Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Jack Ass vs. Jackass

OnlyInAmerica.com: Jack Ass sues over 'Jackass' show

Never mind that he changed his name from Bob Craft to Jack Ass, but he decides to sue a show that has been around for years, for defaming his reputation (huh? his reputation as a jackass?), once the show goes to the big screen.

Hi-lair-e-ous. That's piss in your pants type funny.

Risk: LOTR

Last night Shane cracked open his Risk: Lord of the Rings game that we got him for Christmas.

It took us a while to figure out how to play... the LOTR version of Risk is much different than standard Risk. The rulebook implies too many mechanics, making you read the whole book to piece together the actual rules like a puzzle. Reading reviews like the one linked to above helped fill in some gaps.

Even so, we screwed up on a few finer points of gameplay, but we had a LOT of fun. It's a hugely innovative improvement over standard Risk. Even with only 2 players it's quite enjoyable, but both of us look forward to trying the four player version.

PS5

The Onion: Ghost Of Christmas Future Taunts Children With Visions Of PlayStation 5

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all!

MS wants Macromedia?

The Register: Microsoft plots Macromedia coup against Java

If this is true, Apple needs to unlock the safe they're storing their $4.3B in cash in, and throw a bunch of it at Macromedia, either to buy them or to 'invest' in them (ie: pay them to stay independent).

Losing Macromedia to MS would be... very bad.

Wonder RC1

Last night, Alex and I created a WebObjects application using the "ER frameworks" from Project Wonder.

Getting the frameworks up and running was a piece of cake compared to prior releases. They've done an amazing, amazing job. It's fun to use these frameworks again, it brings back a lot of good memories, and reminds me how powerful Direct To Web can be when it's used properly.

How to skate Australian

Calgary Sun: How to skate Australian

PC killer on the loose

Infoworld: PC killer on the loose

Score one for the good guys!

The evolution of templating systems

There's an interesting intersection happening between two worlds: WebObjects and Zope, brought about by Marc Hedlund's posting on O'ReillyNet, Why JSP Sucks So Hard.

He feels JSP (and by extension PHP, ASP, etc) doesn't go far enough in separating code from content, and that a JSP file is still totally hostile to a web designer who isn't a programmer. (I agree)

He suggests a templating system that physically separates code from content in a template by putting them in separate files, binding them together using CSS, and having the templating system parse out the backend bits during rendering.

Interestingly, this is how WebObjects does things, with a component comprised of a .html file and a .wod (bindings) file. It doesn't use CSS syntax in the .wod file, however, but I'm not sure it really matters what the syntax of the code/bindings file is, just that it's not in the .html file.

So WO is part way there. And so is Zope, but with a different take on things, with their Zope Page Templates (ZPT) and Template Attribute Language (TAL). ZPT/TAL unfortunately puts the "code" in the .html file, but rather than using weird tags like JSP or WebObjects, it puts them inline, in namespaced attributes of standard HTML tags which their backend renderer processes and strips out. ZPT/TAL is WYSIWYG editor/designer friendly, to a point, but only marginally more than JSP.

One person commented on the ORA thread that Evan Simpson proposed the CSS/TAL link earlier this year. Very interesting! Evan and Marc's proposal gives the best of both worlds -- physical separation of HTML from backend code, like WO has, and the use of standard HTML tags and attributes, like ZPT comes so close to having.

I posted my thoughts and a brief explanation of the WO way in reply on the ORA thread.

I really hope this idea gets implemented.

Surgical tool left in woman’s stomach

CNN.com: Surgical tool left in woman's stomach for 4 months. Ouch.