This is going to be a fun day. I have 48 bugs I have to resolve by the end of the today.

Lots of rambling about cars, XML, transformer costumes and a blog that epitomizes the current weblog fad below.

Poll: Favorite Season of the Year?

Nigerian Opposition Party Rejects Obasanjo Win

1. In Warri where fighting is going on, there were no elections, but there was[sic] results.
   
   
2. Violence, Intimidation, Electoral Fraud in Rivers, Bayelsa
   
   
3. ThisDay Presidential Exit Poll

Chris Hollander recently posted two entries on why he thinks specifications are unnecessary for XML vocabularies due to the existence of a perfectly fine language for defining the structure of XML documents. Now even if one ignores the fact that if one wants to point to a perfectly fine language for defining the structure of XML documents they'd actually point here instead of here, I still see some issues with Chris's reasoning.

A schema (small 's') describes the structure or model of some data in much the same way a grammar does. However it is unlikely that one would proclaim that having a copy of the ANSI C grammar makes having a copy of K & R redundant or that having a database's schema is all that is needed to build an application that utilzes the information in the database.

More exposition below.

Surprise, surprise, there are still US government officials resigning over the US government's actions in the War on Iraq. It seems they are pissed the US didn't have any plans for securing the priceless historical artifacts in Baghdad after winning the city. If only the people involved in the military planning had played Civilization they would have realized anarchy occurs when you switch governmental styles then made appropriate plans.

Read below for a couple of comments about various blogs I've seen on XSLT and XML in the past few days.

Shortly after deciding to go with a rear wheel drive vehice I stumbled upon an article on MSN's Slate entitled Why Front Wheel Drive Sucks - And why rear-wheel drive is coming back. I've only had my car for a few days but I already have fallen in love with the way it handles and think it hugs the road a lot better than front wheel drive vehicles I've driven in the past. The Slate article gives a number of technical reasons for the gut feeling I've had that my rear-wheel drive car was a better drive than front wheel drive vehicles I've driven in the past.

Further thoughts on loose vs. tight coupling, a cannibalistic rapper, XML geekery and an answer to a question asked in a previous diary

Poll: Where is the US Going to Invade Next?

So I'm being an insomniac and sitting here watching XXX. I should have watched the movie before buying the DVD, so far it's been just as peurile and illogical as the first Vin Diesel movie I saw; the Fast and the Furious.

My birthday is next month, I'm considering getting myself a couple of martial arts movies as a present. I definitely want Iron Monkey and Shaolin Soccer added to my collection in the next few weeks. If some caring soul picked up a TiVo for me, I wouldn't say no either. You know who you are.

While browsing RSS feeds in past few days, a couple of coworkers and I have puzzled at some of the weird opinions on using XML that show up in various blogs. Thoughts on one of the more interesting opinions on using XML I've stumbled upon in the past week.

This is a follow up to my How Not To Design An Extensible API post from last night. In response to my post Simon Fell stated that he doesn't see much difference between a system where XML is passed around as a mechanism for exchanging data and one where objects that implement a particular interface are passed around. The difference is that one is a tightly coupled system while the other is loosely coupled.

More comments below.

Simon fell has been talking about creating a common API for the several .NET framework based news aggregators of which my RSS Bandit is one. Simon originally started with a model where a plugin implemented an interface which allowed it to take action on an XML fragment containing an RSS item. After some pushback from some folks he moved to designing API where an RSS item was represented as an object. Don Box stepped in and refined the API.

As a .NET RSS aggregator author I dislike both approaches. However I could imagine implementing the former while disliking how limited it was but consider that there is 0% chance I'd ever implement the latter. Sam Ruby hints at why the latter is flawed, below I throw my $0.02 into the stash.

Torsten has outdone himself. He's completely rewritten the RSS Bandit GUI and based it on the Magic UI library. Check out the screenshots at one, two and three. My favorite features of the new GUI are tabbed browsing, nested categories and the fact that I can customize the look of feed items with a custom XSLT stylesheet.

More below on where to get RSS Bandit v1.1 beta, the ladder theory of relationships and thoughts on blogging.

Poll: Dilbert Character You Are Most Like?