This week at my Clark-Kent-day-job, I was working with JQuery, which is usually a pleasure. However, in this particular occasion, Microsoft, circa 2001, stepped in and defecated all over my happy times.

Well, at least according to C|Net Crave the format wars are now over. Toshiba has (unofficially) closed the lid on the coffin for HD DVD.

Overall, I’m glad that this is finally happening; the industry doesn’t need competing, incompatible media formats for long. It’s just a shame that I dislike Sony so much…

The consistently rude are being consistent again, as yet-another-chain of comments on Javalobby shows how internet criticism flows so freely.

I don’t use MediaTemple’s Grid Service for Realjenius.com (I’m on their (dv) dedicated plan) - but I was pleased to see this post come across their blog today:

(mt) Media Temple would like to apologize to our (gs) Grid-Service customers for the series of issues relating to the (gs) system in the past few months. As an appreciation for your patience, we have applied 2 months free credit to your account. This credit has been issued automatically and is reflected in the billing area of your AccountCenter. We appreciate your continued business. […]

It looks like I’m not the only one that had Dreamhost problems - when I first moved to Dreamhost, I saw astronomical uptime numbers similar to what Daviey saw. While these numbers are actually normalized to the number of CPUs (as opposed to 1.00 as he mentions), 430+ is not exactly acceptable.

I follow most of the Eclipse development mailing-lists because they are low-traffic, and typically only carry conversations relevant to the development side, as opposed to the storm of questions and puzzlers that hit the newsgroups. Periodically you will receive a “Hey, how can I do this?” followed briefly by a “Please ask further questions on the newsgroup”.

I recently bought a new custom-built computer from CyberPower PCs, and with it I bought a copy of Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

I wasn’t terribly keen on buying Vista given all of the problems that people have had with it since it came out, but after breaking down the alternatives, I wound up with several reasons why it was the best choice:

Ahh yes, another year, and another huge conference with seemingly huge announcements. JavaOne is back, and already Sun is announcing their way into the hearts of managers and stockholders everywhere.

The first announcement out of the gates was Java FX (see here and here). I’d link to the homepage of Java FX, but, there isn’t one.

My friend Riyad Kalla is struggling with hosts right now, and he recently experienced some issues with Media Temple.

Thankfully, Media Temple has been actively trying to keep him happy, and they went so far as to even call him on the phone to make sure they solved his problems. That’s a good sign that they are a good host, in my opinion. I would consider them if I feel the need to move.

Kevin Rose (founder of Digg.com) recently posted a great video from Yahoo of a presentation of Yahoo’s own Douglas Crockford titled ‘The JavaScript Programming Language’.

The video is a succinct and honest coverage of Javascript, where it came from, why it has a name so close to Java, and what it is useful for now. It’s not an advanced lesson, but Douglas Crockford is a well-spoken presenter.

Topics covered in the video include: