You’ve got to be careful with alliances. When two companies work on the same thing then try to make those things work together, hilarity ensues. Last time I wrote about WSRP ["WSRP is Soo dead"]. WSRP in my opinion is a dead man walking. This time the topic is “Open Ajax”. [LINK].
The Open Ajax Alliance has been in existence since late 2005/early 2006. In that time I am not sure what they’ve done other than publish the OpenAjax Hub.
The charter is “The OpenAjax Alliance is an organization of vendors, …

As strange as Chess Boxing [LINK] but far more nerdy, Speedcabling is a competitive sport in which contestants race to unravel a bundle of network cables/wires.
Speedcabling is performed with short, medium, and long cables. In the United States, where the sport originated, these cables are of length 7, 14, and 21 feet. International speedcabling competitions utilize 2, 3, and 7 meter cables.
“There are two events that are typically conducted. In 2-2-2 competition, the contestant’s set consists of two of each cable. In 4-4-4 competition there are four of each type …

This is a test. In the beginning I just blogged (since 1998, before there WAS blogging). Then I signed up for Facebook, then Twine, then Twitter in that order.
I could care less but it seems to be the done thing to link to your blog posts from Twitter. A few minutes ago I found “Twitter Tools” for Wordpress which claims to post a Tweet every time you blog. This’ll be the inaugural test of that plugin.
Twitter is setup to update Facebook also so we’ll see what happens there.
I’m …

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Not ME! Watchmen came out some weeks back now and I have to say I thought it was terrible. Really indulgent predictable nonsense with little character development, transparent plot and terrible acting.
I am not hugely into comics but there are a couple I’ve happened across in my time that I think would’ve made FAR more interesting movies than Watchmen. Most are from 2000AD.
Strontium Dog, Portrait of a Mutant: Johnny Alpha is a mutant bounty hunter, a result of strontium-90 radiation poisoning. He has no …

First install Silverlight v2.0 [HERE] then check this out: http://www.francisshanahan.com/zoom/ then come back and read the rest.
Silverlight 3.5 was announced recently so I finally took 5mins to look at their “Deep Zoom” technology. Deep Zoom provides a way to view a HUGE image by converting it into what they call an “image pyramid”. Similar to what Google Maps does. It just so happened that I have a thing that makes huge images. It’s a side project I’ve been working on for about 18 months now. Anyway, I fired it up …

What do you get when you combine physical fitness, aggression, strength with strategy, mental dexterity and logic? Answer: Chess boxing.
I kid you not. Yes chess boxing is real. The video below is not a spoof.
“A match between two opponents consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess sessions, starting with a four-minute chess round followed by two minutes of boxing and so on. Between rounds there is a one minute pause, during which competitors change their gear. The form of chess played is speed chess in …

Last time I griped about ASP.NET ATLAS [LINK]. Ok so with that said, what’s the alternative? When I wrote my book (Amazon.com Mashups) I did most of the Javascript coding by hand. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t always easy. I tried ATLAS/ASP.NET AJAX and it sucks. I’ve moved on.
Decision criteria are as follows:
1) The stack should be fast, it should perform and add minimal overhead to my pages.
2) It should not impede interoperability. I want my code to play nice with others.
3) It should not slow me down. …

David Letterman made a comment a while back that Obama is cool, that he’s the 21st century Steve McQueen. He’s not far off here, especially compared to the last 200 years of presidents.
Take for example this iconic portrait taken during the campaigns. When McCain was canceling due to inclement weather, Obama was sporting a leather jacket in the snow and rallying voters. Now he’s playing basketball in the whitehouse? C’mon, who’s cooler than Obama?

My buddy Dan has a post on probability here [LINK]. I confess I never fully grasped probability in this sense. With a single coin toss heads has 50% chance and tails has 50% of coming up. It follows that with 10 coin tosses you’d expect 50% heads, 50% tails, and as things tend to an infinite number of tosses, actual results get closer to 50/50.
But what are the chances of getting 10 heads in a row? Fairly low, right? (how low I’ve no idea). So if I do 9 …

Yesterday Obama lifted the 8 year ban on stem cell research imposed by the moronic conservative Bush administration [LINK].
Thank goodness we finally have someone with a brain who can discuss and understand the issues at a macro level.
Most conservative (christian pro-lifers) are shaking their heads at this news. Not me. Does that make me an evil liberal baby killer? Eh no. Let me tell you why this is a good thing and why you need to open your minds and understand the issues before blindly following the pro-life …