May 31, 2005
Vantage Again
I spent the last two days out in Vantage. It was roasting hot but breezy and we found routes in the shade and fluffy pups. Made for some lovely climbing. (PO0)
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climbing
May 28, 2005
More Fiddling
Some more progress on my Fiddling. In my efforts to explore, I've completely lost touch with make it work in all browsers. Reports of weirdness appreciated. As I don't have comment submission working yet (see below), try email. (PNS)
It is now possible to read comments. With javascript on, a comment reading widget shows up midscreen that lets you flip through a sequence of comments. Try my Blaise bashing entry for a sample. Click on "Read Comments". This one works in Safari (I have 2.0) and Firefox. The comments pushed into a hidden div on the page with the MovableType template system. When the page loads, they are found, pushed onto an array, and made available for later onclick action. (PNT)
There's nothing in place yet for submitting a comment. My plan is a sort of one time comment pad. The form will be generated as needed from the server with fields with meaningless dynamic names. The form will submit to a CGI that has a different name with every go. The CGI will self destruct after submission. Links to retrieve the form will be generated via javascript. etc. etc. Or some subset of that depending on urges. Maybe the good Dr. Surly has some thoughts. (PNU)
The 'Contextualize' link is now active. In most situations it will produce a div explaining why it is not working for you. If you click it now before you make any of the changes it suggests (or implies) you'll get the drift. If you are using a Mozilla-based browser and you have made the codebase principals changes, clicking the link will cause the URL of the current page to be looked up (via Sarissa) at technorati via their API. The results are returned as RSS then transformed to HTML in the browser using an XSL file located on my server. The output is simple enough that the XSL can handle the three styles of RSS generally floating around. (PNV)
The Safari developers promise there will be support for XSLTProcesssor real soon now®. I don't yet know about cross domain document retrieval. A bit of a stopper, but if we really want a flexible ajax world, it's a problem that's going to need an easy solution. (PNW)
Does any of this work in IE? (PNX)
View source leads to all the javascript and from there to the XSL as well. (PNY)
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geek-glaxon
May 26, 2005
Long Live(d) Purple Numbers
Phil responds to Eugene's participation in the recent chatter about purple numbers, returning to the issue of numbers versus names. Some late night thoughts in response: (PNG)
Phil says numbers make sense in a blog, because you're already there when you decide to make reference, whereas in a wiki you're not. He says: (PNH)
My initial discussion with Chris, was, in contrast, about purple-numbers in wiki, which is what E.E.C. and Blue Oxen have always appeared to me to stand for. (PNI)
I'm sorry I helped to extend that impression. Purple numbers have never been thought of as a thing that just live in wikis or for that matter just in any environment. They facilitate cross medium reference and reuse. Purple numbers may be optimized for synthesis, but they are predicated on ethic (or at least goal) of interoperability. Where they show their most value is content reuse between blogs and wikis and email archives. (PNJ)
Phil suggests a sort of "purple names": (PNK)
But we could imagine markers that weren't meaningless. For example, if I could make a link which simply included the first X letters of a paragraph to be matched. If I could link to the previous paragraph in this post by making a link like this : (PNL)
[[PostName#OK?. But]] (PNM)
What, I ask, happens when that paragraph has its first six characters change? Or it moves to another page? The link breaks. (PNN)
This transclusion uses just the purple number: (PNO)
a high degree of flexibility in referencing content from anywhere, even content that will change its location on the network T (PNP)
If the content at PM3 is moved from my blog into my wiki, and I were running the latest PurpleWiki code, the transclusion would continue to work. If I changed the text from "a high degree" to "a significant degree", the transclusion would continue to work. (PNQ)
Yes, right now it has a horrible, nasty, unfortunate interface, but that interface is helping to flesh out an infrastructure that will support some stuff with nice interfaces down the road. In the meantime it does some cool stuff that takes a short while to get used to but provides huge benefits if you're willing to pay the price. (PNR)
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purple
May 24, 2005
Reading To Write
Phil Jones and I continue our conversation about purple numbers: (PMY)
Essentially Chris casts the issue as a trade off between reading and writing. (PMZ)
That's a pretty good characterization of what I was saying, and Phil makes some excellent points. His comments inspire a thought that illuminates a thing I forgot to emphasize in my earlier comments: (PN0)
Yes, purple numbers do try to favor the reader and the act of reading, but not just for reading. They favor the reader so the reader may more easily do more writing. The whole point is for purple numbers and tools like it to be a generative force in the synthesis of new understandings. (PN1)
Phil can write all he wants, and I can read all I want, but until I write down something that builds on what Phil says, while making chains of reference back through the many layers of context, there's been no synthesis, at least not any that is available outside the confines of my own mind. (PN2)
So purple numbers aren't anything new: They are yet another in a long history of techniques that help people generate a little understanding with a little authority. The purple numbers twist is that you can point and grab with finer detail and in real time. (PN3)
