Disqus - Latest Comments for piers_hollott

Re: Using XSLT 2.0 as a Web Scripting Language

piers_hollott — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 16:51:40 -0000

I've been working with an approach that combines Saxon-CE and AngularJS, where Angular provides the MV* pattern, services architecture, and data-binding for JSON payloads and Saxon-CE allows you to do much more expressive templating and interaction if you have XML payload. Angular makes sense of JavaScript scoping nicely, and Saxon-CE obscures it a bit by creating new scope whenever you do something interactive. Combining the two forces you to remember to do things the smart way with CSS.

There's a sweet spot in there somewhere. Underneath it all, you still have JavaScript event-handling, and that probably creates a problem when you start to mix frameworks.

Re: Serial Fiction: the New Wave of Publishing.

piers_hollott — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:15:32 -0000

I suppose Dickens was working within length guidelines...

Re: Serial Fiction: the New Wave of Publishing.

piers_hollott — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:46:18 -0000

Yeah, this has bothered me in the back of my brain for a while now... if the ideal word count for consumption in a single sitting on a bus or whatever is a 1000-1500 word chapter, is the next step an act (or episode) comprising roughly 5-7 chapters, and then an arc comprising 3 or more acts? That's pretty standard for a kids chapter book, padding out to around 30,000 words, adjusted up or down for age.

I think for a serial for adult readers, the chapter and act size wouldn't change much, you just keep increasing the arc count. In any case, 10,000 words is too much for a single episode. 7,500 would be way more natural.

Re: Free stuff!

piers_hollott — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:05:04 -0000

Also avoid cliffhangers.

Re: Free stuff!

piers_hollott — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:41:36 -0000

I am going to be writing articles about Android development for IBM developerWorks. The mobile OS, not like C-3P0, unfortunately.

Re: Choices?

piers_hollott — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:34:57 -0000

+1 for mentioning Moby Dick! One of my favorite writers is Elizabeth Hand who writes SF/F and also the odd Star Wars novel about Boba Fett. I picked up her first novel because it had a picture of a butterfly mask made out of silicon on the front, along with a blurb from William Gibson, and some crazy stuff on the back.

Re: A&K Day 6 Recap

piers_hollott — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:58:48 -0000

Arkadaddy? That's from William Blake, or Pete Doherty or something, amirite?

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Scripting News: OMG, Twitter is suggesting people to follow?!

piers_hollott — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:14:08 -0000

I've mentioned before what you describe, this follow/unfollow usage pattern - when they introduced the new built-in RT functionality, it revealed that a bunch of the people I follow a) have friends who have little to say to me, and b) retweet these friends, and then c) I unfollowed these people. Probably not twitter's intent, but it worked for me way better than any of the social tools that promise to help me clean up my social graph.

Re: Broken Me

piers_hollott — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:44:18 -0000

Based on my reading of "Panda Apples" on this here site here, I have come to the conclusion that pandas are delicious, militarosocial state apparatuses can not be trusted, and fruit flies like an apple.

This may fly in the puffy face of authorial intent :)

Re: Broken Me

piers_hollott — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:13:38 -0000

That's what I said! Michael is allergic to fun, and meeting me for the first time was just that much fun...

erm, never mind... hope you feel better soon!

Re: Keys to the Kingdom: Day 1, Part 1

piers_hollott — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:24:30 -0000

...and I was waiting for someone to kick that puppy!

Re: Pattern Matching

piers_hollott — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:49:29 -0000

This also reminds me of easily my favourite episode of Rollbots, the one with the Do Right Mods, and the way that issues of conformity and non-conformity are reduced to continuity glitches when taken out of context.

Re: Keys to the Kingdom: Day 1, Part 1

piers_hollott — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 09:44:44 -0000

iPawed.

Re: The Dangers of Being Indie

piers_hollott — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:41:41 -0000

seems like there is a constant and nagging diconnect between cost, value and worth. Cost is often hidden, which is unfortunate, or a complete red-herring (I can pirate this, because the CD only costs, like, 10 cents!), value is created by consensus, and worth is a much more long term approach. I have a feeling that if you charge $2.99 for a kindle version, you are giving it value, but not worth, and you are attempting to reach parity with cost. Using a donation model, particularly paired with approaches like live-writing, you're aiming more at worth, which is tricksier, right?.

The value of a book is driven by how much you charge for it. The worth of a book with how much you net by it, and the size of the audience you reach with it. There are hybrid approaches, where a book starts out at a fixed cost and either becomes more or less expensive the wider its audience grows, but this is plain confusing (IMO).

