iamcal.com Since May 2000

now this is interesting: Operational Transformation in Real-Time Group Editors: Issues, Algorithms, and Achievements. the paper on which the sub etha edit protocol is based. the concept of operational transformation could probably be applied to many other forms of realtime interaction and collaboration.

it's odd, but registering as self-employed with the inland revenue seems far more final than the act of resigning from my job. scary stuff.

after using it a little on osx, i'd love a windows port of sub etha edit. the developers say that this is very unlikely - it relies heavily on cocoa and can't really be "ported". there must be some equivilent windows app out there already? like ms word's "track changes", only in real time. maybe ms word will get add it in pretty soon.

honey is hard to get hold of in the uk now for some reason - some sort of health scare i think. none of the resturants i go to serve it as parts of other dishes any more. this makes me sad.

it's not possible to really describe what etcon was, so a word-dump written on the plane back is the closest to an explanation.

ludivan, eight people in a car, sociologist influx, hippie threat, dentistry by mutual cultural apocalypse, quantum dots, not gold colored - real gold, killer robots, kill people for peace, ask a policeman, smores, wrong orders, the height of jeff veen, jeff bezos (comedy stooge), apple 23" cinema display, rendezvous, brit swarm, coronado, electric sheep, intensive dev, lack of bandwidth, password sniffing, 3m3rging loft party, 3m3rging loft sofa, shopping, pixel a.shun, meg's green shoes, overheating laptops, the plaza labyrinth, the yale boys, wifi, late night hacking, $5 water, sex toys, jones' childhood fears, webb's glancing info-burst, centrino keys (broken), frys, in'n'out burger, lax, driving to san diego, oh brother where art thou soundtrack, bluetooth, prussian food, mexican food, missing breakfast, todo.txt, flickr launch, wallop, dumpster, syncing, staging, deploying, firewalls, load balancing, nfs permissions, postfix, authorized_keys, email clocks, dannah's hat, ada's napkins, nokia camera phones, nokia cto, free ice cream, molly's memory, walking fast with helen, jelly margaritas, back channels, blank cds, heavenly hotel.

urgh. total sensory overload.

this stuff looks beautiful and innovative (collaborative drawing tools that don't suck!). unfortunately it doesn't work through the firewall of doom (tm) so i'll have to check it out later. all built by Jared Tarbell from levitated.net and open source.

london agency wilson fletcher showing that you can use css for layout without lookinb like you're using css for layout (if that makes sense). unfortunately suffering from the "Flash of Unstyled Content" bug which makes for ugly loading. Blue robot suggests a couple of fixes.

ludicorp's transcendant interactions presentation gives much food for thought. do any of us really use applications for interactions (between people, at least) that don't transcend? applications that lock us into their own little microcosom which we don't aspire to find a way to componentise into our bigger picture interactions? i can't think of any this morning. maybe it's less about application shift and more about a new way of looking at interaction design. applications as non-discrete elements of "bigger picture" interaction.

the image on the bottom of this page is big. not just big, but huge. a full 1024x768 screen. when i first put it on there i thought it was a great idea. now trying it over dialup, i think it's an even better idea. gives a sense of intrigue, not knowing what's coming. it requires a certain patience in direct opposition to my usual feelings about speed of action. it's kinda soothing.

the atom feed validator is borked, which has made me loath atom before i've even created a single feed. luckily (for me or for atom?) the alternative at feedvalidator.org (which appears to be the same validator, in style at least) works fine. the scripting news validator does atom validation too.

my initial atom thoughts: too many required attributes. entries wont necessarily have titles (these don't). annoying date format - it might be a standard, but it doesn't mean i have to like it. really just like rss with the tag names changed. again.