If..Else Log

Wow! This was one transfer scoop that I wasn't expecting. Harry Redknapp would be proud:) I wonder what happened behind the scenes to get this deal hashed out and what's happening behind the scenes now (esp. in the dressing rooms)?

In other transfer news, it looks a day of swapsies with Reyes going for Baptista, Cole for Gallas and Malbranque for Routledge . Interesting times ahead even if it will cause havoc in the fantasy football league that I'm in.

BBC News has a photo featurette on San Pedro prison, the city within prison walls.

Once you pass the thick walls and the security gates, any resemblance to a normal jail disappears: there are children playing, market stalls, restaurants, hairdressers and even a hotel

Cells are rented (with differing costs and levels of quality¹) and there's a thriving economy as people work to pay off their rent and pay for luxuries. As Tyler Cowen would say, "markets in everything".

1. In the "posh" areas, the cells are not only more spacious but also have private bathrooms, kitchen and cable TV. [back]

How to Create Your Own Planets Using Your Panoramas. Nice, simple and pretty cool. [via]

The NYTimes track down the FunTwo, the guy behind the wonderful YouTube Canon video. If you haven't already seen the video, then you definitely should.

With all the lamentation about what YouTube is worth, this piece is one of those that reminds you that the real value of YouTube for users is how it's opening up the world for amateur performers. Seeing Johann Pachelbel's Canon realised on a single rock guitar is a wonder to watch as well as listen to.

A WOW player accidentally drops his iPod into the toilet of a plane prompting a gratuitous overreaction from police officers, bomb squad and other goverment officials.

He told me there was a similar bomb scare in LA today. He asked me if I was connected with it. He asked me if I was connected to the "liquid" thing from Britain.

When overreaction is the normal state of play, then the terrorists have won.

The definitive list of what's been fixed for IE7 is detailed on the MSDN IE blog. As well as the various bug fixes (including the biggies detailed on John and Holly's site), there have been a range of CSS2.1 features have finally been implemented including:

• Min/max width/height support
• Transparent borders
• Fixed positioning support
• first-child, adjacent, attribute and child selectors
• Alpha channel PNG support

[Hattip: Kevin via email]

Go to Yahoo and click on the exclamation mark¹. Ya..hoooo..ooh! [via]

1. If you don't notice anything, make sure your speaker volume has been turned up. [back]

Whilst Akihabara's shopping district has a reputation amongst videogame fans, it is, perhaps, the black market of Hong Kong which come closest to being videogame's equivalent of a bazaar, a place where almost anything can be picked up if you look hard enough.

Nestled in between the usual masses of pirated merchandise, you'd often find more interesting oddities including the unusual prediliction for modified games. These generally fall into three categories; unofficial 'sequels' or VG 'spin-offs', mashups such as Virtua Fighter vs Tekken¹ or videogame 'ports' such as Sonic on a Nintendo machine²

Whilst the quality of these games left a lot to be desired, they are interesting albeit as a novelty. However, this port of Super Mario World to the NES looks quite remarkably well done. The speed and inertia of Mario seems to lack refinement but the graphics and music³ almost bring a tear to my eyes.

1. Rather amusingly, the one I remember was for the SNES:) [back]
2. This, of course, was more interesting back in the days of the Sega-Nintendo rivalry when Sega was still a player in the console wars. [back]
3. Oh, how I love retro VG music. [back]

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a longer title than that of Sas Jacob's new book. Fortunately, such verbosity is restricted to the cover as the book takes us on a exploratory tour of the world of XML. Starting with an introduction to XML, Sas walks us through some web vocabularies, XSLT and client-side scripting (including the aforementioned use of AJAX as well as Flash) before looking at using XML on the server-side.

Getting a taste

As mentioned earlier, one of the good things about Sas' book is how she has avoided the temptation for verbosity that often accompanies books on XML. Books on programming are bought and written on the premise that the information contained within would be an aid to support development but it's surprising how many books on XML allow themselves get needlessly sidetracked or over-complicate what is a relatively straightforward subject matter. Fortunately, that isn't the case here and the introduction on XML is succint and concise. Whilst perhaps lacking the commentary on the use of XML (such as the perennial argument over when to use attributes vs elements), as a brief introduction to the subject, it works well.

Likewise, whilst the chapters on web vocabularies, AJAX and Flash are perhaps best described as subject tasters, within the context of a beginners book, it makes sense. It provides enough information to serve as a stepping stone for self-exploration.

Taking a bite

Where the book runs aground is when it delves into the manipulation and usage of XML. To state the obvious, XML is a meta-language for marking up data; by itself, it's largely meaningless without a means to to process, produce, manipulate or transport it. The problem is that the book sets itself up as a book on XML and not XML with PHP or XML with C#. Hence, it has the dilemma of not going into too much detail on any given implementation whilst still providing enough information to be a valuable resource. To stay within the 416 pages of content, the book veers to much towards the former; whilst brevity was appreciated with the introduction to XML, in the case of server side XML and XSLT, there is an unfortunate tendancy towards stuntness rather than conciseness.

As a book on the subject, it is, unfortunately, somewhat lightweight. To a certain extent, it's the title that's perhaps at fault. Not being tied to a given language is more of a hinderance than a help; also, the use of a AJAX in the title is a slight misnomer given that it spends as much time on other matters as it does on AJAX.

The beginning and not the end

And yet, to decry it as being too beginner is almost missing the point. It's an introduction to XML and within that narrow scope, it works. If it's considered as part of a group of resources for development (to accompany more in-depth books on client-side scripting, XSLT and XML with server-side language), then it's perfectly fine. However, if you're considering this to be a sole resource, you may find that you will very quickly outgrow it.

Be sure to click the link (to "Imagining the 10th dimension") on the navigation on the site that accompanies Rob Bryanton's book which has an extremely cool movie on multi-dimensional space. Basically, if you find Physics interesting or you enjoy stretching your mind, go and take a look.

One of the predictions postulated by String Theory¹ is the existance of higher dimensions. However, just as 3-dimensional space would be difficult to comprehend by Flatlanders, it isn't intuitive for us to imagine higher dimensions. If the site is a taster of what the book will be like, it sounds like an engaging read that will make a cool but counter-intuitive subject understandable.

1. Strictly speaking, String Theories [back]