The funny thing is, there will always be a majority of people who ask "Oh, they made a movie? I liked the book..." or v. versa, and this extends to live-writing v. kindle; they are different media, and they attract different audiences with very little overlap, I expect.

Anyways, I agree with Karen on many points, but in particular, don't drive away readers by not valuing your work products, and as always, thanks for sharing with honesty and forthrightness.

Re: The Ice Box

piers_hollott — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:45:53 -0000

btw, did you remove the dedication from the original Refrigerator because you were concerned about the possible lawsuit? It's been a while since I've tried to sue anyone, but I'd think you'd be safe, what with that incident where I tried to stab you with an epi-pen and all...

On second though, nm ;)

Re: The Ice Box

piers_hollott — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:40:02 -0000

I know, it's like a self-preservation reflex... like "ooh shiny, oh snap, REFRIGERATOR!"

(I would have hashtagged, but it said it was a MAYtag, obv :)

Re: The Ice Box

piers_hollott — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:15:48 -0000

Oh I get it! If you close the refrigerator door, the light goes out and the world is destroyed, but if you leave the door open, the ALIENS win!

erm...

Re: Privacy Reboot Needed

piers_hollott — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:01:14 -0000

>>> The world is clearly changing and our attitudes to privacy are clearly changing. Is that all good? No. Is it all bad? No. But it is.

Exactly. Only, as you point out, @average_joe and @plain_jane067may not be aware of how these things are changing just yet. Maybe there's an app for that?

Re: Adobe and Google Sitting in a Tree? Or Did Adobe Just Pwn Google?

piers_hollott — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:57:01 -0000

Wheels within wheels... I've been developing in Flex recently, and attended several of the free Adobe webinars during their recent developer week - I was struck by the irony that *all* of the presenters, many of them high profile folks in the Flex world, were using Macs. This must create tension between the two companies. They serve and feed from the same dish.

Great sleuthing, btw :)

Re: Privacy Reboot Needed

piers_hollott — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:47:29 -0000

I appreciate your take on this issue, as well as danah's; I'm not sure I completely agree about the beer analogy, but privacy concerns are definitely framed within what is taken for granted in a social contract which is largely assumed by both parties involved (eula or no eula). We have more invested in our social networks than we can take out of them, and this is frustrating. We are exposed without necessarily exposing ourselves, so we have the choice to live with it, leave it or completely embrace it.

Coming from an Agile development background, I'd like to draw a parallel with one of the fundamentals of the Agile methodology - "just enough." The Agile methodology breaks down when applied to security models because "just enough" is dangerously close to "not enough," and it appears the same applies to privacy. If the privacy provided by a site privacy changes dramatically from iteration to iteration, and particularly if the effects of this are not well understood, it leads to uneasy clients.

This is a tough topic. On the one hand, if your social network is entirely public, it is in effect backed up by the web as a whole (not to mention Internet Archive), so you need not be restricted to a single social network, and transition is easier. This is of course a catch-22.

Re: Phil Jones on how things connect (Scripting News)

piers_hollott — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:03:36 -0000

apparently, #090909 is "almost black"... good to know ;)

http://www.colourlovers.com...

Re: Am I a hypocrite? (Scripting News)

piers_hollott — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:09:16 -0000

There is a big difference between authority and celebrity.

Re: Rebooting the News #24

piers_hollott — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:56:51 -0000

I really like the idea of a Back Story button... there is an inherent problem with syndication, that when you join a channel mid-stream, you have three choices: go to the front of the channel and work back (or continue in ignorance), go to the back of the channel and try and catch up, or abandon the channel; I often find myself abandoning older channels in favour of new, for just this reason, which is short-sighted.

On the other hand, every time we reboot a network (ie leave myspace for facebook, facebook for twitter, twitter for friendfeed), we create an opportunity to allow people back into the head revision of the conversation. The web as we know it has lasted for one really good reason: anybody can "view source" and learn what is actually happening behind the scenes, anybody can open an rss feed and see what's going on inside.

It sounds like you are talking about "view source" for the news.

Re: Health care in a nutshell (Scripting News)

piers_hollott — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:29:48 -0000

Also, when healthcare becomes a universal cost, rather than a profit centre, the value of non-profit education and public service announcements promoting healthy attitudes towards smoking, drinking and the like is increased. In a non-universal healthcare system, these must be discouraged.

Also, c.oy.ly is perfect!

Re: Coming Back to Life

piers_hollott — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:14:35 -0000

Oh sure, it's obvious you're setting up a cover story for faking your own death; that's what all the cool kids are doing. I hope you don't actually expect people to believe you were killed by an iPhone App... Feel better soon :)