Justin looks at what YUI gets right in fostering third‐party scripts. In particular he enjoys the inline documentation, which gets converted to an API reference using JsDoc Toolkit. I’ve long been interested in inline docs, but have not found a system that would not require more effort than writing the docs separately as we do now. (Relatedly: Prototype UI seems to be using Natural Docs.)
Category: Tumbles
We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.
Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert
Six months in the jungle with Sean Penn [filming Casualties of War] is tricky, but he’s a real talented guy. I sent him a note at the end of it saying, “I can’t say that it was a pleasure, but it was a privilege.”
Michael J. Fox
To my amazement, USAspending.gov has launched. It’s a database of recipients of contracts and other assistance from the federal government. It’s worthwhile to read about the bill responsible for the site’s creation. Today I’m cheered by a small victory for information transparency in government.
From John Resig: Bad Background Browser. This reminds me of the arrival/departure monitors at airports — one out of every 16 of those is guaranteed to have the XP “illegal operation” window in the center.
Mass Effect
This is perhaps the most gorgeous game I’ve ever played. More than half of the credit goes to stellar art direction; the game projected a 1980s EPCOT view of the distant future, complete and meticulous. It gave me chills. I’ve played through it once, but will have to postpone a second play‐through because there are too many other excellent games in my queue.
Unfortunately, to start this incremental rendering, Safari requires a kilobyte of data at the beginning of the stream. In Orbited, we use 100 tags for this. But at some point we’ll perhaps switch this to some tasteful ASCII art.
Jacob Rus
Rails 2.0 released. Includes the 1.6.0.1 release of Prototype (which will see an official release very soon).
I want the WGA to set up a website and on that website we can all post stories about every no‐talent, idiotic, amoral producer and executive we have ever dealt with. Just like they do to us on shows like Extra and sites like TMZ (owned by Warner Brothers.) Set up a website and tell the entire world, via the internet, your own anecdote about some of the witless boobs you have endured in Hollywood and beyond. The strike will end in a week.
Alec Baldwin