Tom Morris: 2006-11-06

2006.11.06

Tony Blair seems to be lumping in "ID cards" along with all the things that the "anti-science forces" don't believe in. I think ID cards are a bad idea, precisely because I am sure of the technological incompetence with which they will be introduced. 2006-11-06T16:32:28Z

Austin Cline has a review of a book called The Thought of Benedict XVI. Summary? He's a sin-obsessed conservative who loves Augustine. Just what the Catholic Church needs - someone to shake out all the secular types. 2006-11-06T16:20:53Z

DevSnips.com is great - it has lots of useful chunks of PHP (and other languages) that you can reuse. 2006-11-06T16:19:01Z

Apparently, there are buffoons in Westminster. Whodathunkit? Well, they're not just any old buffoons - they're a creationist. 2006-11-06T16:00:17Z

Marc Eisenstadt is a satisfied Grazr user, and has picked up on GrazrScript. My GrazrScript files are coming soon. Promise! I've gotta think about some tangential stuff before I really start rocking with it. 2006-11-06T15:54:06Z

Paul Kedrosky has been testing the new Gmail Mobile applet. I've got it on my phone - it's nice enough, but I do agree with his point about Java applets being "single-mode" - the mobile web is more like computers circa. 1995 than we thought. Still, the Gmail Mobile client is pretty - hopefully the usability is to follow. It's one of the few mobile apps that I haven't gritted my teeth when using. I still prefer using Gmail on my Palm Pilot through Blazer (no relation to Grazr, although they are both pretty shark products!), or using my laptop. 2006-11-06T15:50:50Z

Kent is feeling that his zeal for posting has ebbed away. The way I do it is I write even when I can't find excitement in it - just because it's good discipline to do so. The joy of blogging is that I can inflict it all on you. Smile and a wink Generally, you can tell what kind of day I'm having based on what I'm writing about. If I'm talking about politics and religion, I'm having a bad day. If I'm talking about them in the abstract, I'm having a slightly better day. If I'm talking about technology in the abstract, I'm having a good but unproductive day. If I'm talking about technology in the specific "I'm building something, go check it out" way, I'm having a good and productive day. 2006-11-06T15:23:52Z

I've made the code available for my first shot at a 'Dave-style' (that's a compliment, btw) OPML renderer in PHP. It's very hacky, but it's a prototype. Please take a look and point out how I could improve it's functionality (all the display stuff will be fixed later - I will, for instance, be putting the whole thing in to a class rather than keeping it as procedure - all those echo() commands won't be there when I release the code. 2006-11-06T15:44:22Z

PHP OPML Renderer: alpha 1 2006-11-06T11:59:08Z

I've started work on producing a PHP port of Dave's OPML renderer.

I've got the basic structure going - but I've still got a long way to go.

Take a gander. I've got lots to build - a component to show RSS and Atom, a method by which I can do inclusion and a breadcrumb method. The RSS component will probably be a link to the website and a link to the XML - and a link to a rendering of that XML.

The interface of the link above is frankly horrible. The end result will be configurable and it will be possible to style it in a number of ways (so, for instance, it will be possible to have stylesheets for mobile and for standard rendering).

The inclusion is the bit I'm having to wrap my brains around. The problem is that there are two ways that I can think of doing it - one way is efficient but very messy to code, and the other is very processor-hungry.

I'm going to be starting a mailing list later in order to piece together the components to eventually supplement the OPML Editor's server functions but on the LAMP stack.

If you've got any experience programming in PHP5, especially if you know how to use the XML tools (I'm using, on the advice of Kosso, the SimpleXML libraries rather than the DOM - and the SimpleXML implementation of XPath), then please drop me a line and get involved. I'll be releasing source code later - let's really rev the motor up and get this thing working!

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Gott mit die Nation, Großbritannien! 2006-11-06T10:09:51Z

Ophelia has found the report from the Evangelical Alliance - hilaaaaariously titled "Faith and Nation" (hence the title for this post).

The Evangelical Alliance are saying that if we stop subsidising Christian charities which they are using to proselytizing (or ask them to stop proselytizing within publicly-funded projects), they are going to be pushing towards "disobedience to law, civil disobedience, involving selective, non-violent resistance or, ultimately, violent revolution".

The report from the EA also states that "non-religious or anti-religious secularist forces based on an individualistic approach to human rights and equality agendas have recently tended to push their way into dominance in the regulation of public life". Oh, if only! If that is the case, whence the continued support for faith schools from this government?

"There are consequently frequent calls for the disestablishment of religion and the radical separation of faith from public life - indeed, perhaps towards a privatisation so complete that religious expression becomes invisible." No - secularists like myself want the role of faith in government to match that which it has in, say, the United States (at least before Mr. Bush took office). Is religious expression in the United States invisible?

How is the religious liberty of a Christian upheld if he is forced to subsidise a Muslim school?

This report proves the profoundly illiberal views of the Evangelical Alliance, and the methods by which they want to implement them.

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Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org

Currently in: East Sussex, England

Usually in: East Sussex, United Kingdom

AIM: tommorris
YIM: tom.morris

I am a vegetarian, an atheist, like to code in Ruby and Scala (and Java, but let’s not talk about that), and noodle about with microformats and the Semantic Web.

I have an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. My philosophical interests are in analytic metaphysics, ontology, modality, the work of Armstrong, Lewis, Kripke, Russell and Plato. I have a strange, unfulfilled interest in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. I’ve been influenced by Gadamer, by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rawls and Nozick.

Musically, I like jazz fusion, soul and P-Funk. My musical nirvana would be a mixture of Beethoven, Miles Davis and George Clinton topped with a side-serving of Erykah, Jill and Angie.

I also write for the Citizendium, an online encyclopedia project. If you know about stuff, you should join in. I occasionally produce audio recordings for The Pod Delusion.

Elsewhere:

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