Geeking

Here’s a collection of links about wooden clockworks. First, you need to search for “wooden clockworks”, not “wooden clocks”, since lots of people make wooden cases, put a quartz clockworks in them and then list them as “wooden clocks”. This site would win the awards for both “most irritating website ever”, and “most useful information”. This site looks really promising, and is what pointed me at the first one. It even has a beginner’s project, which has only a weight and an escapement which runs for 10 minutes. ...

This is my new blogchalk: United States, California, Redwood City, Central, English, Jeff, Male, 26-30. :)

TechNewsWorld reports, Top Dog Oracle Losing Database Market Share. At work, we are using mySQL for new projects, and looking seriously at replacing Oracle in old projects with it too. Oracle is too expensive when mySQL, which is free, will do the same job. Update: Fortune picked up the story, but probably not from me.

On March 10 2003 the UNDP made the “af” top level domain go live. Coverage is here: CNN, UNDP. I decided to look into this to see what it looked like. I found to my delight that ns.undp.org was allowing zone transfers for the entire “.af” namespace. Unfortunately, there’s still not much there to see. The interesting thing is the list of second-level domains they have started out with. Where did those come from? Do you suppose that some geek in the basement of the UNDP set those up for fun? Why aren’t any of them in the local language? ...

There are two things wrong with this story: MSN TV prank creating “emergencies”. One, that it could happen at all, because the design problems and bugs that made it possible have been known for a long time by people smart enough, but too busy to fix them. Second, that people are calling it a virus. It’s not a virus, just like it wasn’t the last time this came up. The press can be so frustrating to deal with. The day I gave that interview, I had to get out of the office and go watch people flying kites to unwind. ...