Kenneth's Picnic

This was our first Christmas together, and it’ll be our last before we’re married.  Cool eh?

Last year, I did the family thing, and Agnieszka went to do her family thing over in Melton Mowbray.

This year, we did the Polish thing together on Christmas Eve, then had Christmas with my family in Camden Town on the day.  Boxing Day we’ve just spent at home.

The Polish thing involved all sorts:  breaking bread and making wishes; herring then caviar with blinis then beetroot soup with pasta parcels then The Carp of course then poppy-seed cake; zubrowka; opening presents early (with a 7-year-old’s glee).  All in all, Agnieszka made us an amazing Christmas Eve.  All I did was build the fire.  I gave Agnieszka a wake-up light alarm clock radio and some creams, and she got me some proper wooden penguin skittles and a sheep.  No, seriously a sheep to put on my side of the bed  Mehhh.

The family Christmas thing was “as usual”, though the food was far above average!  Grandparents, NDJJChCh (PP in Sweden), JPBLH and us.  Not a bad turnout!  We had quite a haul of presents between the two of us!  Food was great: turkey, two stuffings, sausage, gammon, roast and mash potatoes, various veg.  And all from a single Aga with two fixed-temp ovens.  Great stuff.

On to New Year’s, where I think a quiet one is in order.  No transport needed…

Happy Christmas everyone.

I like Django, but I also don’t like it.  Why?  Python’s syntax.

I just don’t know why anyone would want to work this way.  There seems nothing so bad about the pointless braces and semi-colons that we should bother to exclude them.

I’d rather have Java-like syntax.  Why?  It works, and it matches JavaScript.  This continuous switching back and forth is confusing.

IMHO, the greatest threat facing the Internet in 2009 is the people in charge.

The Internet is governed by ICANN, who are controlled somewhat by the US Government.  They are asking for greater freedoms under the guise of liberty, and the opportunity to be more dynamic.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7205609.stm

However, the great thing about governments is their rigorous checks and balances.  Sometimes this is seen as stuffy and slow, and deregulation is recommended.  This is how we get into situations like the banking crisis.

Now ICANN have also proposed opening the top-level domains, so that they can be registered by “anyone”. These “top-level domains” (TLDs), are like “.com”, “.uk” and so on.

Initially, this sounds freer and better.  I could be simply kenneth@kufluk.

However, this is a very stupid idea.

• The rush to register domains will be like the early days of the Internet.  Panic, and court cases.
• “The net body planned to offer between 200 and 800 new addresses for sale at $185,000 (£125,000) per domain with a yearly cost of $60,000.”  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7797206.stm
  WHAT?
• Dr Twomey said: “If there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest  bidder.”  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7468855.stm
  WHAT??
• “We are doing this on a cost recovery basis. We’ve already spent $10m on this,” Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7468855.stm
  WHAT???

http://dojocampus.org/content/2008/06/04/refreshing-a-data-store/#more-130

Nice article.  Took me ages to find.  Dojo docs are #king useless I must say.  Anything that has an article saying “actually a lot of people ask this” clearly has bad docs.  Why not add this note to the docs – what does “close()” do?  Put it in the docs.

See php.net for sensible docs.  The comments are useful, but also the docs are well written.

Update:  Haha, not so easy!  http://dojotoolkit.org/forum/dojox-dojox/dojox-grid-support/how-update-datagrid-1-2#comment-20458

• Got Engaged
• Run a Marathon, half marathon and a 10k
• Finished my second Bachelors Degree
• Bought a House
• Turned 30
• Recovered (mostly) from ME
• Released 5 Websites for my job
• Been to 3 Weddings, and 1 Diamond Wedding Anniversary
• Been to Poland, Holland, Denmark, France, and Mexico
• Made myself a new blog
• Promised to update my auntie’s website 400 times, but haven’t done it yet