Tom Morris



2007.04.21

  No. 537 

Brian Doherty links to Salon's article about Carlos Castaneda, anthropological hoax-monger and cult leader. Read it, it's good. 2007-04-21T10:52:49ZUntitled entry permalink

Mashup my blog 2007-04-21T10:59:57ZPermalink

As part of the redesign of my blog, I have made available a JSON feed containing all the dates on which I have published. This JSON dataset is being used internally by my server to produce calendars, 'on this day in' lists and the such like. But the reason I am making it available is simple - I want you to build things with it!

The feed contains two sets of data - firstly, a hierarchial list called 'multi' which has the years, months and days that I've published listed inside of it. Secondly, it contains a list called 'flat' which lists every day I've published in a flat order. Why both ways? Well, I found myself writing code to sort through this list over and over again and thought that it would be easier just to double the amount of data to reduce the number of cycles processing it. I haven't done any testing, but it should be a little bit quicker on my server to do it this way.

Why not XML? Well, I may do an XML version soon, but I'm lazy. With JSON, it's as simple as making a PHP array and pushing it through a json_encode().

So, what could you do with this? Well, it's up to you. Build me a widget or a funky, slidy Ajaxy calendar, visualise the data. Anything you want, really. Although I'm not totally inexperienced with JavaScript, I'm stil very much a beginner.

Remember - the date format is quite simple - tommorris.org/blog/year/month/date to get the HTML, or put .opml on the end to get OPML 2.0.

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Learning Perl - convince me not to 2007-04-21T21:53:07ZPermalink

I'm strongly considering learning Perl. I spend a ridiculous amount of time doing donkey work. I've tried things like sed and awk and they don't seem to be quite what I want.

I really need a language that can just let me get one-off crap done in the least fussy way possible (and 'fuss' means, for me, looking things up in books, Googling, having to use a code-completing editor, keeping track of files, whitespace etc.)

So, for the Perl users out there - is it worth it, for me? I've got too much to do already - should I learn Perl? Is there a simpler - preferably graphical - way of processing text and/or XML files on the Mac.

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Tom Morris 9f4907d871750fd4c9b9bad7086701b51d6abd10 bd9f81a05283ed85e699175ed057b4a497f20b77 802c68123e12bf69d99a25a87cef360f18813fe4
Currently in: East Sussex, England
Usually in: East Sussex, United Kingdom
AIM: tommorris
YIM: tom.morris

I am a , an , like to code in and (and Java, but let’s not talk about that), and noodle about with and the .

I have an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. My philosophical interests are in analytic metaphysics, ontology, modality, the work of , , , and . I have a strange, unfulfilled interest in . I’ve been influenced by Gadamer, by , , and .

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.

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