commentary

Janette Sadik-Khan: A Reason to Love NYC in 2007

Janette Sadik-Khan: A Reason to Love NYC in 2007: But recently, the DOT has been championing some very un-DOT ideas. It has replaced parking lots and traffic lanes with chairs and umbrellas in Dumbo and the meatpacking district and installed a new, physically separated bike lane on Ninth Avenue; it is pushing the mayor’s controversial congestion- pricing plan; and, in a symbolic act, it has given over three parking spots by the Bedford Avenue L stop to bike racks. Taken together, it’s as if the department has awakened to the idea that streets belong to people, not their vehicles.

The difference can be summed up in one name: Janette Sadik-Khan… [Go! Go! Go!]
Source: StreetsBlog

A New PickAxe

A New PickAxe:

Ruby3_cover_small

Ruby 1.9 is just around the corner, so it looks like a good time to create a new edition of Programming Ruby. So, I’m pleased to announce that the Third Edition of the PickAxe has just entered beta.

The book’s home page is at http://pragprog.com/titles/ruby3.

Although 1.9 is largely compatible with 1.8, there are definite differences. And it’s been an interesting ride getting the examples in the book to compile and run with the current 1.9 interpreter. The book pushes the envelope in many different areas, and includes example code designed to illustrate edge cases. When I find these, I’m flagging them in the text and (if they look like bugs) adding them to the tracking system. But, so far, 1.9 is looking like a big win for Ruby.

[The original guide, which so many used to get started with Ruby. Looking forward to 1.9, and now reviewing this edition.]
Source: PragDave

‘But I Think It’s Got Something to Do With Loneliness’

‘But I Think It’s Got Something to Do With Loneliness’: Great find by Kottke: a transcript of Michael Silverblatt’s terrific 1996 interview with David Foster Wallace on the publication of Infinite Jest.

DFW: I guess I, when I was in my twenties, like deep down underneath all the bullshit what I really believed was that the point of fiction was to show that the writer was really smart. And that sounds terrible to say, but I think, looking back, that’s what was going on. And I don’t think I really understood what loneliness was when I was a young man. And now I’ve got a much less clear idea of what the point of art is, but I think it’s got something to do with loneliness and something to do with setting up a conversation between human beings.

[And now you know what social networks are all about.]
Source: Daring Fireball

Bebo Embraces Facebook Apps With Its “Open Applications Platform”

Bebo Embraces Facebook Apps With Its “Open Applications Platform”: Today, Bebo is announcing the availability of a new platform called the “Open Application Platform”, but it’s not really a new platform. Rather, it’s like a clone of Facebook’s proprietary platform. The idea is to create a platform that matches the functionality and structure of Facebook’s platform so closely that it’s easy to deploy applications built for Facebook on Bebo, with little or no changes to the code.

Bebo’s new platform accepts something called SNQL and SNML (as in, social networking query language and social networking markup language), each of which mirrors Facebook’s FQL and FBML, albeit with subtle differences. CEO Michael Birch says that it has been developing these parallel languages for about five months and in communication with Facebook itself, which has been assisting Bebo in its efforts to essentially adopt its platform. [Brilliant.]
Source: TechCrunch

Amazon launches new database service

“Many developers simply want to store, process, and query their data without worrying about managing schemas, maintaining indexes, tuning performance or scaling access to their data,” the documentation explains. “Amazon SimpleDB removes the need to maintain a schema, while your attributes are automatically indexed to provide fast real-time lookup and querying capabilities.”

SimpleDB costs 14 cents per machine hour, with no minimum fee. This is normalized to the hourly capacity of a 2007 1.7 GHz Xeon processor. There’s also a data transfer charge of 10 cents per Gbyte transferred in. For data transferred out, the rate starts at 18 cents per Gbyte for first 10 Tbytes per month, then drops to 16 cents for the next 40 Tbytes per month, and finally drops to 13 cents per Gbyte for 50 Tbytes and beyond per month. These fees apply to data transferred in and out of Amazon SimpleDB. Data transferred between SimpleDB and other Amazon Web services is moved without additional cost. There’s also a $1.50 fee per Gbyte per month for the storage of structured data.

There’s one significant cost that SimpleDB users can avoid: keeping a database administrator on the payroll.

[We live in interesting times…]

Professional services for professional blogs

Professional services for professional blogs: For Dave Winer, for me, for Ben Toth, for John Halamka, and for a growing number of professional bloggers in the sense I’m defining the term, there’s got to be a better way. We don’t need services that are free. We need services that are reliable here in the present, and that offer tiered levels of future assurance. If you build it, we will pay. [Opportunity knocks…]
Source: Jon’s Radio

Cyclist Doored, Killed by Truck in Midtown

Cyclist Doored, Killed by Truck in Midtown: Here is the wire report:

FINAL UPDATE,RESP-4 REPORTS A CYCLIST TRAVELING NORTH BOUND 6 AVE BTWN 36 & 37 ST WERE A RED PICK UP TRUCK WAS PARKED BY THE HYDRANT WHEN THE PASSENGER OPENED THE DOOR AND STRUCK THE CYCLIST . THE CYCLIST WAS STRUCK BY A PASSING BOX TRUCK.THE CYCLIST WAS TAKEN TO BELLVUE HOSPITAL {DOA} ..SIGNS & MARKING IN GOOD WORKING ORDER..PER OP-26

And here is how it was reported in the Daily News. Note the number of steps taken, and not taken, by the cyclist to put himself in mortal danger — starting with the headline.

Bicyclist killed after falling in front of truck
 
A 63-year-old man bicycling in midtown Manhattan Wednesday morning hit a car door and flipped into the street before he was run over and killed by a box truck, police said.

The man, whose identity wasn’t immediately released, was not wearing a helmet, a police source said.

It’s as if every action — hitting the door, flipping into the street — was initiated by the cyclist, who wasn’t even wearing a helmet. The drivers of the vehicles, meanwhile, are never mentioned in the story. In fact, the article makes it seem as if there were no drivers.

The Ace Hardware truck that hit the man stayed at the scene. [Perspective is why blogging rules. There’s an outlook, a framework through which we all view the occurrences in our lives. Shift the framework and our perspective changes, and so does the way we record the account of a given moment. Because of human nature, all the major papers report news from a similar perspective (in order to become a reporter, editor, etc. requires certain qualities which are self selecting for a given viewpoint.)]
Source: StreetsBlog