In Plain Sight

Future Web: XMLDB

I see the desktop disappearing completely in the not too distant future in favor of full client integration of the net via technologies like Google Gears http://gears.google.com

However, my gripe with Google Gears - apart from the fact it does not support SAFARI yet - is that the integrated db is Sqlite.

This is plain wrong in my mind. It really should be and XMLDB. So I hope that the Yahoo YUI people are taking note because a client side persistent XMLDB that supports XSLT, XPath and XQuery (with Update extensions) is certainly the way to go.

After Rauschenberg

The press didn't let me down when they allowed soulless but know-it-all professors of art history to write Rauschenberg's obituary. It was predictable. In an ideal world they would have waited for Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham or some artist of similar station, that knew Rauschenberg well, to comment. Cunningham said:

"Together we erased boundaries between the arts."

I'm glad that I have had the pleasure to see Merce Cunningham at Stanford in recent years and I am sorry that I never had the opportunity to meet Robert Rauschenberg. I had so many questions for him.

I'm don't really want to deem the Slate with a direct reference (but will anyway http://www.slate.com/id/2191397). I have mixed feelings about Jack Shafer's superficial comments. Obviously, he felt it necessary to to be contrarian and I agree with his notes about the reporting. There is definitely room for more controversy. But obviously Shafer knows nothing about modern art.

Robert Rauschenberg Passed Away

The news that Robert Rauschenberg died today, while not entirely unexpected, is deeply saddening. Robert Rauschenberg was 82 and the world is a little less bright today.

Robert Rauschenberg was IMHO the most important artist of the twentieth century, and he was still producing work in this century. While there is much to celebrate in Modern Art since Cézanne, with many extraordinary contributions from the European continent, including of course the outstanding work of Picasso, Chagall, Dali, Mattisse, van Gogt, and American contributions that took the late twentieth century by storm, one must mention de Kooning, Pollock, Warhol, and Rauschenberg's close friends Jasper Johns and John Cage; they are all illuminated by the bright light that was Robert Rauschenberg.

Why is Robert Rauschenberg so important to our culture and in what way did he transform modern art?

The real reason is not widely appreciated I admit. Sure you will hear curators talk about the great "stuff" he built, his "combines," and they will tell you about how he pulled things into his art from the world around him, but none of this was particularly original or revolutionary.

Robert Rauschenberg is important to Modern Art and our culture as a whole for one thing, and it is a major transformation in thinking about art; more revolutionary than Duchamp and Dada and more profound than the Surrealism of Dali.

He turned ideas into works of art.

It is a remarkable and stunning achievement. And when you look at his body of work it is that one great thought that astounds you. He turned not material things into art, but ideas. This is best illustrated in his "Erased de Kooning Drawing" that is in the permanent collection at SFMOMA. It is, in my view, simply the most revolutionary work of art of the twentieth century.

Rest in peace Robert, and thank you for transforming how I viewed the world.

A New Bicycle

People that know me well know that in the past two years I have been making a real pain of myself by insisting that I fully integrate a bicycle into my life. I've been turning up at business meetings on my bike. I've also been turning up on "dates" on my bicycle, which I have to note has rather limited my first date possibilities. Dinner at the Fairmont is great, just don't offer to turn up on your bicycle apparently.

Well, that's their lose, as they say, not mine. Whittling out the fortune hunters and the materialist bitches is a filter that I am more than happy to apply.

Last summer I lost a bunch of weight as a result of this strategy but since the fall that weight has returned mainly, I think, because of calcium channel blockers that I take to control my blood pressure. Of course, overall I am much fitter than I was.

So, to correct this imbalance and to eliminate the extra 50lbs that I'm carrying I am upgrading my cycling activities. I'm 260lbs, the product of a misspent middle age. I've started to take the long route to Palo Alto, via Portola Valley and about 23 miles. I often ride back more directly, about another 12 miles (and I sometimes take the train).

It is a beautiful and scenic ride, but boy does my ass hurt!

The reason for this is that I'm riding a bike with an Aluminum frame that is really only designed for about town and short distance riding. It's no problem to ride to Palo Alto directly but the longer route is pushing the limits of what I can do on this bike.

So, a new bike is in order and after some research I discover that a man of my excellent stature, in all senses, really needs a steel framed touring bike. All those glamorous carbon framed bikes are useless to me.

While cycling is a very popular sport locally, it's mostly young lawyers, financial types and, believe it or not, wealthy old ladies, riding $6000+ carbon framed road bikes in bright and tight florescent green and yellow tights covered in unrecognizable branding. Geeks riding bikes, like me, tend to be limited to Campus and the commute to and from there. We are mixed among the throng of students, not all of whom are geeks.