Update: Eugene joins in with some interesting additions. (PN4)
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purple
hypoallergenic
When last I was at the doctor we decided that having discovered some food allergies it might be wise to investigate allergies of the airborne or environmental type. (PMU)
So today I trotted off to the allergist confident that something would show, at least mold, cats and perhaps a few tree pollens. (PMV)
Nothing. Nada. Zip. I had no reaction to any of the (many) pricks and shots. I barely had a reaction to the positive control. And the machine that goes ping when you blow into it says my lungs are fine. (PMW)
The good news is apparently I don't have airborne allergy problems. The bad news is something unknown is wrong with me. (PMX)
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journal
May 23, 2005
Fiddling
I've decided to give the blog a face lift as preparation for experimenting with some interface changes. I had to get things looking interesting enough to make it worth playing. For now the changes only show up on the front page. (PMM)
Syndication is killing the showy blog, so this may all be pointless, but I need somewhere to experiment. (PMN)
Basic ideas are: (PMO)
- only have one entry on the front page (PMP)
- comments will initially be hidden from view, with a click to show them and to add one, eventually with something ajax, so as to be fully buzzword compliant (PMQ)
- the word contextualize will provide information about trackbacks, technorati cosmos, and other methods for finding other things related to this thing, also ajax (PMR)
- rather than a blogroll, a sorted list of who I've read recently, based on data farmed out of Netnewswire somehow (PMS)
Seems to work fine in Firefox and Safari. If it blows up or looks ugly for you, please let me know. (PMT)
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geek-glaxon
May 11, 2005
Purple Identification
In a fine bit of conversation, Phil Jones has responded to my response to Adina Levin responding to my response to Jason Kottke talking about the fundamental units of content on the web. (PLT)
Phil asserts that I'm hostile to the semantics of labels being bound by everyday behavior. This is not at all the case. Phil uses WikiWords as a good example. My hostility to free linking should indicate the depth of my love for WikiWords. I also love tags, but as Bill Seitz points out, tags don't point to a single resource, they point to a collection. (PLU)
Tags and WikiWords don't serve the same purpose as purple numbers. (PLV)
Tags and WikiWords are names people can use to label something or some things. They grant a certain power to authors: "I am calling this thing I am writing or this thing I am pointing to FOO". There is an expectation or hope of collision. (PLW)
Purple numbers are identifiers that grant power to readers, reviewers, annotators and commentators to indicate a specific piece of any content anywhere and make reference to or, more importantly, reuse it. If pieces of content had meaningful labels, imagine the difficulty of adding labels to every piece of content? (PLX)
For perspective: Tim Bray took a step down the slippery slope away from the shimmering shiny idealism of allowing the reader access to everything by implementing his (reference only, no support for transclusion) purple numbers in way that grants the author control over what chunks get the numbers. That's like letting a politician say "off the record..." (PLY)
By the way, a closer look at my gripe with URIs (PLZ)
Current implementations of purple numbers expose the identifiers (in both the numbers on the screen and numbers at all senses) but this does not need to be the case. Because they are unique (for now in a given suite of tools, but long term globally), persistent and stable they can have labels associated with them that resolve to the stable identifiers (Purple:DistributedPurpleNumbers for some references). The labels could be names like "mom's address" or sequences like those found in legal documents. All this is very much like the concept of a URI except that URIs, because they contain information about what they identify, fail to be persistent or stable and thus are not identifiers at all but labels posing (miserably) as identifiers. T (PM0)
shows that I'm okay with labels (which is what WikiWords and tags are) in general. I agree that presenting purple numbers onscreen as the numbers, and requiring users to manipulate the numbers is problematic. (PM1)
However given the goals (PM2)
- a high degree of flexibility in referencing content from anywhere, even content that will change its location on the network (PM3)
- referential control in the hands of the reader (PM4)
- versioned nodes (PM5)
there need to be persistent, unique, stable identifiers underneath whatever helpful interfaces will eventually exist between the user and the guts of the system. In simple wiki systems, the page name which people use to gain access to the resource which is the manifestation of that page on that particular system resolves to a unique identifier (inode) on the (extremely local) filesystem. In modern operating systems, you don't personally use inodes to get at stuff, but they are a crucial piece of the pie. Purple numbers, someday, can be thought of as inodes for individual chunks of content that transcend filesystems and local networks and can move around. (PM6)
Someday, perhaps, there will be nice libraries for them. In the meantime we have to come up with what those libraries will need to do by messing with some ick. (PM7)
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purple
May 10, 2005
Purple response
Responding to my Fundamentally Purple posting, Adina asks some good questions about purple numbers summed with: (PKN)
In practice, are purple numbers stable enough to be useful? Or are there certain cases where they are more useful than others? ps (PKO)
