Chaos MagnetThe personal and professional ramblings of technology author Nicholas ChaseScratch: programming for kids and other non-programmers- January 29, 2007 Now that I have my laptop and it's clear that I'm not going to be switching back and forth between it and the laptop, the lowest-ranking computer has been granted to the kids, but since it's in the bedroom, there will be no internet connection. But I still want them to do more than just play video games, so it was nice to find Scratch, a programming environment that lets kids build interactive games, art, etc.I haven't actually built anything yet, but from that I see, it seems pretty much like.http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000865.html Introduction to XSLT- January 29, 2007 I've been slacking on blogging my pieces as they get published on IBM's developerWorks, but Introduction to XSLT is being featured on the home page this week, so it reminded me. :) So here it is... Introduction to XSLT The need to transform XML is so common that Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is considered one of the basic XML specifications. This tutorial explains how to create XSLT stylesheets. It also covers the basics of XPath, which enables you to select specific..http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000864.html ReadWrite Web- January 29, 2007 Now that I'm keeping up wtih my favorite feeds via email, I'm developing a notion of what's worth reading and what's just worth checking once in a while. ReadWrite Web is definitely in the first category. Commentaries are consistently well thought out and cover a wide range of technologies involved in web development, from mobile to throwaway identities to Ajax to OpenId and lots more.http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000863.html Back in the saddle- January 22, 2007 Last year, we sold a bunch of stuff on eBay, but come December, we were so swamped, we took a break for about a month. We started up again this week, with just five items: Ateco 105+ Piece Set of Cake Decorating ToolsCase VGC Emenee Sunburst Tiger Plastic Guitar GC Guardian Service 13" Platter Gc Staffordshire Blue Ironstone Candlestick Copeland Spode Bowl w Handles in the Rhine Pattern EChttp://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000862.html Creating glassy looking buttons- January 19, 2007 OK, I have no artisitic talent, I admit that. But every once in a while I need something that looks nice for a project, and I've always been in awe of those glassy looking buttons. Especially now, with the new Vista interfaces, I knew I was going to have to figure out how to do that, or really regret it. Fortunately, I just found a tutorial on making those glassy looking buttons.http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000861.html How to market your blog in 2007- January 12, 2007 I am determined to get it together this year. (Yeah, just like every other year.) One of the things I need to do is decide what to do with this blog. The last couple of days, while researching stuff for work, I added a whole bunch of posts, and circulation took a nosedive. I choose to believe this is because you all are just not interested in so much technical stuff, rather than believing it's just that you are not interested in what I have to say. (Hey, you're reading this, aren't you) ...http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000860.html Chaos Magnet now publishes full feeds- January 12, 2007 Okay, everybody, I'm trying an experiment. For the life of this blog, I have published an RSS feed, but it has been a "partial feed", on the premise that people should come to the site to read the actual post. However, I'm beginning to think this is not such a good idea. Part of it stems from the fact that I have finally discovered a good way for me to keep up with all of the feeds I want to read - RSS2Email -- and I've discovered I personally prefer full feeds. That means the whole posting.http://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000859.html A little science humor- January 11, 2007 Centrifugal Forcehttp://www.chaosmagnet.com/blog/archives/000858.html |