When I ride a bike I'm certainly not thinking "Tour-de-France." I'm thinking of black and white photographs of trendy young men riding around Italian or French towns and cities in Roman Plazas, stopping at book shops and cafes, arguing about anarchy, and smoking. Okay, so this isn't much of a match to reality either, but it is an achievable goal.

So on Thursday I went into Palo Alto bikes and was measured for a new custom built bicycle constructed around a Surly Long Haul Trucker steel frame (http://www.surlybikes.com/longhaul.html) and comforted by the blazon "Fatties Fit Fine" imprinted upon the frame. Cost is in the order of $1750 by the time I'm done.

And this may be the route that I go. However, ...

My research on Thursday evening uncovered two things.

First, it really isn't so hard to build your own bicycling machine and it looks like a lot of fun to do so. I love the Palo Alto Bicycle Store (http://www.paloaltobicycles.com/), but it may be time to ween myself off of my dependency upon them.

Second, I discovered Rivendell Bicycle Works (http://www.rivbike.com/).

Rivendell just appeals to the kind of bicycle rider I am. These are the bikes that the trendy young men in blazers, slacks and caps ride around Roman plazas. What is more, the company is a Bay Area company. They are in Walnut Creek. So I just have to go to their location to take a good look before I take my next step. The bikes cost a lot more than I was considering, they are twice as much. But this just may be one of those things that will so improve my daily pleasure and my conviction to extend my cycling habits, and rid myself of this extra 50lbs, that it's a must have. It seems unlikely that I will have time to go to Walnut Creek before next weekend, so I must temper my purchasing drive at least until then.

Proudly Owning Michael Kay's XSLT 2.0 4th Ed.

I am now the proud owner of Michael Kay's XSLT 2.0 4th Edition, just released and flown to me down the friendly Amazon. Excellent! :-)

I've been using XSLT for a couple of years now and I have become committed to using XML, XSLT, XML Schema and XQuery in all my future information projects.

I do all my own science and technical writing in the context of the "memeio project" which I am gradually building up ([re]writing) in these technologies as I need new functionality and explore new ideas. It has turned into quite a powerful tool, built on top of the exist-db native xml database as it now is. I haven't had to write a line of SQL in those two years.

I am also a big fan of the excellent work that is being done with the Oxygen XML Editor, which is really maturing into a fine tool for work with these technologies. A new mode was added recently in version 9 that allows a more WYSIWYG view. It has left me much impressed because I have been able to give it to my non-techy writing assistant and she has been most productive with it and "memeio" in a current project.

With all these things coming together we are due something of a surge ahead in the XML community I believe, with excellent tools like those above becoming widely available and all kinds of new applications possible.

Kudos to Jerry Yang

There is a lot of criticism of Jerry Yang around but I say Kudos to Jerry for standing up to the bully.

Whether it was in his motivation or not, this outcome is best for Yahoo employees and for Silicon Valley as a whole. I am rather appalled that he is being criticized for declining a quick profit for shareholders yet he was smart enough to recognize there was a price that they could not refuse. That price was $37 and it was a price that Steve Ballmer was unwilling to pay. So it goes ...

Clearly Yahoo! has some challenges ahead, but then so do Microsoft.

As to a deal with Google. I think it just makes eminently good sense for Yahoo! to farm off their operations of search onto Google. They will continue to get the revenue, lower their costs and sharpen their focus.

It makes perfect sense for them to play to their strengths and there is a more valuable prize to be won than Search. I agree with what BJ Fogg said in his Stanford class last week. The social graph is a much more valuable prize than search and Yahoo! have a good stab at that, while Google has little chance at it.

I wish Yahoo, a Sunnyvale company, the best of luck and I firmly believe their CEO did the right thing.

Iron Man

Casting Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man was a stroke of genius. The best movie of the Marvel Franchise so far IMHO - beating Spiderman and the X-Men - simply brilliant. The introduction of S.H.I.E.L.D. opens the promise of a movie introducing Nick Fury! An important element of my childhood just came to life. I'm so excited!

Now Marvel just need to make movies with The Mighty Thor and Dr. Strange, and DC have to make The Green Lantern and The League of Superheroes, and the mythology of my childhood has been born and I can die happy.

Iron Man was so awesome and I am so excited that I can't begin to do a proper review. Just go see the movie, and you'll see what I mean. I've been looking forward to the movie for months. When I first saw that Robert Downey Jr. had been cast as Tony Stark I was totally excited, he seemed so right for the role. The movie lives up to all my most hopeful expectations. Gwenyth Paltrow makes a perfect Pepper Potts and I am so glad they kept the character's comic name. Jeff Bridges was awesome too. The CGI was good IMHO - though I have no doubt that Zen will bitch.