Adina's concerned that during the editing process the numbers will migrate around too much as paragraphs split and sentences move from one paragraph to another. (PKP)
That's a valid concern, and it does happen, but experience with Purplewiki and the collaborative environments at Blue Oxen and other places lucky enough to have a full suite of purple stuff have shown that it's not too much of a big deal: people adapt well. (PKQ)
(If you are short of time you may find it useful to skip to the end of this meandering think.) (PKR)
People's writing habits change a bit: (PKS)
- a little more effort is made to break thoughts up into chunks (paragraphs or list items) so that references are easier to make and are more stable (PKT)
- there's a bit more atomism (Wikipedia's description of transclusion has a bit on this) (PKU)
- when editing a wiki page, people choose to maintain the purple number on a chunk or remove it as fits the degree of change made to the chunk (PKV)
- references to information that adds context to the current content increase (PKW)
Purplewiki's implementation of purple numbers is far from done or perfect (it's a sweet little hack that happens to enable all kinds of helpful behaviors): it provides a platform for exploring the concepts and issues with systems that allow granular addressability and transclusion but imposes some burdens on the user. The flaws present now are pointers to things to fix or research as we learn how to create systems that support the basic (and flawless in the abstract sense) concept at the core of purple numbers: If you put handles on things that both computers and people can manipulate, you increase opportunities for use and manipulation. (PKX)
(Lee Iverson's Nodal project presents a more formal model for node-based document systems.) (PKY)
Adina lists three points: (PKZ)
- purple references to an early draft will be very different from their referents in a later draft. (PL0)
- the sequence will be garbled (PL1)
- some references will be missing ps (PL2)
The first and third can be at least somewhat addressed by one of largest missing pieces in current purple implementations: node versioning. With proper versioning, references will never die, they just fade out of the foreground. A cool system of doing versioning will allow a referenced node to present itself from any point on its history, while giving indicators of its forward and backward life. (PL3)
In very recent versions of PurpleWiki, purple numbered nodes (the chunks of content) can move easily from page to page in the wiki and amongst associated blogs, document repositories and email archives. Experimental code exists which allows nodes to move between a designated set of servers. Long term nodes could move anywhere on the public internet. (PL4)
The second point is not so much a problem as a misunderstanding. Despite the fact that some purpled documents appear to show a sequence (such as PK1, PK2, PK3, etc.) this is coincidental: the system that generates the numbers happens to be predictable, but is not reliably so. The purple numbers are meant to be entirely meaningless identifiers (not labels or names) and therefore not present any information about the content they identify (no sense of time of creation or of sequence). This makes them portable and stable in the extreme. That they sometimes do show up in sequence is essentially a misfeature resulting from laziness. (PL5)
Current implementations of purple numbers expose the identifiers (in both the numbers on the screen and numbers at all senses) but this does not need to be the case. Because they are unique (for now in a given suite of tools, but long term globally), persistent and stable they can have labels associated with them that resolve to the stable identifiers (Purple:DistributedPurpleNumbers for some references). The labels could be names like "mom's address" or sequences like those found in legal documents. All this is very much like the concept of a URI except that URIs, because they contain information about what they identify, fail to be persistent or stable and thus are not identifiers at all but labels posing (miserably) as identifiers. (PL6)
In advanced tools using purple numbers, they never need be seen. Fancy gestural interfaces could include "reference this" or "transclude this" for content that is, behind the scenes, purple numbered. (PL7)
And lest we forget, purple numbers are just one implementation of a concept, granular addressability, that could be done in many ways. (PL8)
In purple number tools of today, when one right clicks on a purple number you get the full url of the page being clicked plus the purple number. Something like this: (PL9)
http://www.example.com/purple/thing.html#nidA9E (PLB)
Better would be something like one of these: (PLD)
http://purpleresolver.net/A9E {nid PLF} purple:A9E (PLG)
(The answer to the question "Why?" left as an exercise for the reader. I'll make some Church of Purple t-shirts on Cafe Press and give one to the author of the best answer.) (PLI)
Update: (PM8)
paulv: is the "why" question "why is http://purpleresolver.net/A9E better than http://www.example.com/purple/thing.html#nidA9E"? cdent: yes (PM9)
So, are purple numbers stable enough to be useful? For everyone and every case? No. But for quite a number of people in quite a number of situations they have been very useful. The primary use has been with smallish groups of people who need to create and use a large amount of information that is both stock and flow that is as valuable the second and later uses as the first. (PLJ)
See the WateringHole at Blue Oxen for a place to experiment. (PLK)
Clearly I am in far too deep with purple stuff: I need a translator. The above can be so much meaningless noise and I find little time to make things cogent. (PLL)
Here's a different angle: I've been using purple numbers on this blog for two and a half years and using them in wikis and mailing list archives for more than three. In collaborative settings where I've had purple numbers my ability to recall, use, synthesize and act on information has been exponentially augmented. So much so that in environments where I do not have them I feel radically hobbled. (PLM)
