require 'okay/news' # Wrapping strings for display class String def wordwrap( len ) gsub( /\n\s*/, "\n\n" ).gsub( /.{#{len},}?\s+/, "\\0\n" ) end end news = YAML::load( DATA ) news.items.each { |item| puts "-- #{ news.title } @ #{ item.pubTime } --" puts item.description.wordwrap( 70 ).gsub!( /^/, ' ' ) puts } __END__ --- %YAML:1.0 !okay/news title: whytheluckystiff.net link: http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/ description: Home remedies for braindeath. updatePeriod: 00:60.00 items: - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-23T09:03:40.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/23#1035385420 description: > Considering the "discussion"="http://philringnalda.com/archives/002359.php" around the Web about saving RSS bandwidth, I checked the size of my RSS feed: 33k. And my YAML feed: 15k. A big part of that is my content included twice for the "content:encoded"="http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" tag. Which brings up another valid point in favor of YAML feeds. **YAML doesn't have entity-encoding issues.** XML users: can you imagine? - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-22T23:46:57.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/22#1035352017 description: > Last night I hung out at this hotel with my relatives, all in town to see "Dot"="http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/20#1035131109". I haven't wanted to post here on my site all the events concerning her death, even though I "abandoned"="http://www.whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/07#1034018848" my paper journal to write on this site. I think I need to flag some entries as private. Because it's too wierd having a site where one minute I'm jabbering about YAML ideas and the next I'm going into the details of ovarian cancer or the rifts in my family life. Sure, I want both documented. But I think I can tell what entries are meant for you and what is meant for me. I'm going to write anyway, though. Under her closed eyes, she went away on Sunday night at 8:12 PM. She did go naturally, as we all wished. You know, I've never had a life like I have right now. Feeling her with me now. Believing that she is somewhere now. Why do I insist on thinking that? They all think she's been ushered off a plane and onto some tropical beach, a part of some Carnival cruise that you get for free after you die. Run by the Carnival people who died and their heaven is continuing their employment. (Why am I telling heaven jokes?) I feel love, so I think about her. Her death was a sunset. As the sun is buried, it still casts the colors upon the world for a while longer. I see those colors in my life now. It's either her literal dispersement into the air or she is simply so joyful now that I can feel her happiness from my vantage point. Can I just tell you: it's so incredible to know someone who had no agenda, who never got offended, who wielded such power but never used it against anyone? So, the hotel. We went downstairs and lounged in the jacuzzi. Talked about work, baseball, Dot and Ray. We did some dives into the pool. One guy walked in with his pecs and abs with his chick and messed around in the pool. Dancing around with each other and playing naughty, splashy pool games with each other. Suddenly they were in the jacuzzi with all of us. It was whack. It was _The Bachelor_. I think I even said, "Hey, are you *The Bachelor*?" He went and told on us for having too many people in the pool and *especially* in the jacuzzi. My aunt and uncle had to move hotels. And that's when I started to question the beauty of life again. - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-21T15:34:31.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/21#1035236071 description: > Today I've decided to rewrite the parser backend for yaml.rb. The new parser will be called **Pill** and will also become the secret behind "reStructuredText"="http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html" for Ruby. The reST team has put some excellent effort into documenting and producing code for their project. YAML and reST share so much in common that I thought I could save a lot of time by abstracting the parser so that it can handle both. To give you an idea of what I mean, just look at the following Ruby code. To create a parser, you merely extend the Pill class and define the meaning of your tokens: = class YamlParser < Pill = # Define YAML's literal block = def_token :block, :literal, = [ '|' ], [ :entry ] = # Define mapping indicator = def_token :indicator, :mapping, = [ ':', :space ] = end This is prototype code. Hopefully it gives the picture though. I define the specific syntax symbols and the parser sends them to event handlers which can construct native datatypes (YAML) or markup (reST). - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-21T13:25:25.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/21#1035228325 description: > Okay, so I just found an "FAQ"="http://otakuworld.com/games/saturn/vs_moves.htm" for **Vampire Saviour: World of Darkness**, the game I "raved about"="http://advogato.org/article/562.html" on Advogato. The article was likely misplaced. Thinking about it now I can't imagine why I posted it there, but I thought it would be fun. Probably was fun. Keep in mind that this is an old game now and since I don't say that in the article it probably sounds like I'm plugging some new, hot commercial game. No way. This game is dead. And time for a resurrection! It turns out that the reason I can't find any information about **Vampire Saviour: World of Darkness** is because the game isn't really even called that. Yes, that's the name on the arcade machine. I wasn't paying attention to the title screen, though, which probably said **The Lord of Vampire**. At any rate, I didn't see a single vampire in this whole game. Not to mention that it was a bright and colorful game (not a World of Darkness as one might suppose). With all the love that I have in my bosom for this fine Capcom production, I feel that I must rename it for use in my private spheres of influence. In my associations with humanity, I will now refer to this game as **The Organism of Life-giving Eternity**. So it is. So it is. - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-20T10:25:09.