Benjamin Coy

This afternoon, Katy and I were out walking and decided to walk through a little nature area behind a parking lot near our condo. We weren't expecting much, but we thought we should at least take a look. We were very pleasantly surprised; in addition to three little recreated habitats, there was a rather extensive butterfly preserve. There were dozens and dozens of monarch butterflies everywhere we looked. Hard to believe such a place is sandwiched between Lake Shore Drive and our neighborhood, but it is. Very nice.

8:58 PM - 0 comments

I started replying to Liza's comment, but once I got going, I ended up with a full post rather than a mere comment. Here are my initial thoughts on Google's new browser, Chrome:

Google Chrome is windows only so far, and I'm Mac only right now. So, I've read about it but haven't used it. It's built on the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari, which is based on Linux's Konquerer/KHTML. Google wrote a new javascript engine for it and tied in their own core products. This is all very good news in my world.

Safari/Konquerer/KHTML has the best (most standards compliant) rendering engine of any browser, and Google has huge brand appeal. The same people who install the Google toolbar in IE are very likely to install the Google browser and use it instead of IE. This gives a big boost to the percentage of people who are using standards-compliant browsers, which in turn puts more pressure on Microsoft to get their act together. This is another nail in the coffin for nonstandard rendering!

Also, Google is leading the charge in client-side scripting - their apps make great use of Javascript. But, most Javascript engines these days are VERY slow, so the power of these web-based apps is limited. Google's new Javascript engine will dramatically speed up client side scripting. Between this new engine and Firefox's Just-In-Time Javascript compiler (available in FF3.1), we're seeing remarkable advances in interpreter speed. Both FF and Chrome are open source, so maybe we'll see some cross-pollination? It would be great if the engineers from all the major browsers could pick up some ideas from these innovations and make client-side scripting faster in all clients.

In short, we're finally seeing signs of the web moving forward. CSS3, and for that matter CSS2, have not taken off because of browser limitations. XHTML2.0 remains a working draft. Safari brought more variety to the table and highlighted the ACID tests, but failed to really make a difference. I have great hope that Chrome will be the missing piece that reignites technological progress on the web!

1:58 AM - 0 comments

I'm watching all the major speakers at the DNC that I missed over the past week, and I have to say, I'm very impressed with Al Gore's. The first bit about how he wouldn't have screwed up the way Bush did goes on a little long for my taste, but after that, it's a very well constructed oration.

Joe Biden's speech, on the other hand, was very very blah. But, in terms of sound bites, I think he gave us with a very good one. "Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable."

1:13 AM - 1 comments

We have a couch! Finally! The ordeal is over. You don't realize just how central a couch is until you don't have one. Chairs are nice. Tables are nice. Even floors are nice, depending on what you want to do. But nothing really replaces the functionality of a sofa. It's so nice.

Also in the good news department, I picked three perfect little tomatoes from my herb garden today. No comparison between those and the grocery store ones. I can't wait for more to ripen!