The present day technical and usability issues with purple numbers (or better systems that might replace it) are temporary, interesting problems to solve, and a small price to pay for being less dumb. (PLN)
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purple
May 08, 2005
Climbing at Exit 38
Good lord, two weekends in a row. More climbing, this time at Exit 38. It was a bit damp but fun. I should do a combined report on the red, vantage and now this. (PKG)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdent/sets/312888/ (PKH)
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climbing
May 07, 2005
Fundamentally Purple
Much like the shift from molecules to atoms to subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, etc.) to quarks to (potentially) tiny vibrating strings as the most fundamental unit of physical matter that we can find, the fundamental unit for content on the web has been getting smaller as well ps (PKC)
He then lists the sequence: site, pages, post/permalink combo and now, with bookmark managers and tagging systems, the phrase or word. (PKD)
Left out is the more useful (for reuse and reference) paragraph or block unit, as done in purple numbers and other fragment identification systems, which make every "paragraph a first-class Web citizen". (PKE)
Reference at the level of a paragraph enables valuable granular referencing and reuse while staying just on the safe side of the boundary between respecting context and being ridiculous. (PKF)
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purple
May 03, 2005
Apple Amplifier
Meet Automator by Matt Neuburg at TidBITS opens with: (PK4)
The history of the Mac is paved with Apple's attempts to enable ordinary users to tap the programmable power of their own computers. (PK5)
They've done this by giving users more granular access to the operations of the tools and applications on the system. Applescript and Automator let people manipulate and assemble simple data and actions in ways that create complex systems. (PK6)
It's like lego. If you have lots of little pieces of lego you can build all kinds of fancy things that are less limited than what you can build with the bigger blocks of Duplo. (PK7)
This is the argument that's often been used to explain the superiority of Un*x over Windows; the lack of flexibility and real assistance provided by wizards and Clippy; the value of nanotechnology; and, near and dear, the importance of purple numbers and similar systems. (PK8)
Apple's use of this model may explain why I've never felt particularly insulted by the company. Granting people usable handles to actions and information is a generous and trusting gesture that hopes and assumes the receiving end is a creative and intelligent person that wants to use their tools in a less dumb fashion. There's extra power here if you want it. Headroom. (PK9)
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geek-glaxon
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philosophy
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purple
May 02, 2005
Links: 2005-05-02
- Capital Hacks: Why Seattle is Cooler than your City
Not sure I entirely agree with all of this, but it is interesting
Posted: 2005-05-02T23:10:25Z (categories: politics seattle ) - macosxhints - Disable Safari's ability to handle PDF files
I'm gonna want this after I upgrade
Posted: 2005-05-02T21:10:49Z (categories: osx tiger )
It's about time: Vantage
Finally made it outside in Washington, to Vantage (aka Frenchman's Coulee): (PJW)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdent/sets/295860/ (PJX)
Perhaps more later. (PJY)
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climbing
May 01, 2005
Blogs: Moving the Bait
SB received her copy the SLIS Network alumni magazine today. I suspect they've lost me somehow (off the hook for now, but see below). (PIF)
It opens with a note from the Dean, Blaise Cronin, lovingly entitled: BLOG: see also Bathetically Ludicrous Online Gossip. (PIG)
Blaise has a strong reputation as someone who loves to stir controversy. It helps him support his persistent belief that citation is a greater indicator of academic importance than content. Blaise is a brilliant strategist on a fishing trip so I find myself reluctant to write in response, but his last paragraph compels: (PIH)
One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they chose to they expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better. ps (PII)
Under some circumstances, I might be willing to agree with Blaise. Ross reports back from Les Blogs: (PIJ)
Barak from 6A noted that focus groups show people consistently think of bloggers are people who are self-important and have too much time on their hands. (PIK)
thoughts I've had myself on a rainy day. (PIL)
But there are two things: (PIM)
Blaise is the dean of a major site for information science education and research. He's showing a, um, bias here that's inappropriate for a place that should be pushing the boundaries of communication and knowledge enhancement forward, not holding them back. He's also playing political games with his own faculty that are too ridiculous to mention further. (PIN)
And that bit about Wikipedia certainly brushes up against my chosen lines of work. Blaise speaks there as if he is the voice for all librarians. The librarians I know and cherish, of course, know better than Blaise. (PIO)
Where I am in life today has a great deal to do with what I was able to milk out of my SLIS education. It came from my own assiduous exploration and the support of some very special people. It had very little to do with the policies and programs overseen by Blaise, and if he continues with these blinders the school will be unable to produce the sort of graduates the world needs. (PIP)
Update: Blaise has posted a response to all the static he's received. (PMH)
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collaboration
