Month: November 2006

  • Why I miss strong variable typing in scripting languages

    I love strong typed languages.  Languages that require you to define all variables before use.  They save me from myself, or, from my attrocious spelling.  I was working on LibraryFind, OSU’s opensource metasearch service, three days ago making a few tweaks and changes.  One of the things that this tool has that is somewhat researchy…

  • Belated halloween pictures

    I have a number of posts that I’ve started over the past month, but obviously been busy.  At some point, I’ll start writing about why — but for now, I’m catching up.  For example: Alyce and I took Kenny and Nathan trick or teating this halloween.  They were cuties.  Kenny is obviously Superman, Nathan —…

  • Nathan and Kenny in the local newspaper

    Kenny and Nathan found their way into our local newspaper just before Thanksgiving.  They were down at the library playing turkey bingo (well, Kenny was playing, Nathan was playing) and got their pictures taken.  Here’s the picture with associated captioning information:  URL: http://www.itemizerobserver.com/images/4787.jpg Credit: Photo by Sarah HillmanDate Published to Web: 11/22/2006Caption:  Kenny Reese, 5, throws…

  • Google Spell API — Ruby

    Someone had asked if I could post the ruby code we use to interact with the google toolbar spell api.  Well, here it is. require ‘net/https’ require ‘uri’ require ‘rexml/document’ class GoogleSpell def GetWords(phrase) results = [] x = 0 i = 0 phrase = phrase.downcase phrase = phrase.gsub(“&”, “&”) phrase = phrase.gsub(“”, “>”) word_frag…

  • Wikipedia taking it in the teeth today

    Ouch — on slashdot today, two not so flattering articles surrounding wikipedia.  In the first, there are reports of the German version of wikipedia being used as a platform for speading a virus.  An interesting idea.  Given that folks trust wikipedia, noone seems to think twice about clicking on links that go outside of the…

  • Google Sitemaps

    I’d run across these a few weeks ago and thought they were pretty nifty. Essentially, I was looking for something that would allow Oregon State University’s CONTENTdm collections to be harvested by Google. Since CONTENTdm has an OAI interface, and Google’s Scholar supports OAI harvesting, I thought there must be an easy way to get…