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/20#1035131109 description: > My grandmother has slipped into a coma and will likely close her life in the next few days. We've actually had her much longer than we were supposed to. It's been a wonderful time to be with her. Her name is Dot and I think of her often. She's one of those people in my family tree that I really hope a lot of genes seep down from. She spent her whole life fully devoted to her husband. Their life was golf, Hawaii, gambling, their children. Her husband now has Alzheimer's and she has taught us that Alzheimer's isn't a frightening or sad disease. She helps us see how cute he is and how he still does remember who we are. Maybe he doesn't recognize our faces, but he recognizes something. And so it's up to us to recognize him back. Dot makes me laugh everytime I am with her. One of my favorites was when she looked up at my mom and said, "I was in love with two black men." She can say whatever she wants these days and she does. She thinks her doctors are sexy. She watches lots of baseball, a life-long Dodger's fan, but also general fan of the game. I should stop writing now. I just can't think about it all today. Approaching death has been so hard for her. I just wish her death could be as natural as the rest of her life has been. - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-19T11:02:53.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/19#1035046973 description: > Watching the "RSS 1.0/2.0 logomachy"="http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/18.html#take_up_knitting" is evocative in light of a new "YAML equivalent"="http://whytheluckystiff.net/why.yml". The struggle in the YAML world will be trying to steer people away from interleaving content. (The tags with namespaces you see mixed in with the RSS tags.) The struggle is: what is our answer? See the collection of links at the end of "Mark's"="http://diveintomark.org/" posting, along with the "XSS Draft"="http://www.mplode.com/tima/archives/000126.html". - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-19T10:46:36.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/19#1035045996 description: > About distribution in the Ruby kingdom. I think "CPAN"="http://search.cpan.org/" has put a bit of undue pressure on us. I personally use CPAN for documentation and for comparing modules before downloading them. I don't use CPAN to install modules. I use the ports collection or (on Linux) the packaging system. Ruby has "RAA"="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa.html". RAA is less than what we need. RAA has some great stuff. You can access it through web services. I just wish it had a more comprehensive search and extensive documentation for each module. And package mirrors. Make sure we don't loose our libraries. Two RAA replacements are in progress, both of which I took a close look at today. # "rpkg"="http://www.allruby.com/rpkg/" is great. It's a Debian-like packaging system for Ruby modules. I don't know exactly how they solve the mirroring issues and there's no accessibility to module docs and definitions online, but it's got some neat ideas. # "rubynet"="http://www.rubynet.org/" is a precocious project to do about anything you could want to do with Ruby packaging. I'm still trying to decide if it's overkill. Again, plenty of ideas to ease installation but no hints of making each package's docs available. I don't think Ruby users have a large problem installing modules. Most modules are quite straightforward. The bigger issue is organization and documentation. Are we the only group who hasn't standardized on a doc format!? - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-19T01:25:46.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/19#1035012346 description: > I am aghast! YAML.rb 0.44 is now in the FreeBSD ports collection! Sitting right there in /usr/ports/devel/ruby-yaml! It installs perfectly. There are two amazing things about this: # Stanislav Grozev did this without any provocation from me. # I've actually seen one of my software projects through to see some sort of general distribution and acceptance! Seriously, what a kick! The ports collection is like the Hall of Fame for me. I cvsup fresh ports at least weekly and I have for the last several years. I probably shouldn't be making such a big deal out of it, but it's so rewarding to see that someone appreciates this library enough to help step it along for distribution. *Thank you, Stanislav!* - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-18T13:50:57.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/18#1034970657 description: > I know there's some incredible uses for YAML and documentation, but it's difficult to grasp exactly what that is. Stefan Schmiedl posted an idea to the Yaml-core list last month: > What I had in mind was a "layered" wiki approach, where you would organize YAML-documents to create a page. You would edit the "nodes" of the page via usual wiki approach or modify the sequence collecting the docs. At the end of the day you'd have a large collection of YAML-docs and a second collection of "organizers" collating them into pages. The time is soon coming where this will be available here on this site. I'm thinking of something similiar to Wiki. The difference would be that the content would be updated to YAML documents on the server in Yod format. The documents could then be exported to HTML, man pages, CHM, PDF. It would be Wiki, but with a real end toward polished documentation. I want to store organized text on this site in such a way that it can be removed from the site, distributable, and yet very easy to edit. - !okay/news/item pubTime: 2002-10-18T10:01:49.00-06:00 link: http://whytheluckystiff.net/arch/2002/10/18#1034956909 description: > **Coldplay: A Rush of Blood to the Head** Despite what the music press might say, I feel obliged to like whatever music I please to like. And yet, when I read something about an album, I let it easily influence my listening. For a few weeks at least. If some poor review keeps me from hearing an album or I can't make it through the album a few times, then likely I've missed the chance to hear the music as the artist intended it. I don't know why I gave **A Rush of Blood to the Head** a chance really. I remember being unimpressed with Coldplay's first effort. Not to mention that the public's admiration of the band was rather discouraging. But these days I find myself opening back up to **Weezer**, **Ben Kweller**, **Supergrass**. Perhaps I have a diluted catalog, but I really enjoy the songs. What can I say? The song "Clocks" struck me in a peculiar way. The song simply turned my opinion. I actually heard his voice as he intended. I fancied his use of repetition. I went back and listened again. This song had a very warm emotion attached. The disc continued to play and that's when I realized that all of Coldplay's songs have that same emotion spun throughout. Perhaps that's a strike against the band. Their feeling fluctuates between songs, but they don't ever get terrifically angry. Nor do they pity themselves much. If they don't explore all of those avenues of thought, how can they very well be songwriters at all? Coldplay simply shines like a dazzle of light across a country lake. Constantly and slightly beautiful. I'm not the sort of person who can bore of natural beauty. I don't imagine many people can look at a sunset and discard it thanks to the monotony of sunsets each day. It turns out that Coldplay makes beautiful music, which fills a definite void in my collection.