decided to do the following:

• Found Andor’s Trail on GitHub
• Cloned it using AIDE (an Android-based IDE)
• Tapped “Open Project”
• Tapped “Run”
• Opened the compiled app

Building open-source apps didn’t used to be this easy. In Linux, you generally install a long list of library dependencies first, then run some kind of configuration, then do a make, figure out what went wrong/is missing, do another make, go on a mailing list to find out what went wrong, download a different version of some of the build tools or libraries, try again, etc. until eventually (maybe a few hours or days later) you raise your arms in triumph and shout that you’ve succeeded in building the app. After that, you’ve earned the right to be smug on mailing lists and tell the noobs to RTFM when they have the same problems you did.

Is this a glimpse at the future of open source? Cloning, building, and installing a dev build (7.1dev) was so easy that a non-developer could do it; on the difficulty scale, I’d say that it’s easier than figuring out how to upload a video or picture to Facebook.

Right now — despite the fact that Android itself is released under the Apache 2.0 license — open source in the mobile world is still in its infancy. We do have the F-Droid app store for Android, stocking only open-source apps. However, what if mobile itself became the predominant open-source development platform, with new types of tools, collaboration, and social cultures? Keep your eyes on this one.

1. Out-of-control debt
2. Bad PR around PRISM

Maybe it’s time to start thinking like a business, and figure out how to turn those liabilities into assets. If PRISM brought real benefit to citizens’ lives, would they look on it more favourably? Would they, perhaps, even be willing to give money to the program?

prism-suggests.gov

With that in mind, I’d like to propose a new, pay-for-use government web site named prism-suggests.gov. The web site will have a natural-language interface where people can ask questions about themselves or their friends and family, and get suggestions back. Here are some examples:

Q: What book should I read next?
PRISM: You bought Infinite Jest three months ago, but I’ve noticed that you always fall asleep when you try to read it on the subway on your way home. Perhaps something lighter, like Fifty Shades of Grey, would be better, especially since you go out of your way to read Facebook comments about it.

Q: What kinds of clothes should I buy Maria for her birthday?
PRISM: Maria’s credit-card and Google-search history suggest that it’s 87.3% likely she has a bladder control problem, so it would be best to buy things that fit loosely around the hips, to leave room for an adult diaper.

Q: Is Phillip going to ask me out on a date?
PRISM: Unless Phillip has been doing a “research project” for the last 3 years, the type of porn he views on his smartphone suggests that yours is not the gender that interests him.

Q: How can I get a promotion at work?
PRISM: Casually mention the phrases “St Lucia,” “offshore investment,” and “IRS” loudly in hearing range of your boss, then come back a week later and ask for the promotion.

If the site charged $5 for each question, imagine how fast the US federal deficit would shrink! And, of course, all those people whining about “privacy rights” and the so-called “Constitution” would be drowned out by billions of satisfied customers.

The Economist wonders why English has borrowed so few new words from China over the past 30 years, despite the country’s rise as a major world economic power. The Hermit Kingdom isn’t a hermit any more — Chinese government and business are everywhere, not only trading money for influence and business opportunities in the developing world, but also buying up American companies in sectors like general aviation.

Unlike the European colonial powers of 150 years ago, however, China does not seem interested in exporting its cultural values; for example, Beijing may donate a fleet of Chinese-made cars to a Latin-American government, but it doesn’t also set up missionary schools to try to teach the country’s elite to speak Mandarin and follow Confusian principles.

Can Chinese language and culture spread on its own, without a deliberate attempt to promote it, the way Europeans once promoted English, Spanish, Dutch, French, or Portuguese language and culture in the Americas, Africa, and Asia?  Would China even want its culture to spread (beyond just cuisine)?

One interesting model is Japan, which has also made little attempt to promote its language outside its borders.  For decades, while Japan rose as a world economic power, little happened.  Then, suddenly, Japanese culture exploded on the rest of the world.  American students, for example, not only eat sushi, but read manga, sleep on futons, and use Japanese terms like “panchira” to classify their pornography. And they’re often prone to take Japanese language classes, despite the complete lack of Japanese-sponsored missionary schools. 

Now, we’re starting to see the same thing happen with South Korean culture.  We might not be borrowing many new Mandarin words into English right now, but will that still be true in 20 years?

Even though big web sites use lots of so-called “enterprise” technology, and big companies and government departments create browser-based applications, there’s still a huge chasm between web developers and enterprise developers.

We’ve been flooded with clichés and stereotypes about both sides — enterprise developers do everything the hard way, web developers don’t understand security and reliability, etc. — but it’s best not to take that too seriously. A lot of my consulting work and personal projects straddle the line between Enterprise and Web, so I’ve had a decade and a half to observe people and processes on both sides.

I’ll post more about this later, but here are two differences that strike me right away:

1. Enterprise does a lot of integration
2. Enterprise doesn’t have many rock stars

This post isn’t really about Feedly, though, but about open specs and standards. The reason I can still keep reading all the same blogs, newspaper headlines, and status updates is that Google Reader didn’t control them — they’re publicly available on dozens or hundreds of independent web sites, all following the same set of simple, free syndication standards. Even the way Feedly imported my list of feeds is standards-based.

If I’d been reading all that information on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, or any other similar proprietary, centrally-controlled service, I wouldn’t be able to rebound so easily; even worse, if I’d been relying on one of those locked-in services to publish my content, it would have stolen my audience as well. Think of it as the equivalent of your ex knowing your bank card PIN, and emptying your accounts before running off.

I’ll stick with Feedly as long as we’re both having fun, but as soon as the relationship gets stale, we can part ways as friends and move on. While there may be only one Twitter or Facebook, there are lots of RSS/Atom feed readers out there.

Think – how often do you hear  of someone dropping a laptop computer into a toilet or leaving it in a restaurant? How often do you see spider-web cracks on a laptop screen from a fall? Small, hand-sized computing devices are much-more likely be involved in accidents than larger ones, because we carry them around with us all the time, in pockets, purses, glove compartments, etc.

Reading this list (via John Hardy on G+), I think the same kind of distinction applies to long firearms vs handguns – handguns seem to have a lot more stupid/accidental discharges than long firearms like shotguns and rifles, because they’re the smartphones of the gun world. The problem is that the consequences can be much more serious than having to leave a smartphone in a bowl of rice overnight to dry out.

«Pure science research drops sharply at National Research Council» (Ottawa Citizen, 2013-05-08)

We’re learning the danger in Canada of having let too many sectors become dependent on federal money. When the arts, NGOs, scientific research, many kinds of R&D business, and even our main national broadcaster all rely on government subsidies or funding, they’re all immediately vulnerable to any ideological shift in the government that doles out their money.

The Liberals created this dependency to ensure that the sectors would reflect their (central-Canadian, urban, moderate left) values in the 1990s, 70s, 60s, and earlier, but in doing so, they’ve handed a powerful weapon to their (western, suburban/rural, moderate right) successors and ideological opponents.

The US system has many problems of its own, but its relatively-independent arts sector — especially film, TV, and music — and the widespread existence of private universities and foundations, ensures that their government can’t entirely turn off the tap for arts, research, or NGO work that it doesn’t like.

This is an important feature for any web repository that’s shared among multiple users or client systems. For example, let’s say that User A wants to upload a file named funny-cat-pic.jpg and User B also wants to upload a file named funny-cat-pic.jpg.

Using HTTP PUT, they can both specify that it belongs in /pix/funny-cat-pic.jpg, but then the second one will simply overwrite the first one.

Using HTTP POST, on the other hand, they could each upload their files, and then receive HTTP 303 (See Other) 201 (Created) responses providing the URLs that the WebDAV server chose, e.g. /pix/funny-cat-pic-001.jpg and /pix/funny-cat-pic-002.jpg. The server could guarantee that a POSTed file never overwrote an existing one.

I know I can just write a short Python or PHP script to do the posting, but before I do that, am I missing anything? Supporting POST seems like it should have been an obvious choice from the start.

Update: Thanks to Tim Bray for the HTTP status correction. Tim also mentioned that AtomPub supports POST, but not, unfortunately, hierarchical organisation of resources (e.g. directories).