Archive for August, 2008

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Friday, August 29th, 2008

Tropical Storm: Computer Model Hurricane Forecasts : Weather Underground

Worrisome: some of the computer models are now showing Gustav hooking to the south. One, the NGFDL model, shows Houston in the bull’s eye.

Even if it does, I probably have nothing to worry about, given I live almost forty miles inland. Still, it looks like I need to do some shopping on the way home tonight.

Forty-Four is Less Than Forty-Six

Friday, August 29th, 2008

McCain picks Alaska Gov. Palin as running mate – CNN.com

Palin, 44, who’s in her first term as governor, is a pioneering figure in Alaska, the first woman and the youngest person to hold the state’s top political job.

I guess it had to happen someday: a Candidate for the Presidential ticket (if not actually for President) who is younger than me.

ECMAscript4 is Dead; Long Live 3.1

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Okay, I’m a week late hearing the news, but it seems the EcmaScript (aka JavaScript, JScript, etc.) committee has cut its losses, and settled on a less ambitious next version of the standard, ECMAScript Harmony. Packages, namespaces, and early binding are gone. Which kind of leaves Adobe with a problem, as they had started implementing a lot of the ES4 features in ActionScript for Flash/Flex.

Namespaces are, in other languages, an important means of controlling complexity by partitioning the code into well-defined pieces. Maybe it’s not so essential in Jav(ahem) EcmaScript, especially in web browsers, which account for 99% of the current use cases. I think dropping them reduces the chance that EcmaScript will break out into other domains, and I think that’s unfortunate. But I’ll admit, the technical trade-offs involved are beyond my current understanding.

I’d very much like to know how this is going to affect the Tamarin project, though.