vanderwal.net

The Visual Display of Quantitative XML on O'Reilly Net really rocks for me. I am really impressed with the presentation, but not nearly as impressed as I was with the ease of downloading and running the SVG plug-in in IE 6 on Windows and IE 5.1 on Mac OS X. Overal this is a great article as it not only walks through the how-to portion, but also offers insights into things that will make similar development go more easily.

Can't get enough about Mozilla? Blogzilla may be our answer. This is a weblog devoted to the Moz. (By the way Mozilla is extremely fast on OS X and is becoming my favorite browser on that platform.) [hat tip Scott]

Ah, an even newer update to MySQL on Mac OS X. My last build was a little buggy, which was to versions back. It is seeming that it is contiually a good thing to follow the setup info on Marc Liyanage site.

Wahoo, the Mozilla build, 0.9.8, is out. Mozilla on OS X is great. I had a build problem two releases ago on XP, so this may be the time to give it a go again.

I now have MySQL running on my OS X Powerbook. I largely followed the directions from The Business Mac MySQL instructions. I used the install package from http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx and found it a rather easy build. I did have to make one minor adjustment. When trying to start MySQL for the first time it is good to place an empty mysql.sock file in the /tmp/ directory. The other item to add is create a directory (sudo mkdir) libexec in the mysql directory then go into the libexec directory and create a softline to ../bin/mysld (sudo ln -s ../bin/mysqld mysqld). You should be good to go.

There are two Slashdot reviews of the recent MacWorld conference. CmdrTaco points out where Linux has power Apple has desire and chrisd looks at the Apple community. Chrisd noted the exhibition's, "focus on sheer functionality, capability and commerce."

A large part of my desire to get an Apple computer that would run OS X, was my work with Unix and Linux over the last couple years. I have loved working in that environment that is stable, lacking confounding DLLs, and easy to manage from the command line. To this end Linux Jounal reviews the recent MacWorld. The article notes many familiar faces between the Linux and Apple conferences, also held in the same building.

I really would like XP Home to have Samba (SMB) as the Apple documentation on using SMB to network machines and share drives is very solid. XP Home does not have SMB capability. If anybody knows a way to build it in plese e-mail me (comments being turned on this month or next month).

SMB is an open source networking tool that is supported on most operating systems. Windows 2000 and XP Professional support SMB. I should have learned my lesson and never by consumer grade software or hardware as I am always wanting to do more.

After reading Nick Finck's notes from the Web Design World 2001 in New Orleans and reading the Web Design World 2001 Agenda I think I may have to make the trip next year. I am very intrigued with the Open Source elements of the conference combined with the Web design/development aspects. Open Source tools have treated me far better than any proprietary tool ever has in the past. I am not interested in the cost as much as how solid the tools are, which leads me to Open Source.

The great Microsoft and Linux debate is on... Slashdot discusses MS inside memo on Linux threat. The Slashdot folks are by-in-large technically inclined, if to hard core techies and are also leaning Linux. It is good to see technical understandings when comparing Windows server solutions to Linux, both running on Intel.

The sales approach for Microsoft is ahead of the Linux folks. MS is giving the hard sell to the boardroom inhabitants and Linux is winning the technical folks who are in the trenches. This is a great view of the dicotomy of corporate environment and the disconnects between business and technology (not directly in this example but in the stories underlying the example). Microsoft has always sold the future and what is coming, while the UNIX and Linux people solve your problems today. MS is just delivering on their promisses of years ago, but they are still selling the future and are still behind the xNIX platform. Heck, Apple even got religion for their stable and fast new OS.

It seem September 11, 2001 was the day Bill Gates claims "he" invented Open Source. Sometimes I think he is going to start naming operating systems Zeus, Hydra, etc as he may think he invented the Greek gods.