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Deciding between a PC and a Mac?

Microsoft wants to help you decide between a PC and a Mac…

They even have this awesome web site to help you do it…

PC vs. Mac

That photo… there’s something… familiar about it…

PC vs. Mac

Can we zoom in on it?

PC vs. Mac

No… More! Can we zoom in on it more!?

PC vs. Mac

Wait… those colors… Zoom more! And rotate it!

PC vs. Mac

Say what!?!? I knew I’d seen those colors before…

So what does it mean!?!?

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BarCampMadison People

BarCampMadison3 will take place Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM. As of this post, barcampmadison.eventbrite.com show everyone who has registered for BarCampMadison.

BarCampMadison

I wasn’t sure how long the Eventbrite data would be around (does it disappear after the event?) but since it’s publicly accessible, I figured I’d post it here as well. Feel free to check out the web sites or Twitter streams of people who plan to attend BarCampMadison.

  1. Mitch Altman
    Website: http://www.CornfieldElectronics.com
    Twitter: @maltman23
  2. Mark Anderson
    Website: http://www.markdavidanderson.com
    Twitter: @doodlehaus
  3. Lena Arvola
    Website: http://www.ontask.net/
    Twitter: @ontask
  4. Sam Baskinger
    Twitter: @basking2
  5. Peter Beckett
    Website: http://petebeckett.com
    Twitter: @ptrbeckett
  6. Brian Beermann
    Website: http://www.uwcu.org
    Twitter: @powdernine
  7. Lee Berg
    Website: http://LeeAlanBerg.com
    Twitter: @LeeAlanBerg
  8. Michael Blix
    Website: http://mkeblx.net
  9. Bryan Chan
    Website: http://www.renewableinternet.com
  10. Scott Christensen
    Twitter: @smchristensen
  11. matthew clark
  12. Levi Cook
    Website: http://github.com/levicook
    Twitter: @levicook
  13. Philip Crawford
    Website: http://lesspostmoreget.com
    Twitter: @wiscoDude
  14. Lucas Dailey
    Website: http://www.logicalconsensus.com
    Twitter: @lucasdailey
  15. Elisa Derickson
    Website: http://www.elisaderickson.com
    Twitter: @elisa_madison
  16. TJ Dooley
    Twitter: @tjdooley
  17. David Douthitt
    Website: http://administratosphere.wordpress.com
    Twitter: @ddouthitt
  18. Ashe Dryden
    Website: http://Ashedryden.com
    Twitter: @Ashedryden
  19. Nivas Durairaj
  20. Jacob Ela
  21. Matt Everson
    Website: http://astuteo.com
    Twitter: @astuteo
  22. Steven Faulkner
    Website: http://www.southpolesteve.com
    Twitter: @southpolesteve
  23. Patrick Fleury
  24. Scott Fradkin
    Twitter: @sfradkin
  25. Anthony Frey
  26. Josh Gachnang
    Website: http://servercobra.com
    Twitter: @eclectic_pc
  27. Matt Gauger
    Website: http://blog.mattgauger.com
    Twitter: @mathiasx
  28. carol gruba
    Website: http://www.greenheronresources.com
    Twitter: @bookluvn
  29. Bradley Grzesiak
    Website: http://bendyworks.com
    Twitter: @listrophy
  30. blake hall
    Website: http://blakehall.org
    Twitter: @blakehall
  31. Caden Howell
    Website: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/
  32. Karsten Huttelmaier
    Twitter: @kphutt
  33. Jim Jarrett
    Website: http://www.alliantenergy.com
    Twitter: @jrjarrett
  34. Nick Karpenske
    Website: http://bendyworks.com
    Twitter: @randland
  35. Adiatou Kassim
    Website: http://facebook.com/kassimad
  36. Sean Kelley
    Website: http://seanpkelley.com
    Twitter: @seanpkelley
  37. Chad Kittel
    Website: @ckittel
  38. Veezus Kreist
    Website: http://veez.us
    Twitter: @veezus
  39. Stephanie Larsons
  40. Nathan Lustig
    Website: http://www.entrustet.com
    Twitter: @nathanlustig
  41. Nathaniel Meierpolys
    Website: http://www.thanscorner.info
    Twitter: @nmeierpolys
  42. Christopher Morris
    Website: http://cunaverse.com
  43. Louie Penaflor
    Website: http://mystyleapp.com
  44. Pete Prodoehl
    Website: http://rasterweb.net/raster/
    Twitter: @raster
  45. Steve Pulec
    Website: http://stevepulec.com
  46. Brian Purtell
    Website: http://dewittross.com
    Twitter: @brpurtell
  47. Jimmie Rodgers
  48. Website: http://www.jimmieprodgers.com
    Twitter: @jprodgers
  49. Eduardo Sampedro
    Website: http://www.eduardo.net
  50. Jared Schaber
  51. Natalie Schaefer
    Website: http://www.madisoncoworking.com
  52. Mike Seeley
  53. Joseph Shaul
  54. Andrew Shell
    Website: http://blog.andrewshell.org/
    Twitter: @andrewshell
  55. Greg Tarnoff
    Website: http://tarnoff.info
    Twitter: @gregtarnoff
  56. Greg Tracy
    Website: http://gregtracy.com
    Twitter: @gregtracy
    Eric Veenendaal
    Twitter: @ericveenendaal
  57. Dan Voell
    Website: http://www.gobuzz.com
    Twitter: @danvoell
  58. Ryan Wachtl
    Website: http://ryanwachtl.com
    Twitter: @ryanwachtl
  59. Tony Walla
    Twitter: @tonywalla
  60. Devin Walters
    Website: http://devinwalters.com/
    Twitter: @devn
  61. Jenna Weber
    Website: http://startpointmarketing.com
  62. Adam Witt
    Website: http://wittlawoffices.com
    Twitter: @atwitt
  63. Jonathan Yankovich
    Website: http://madisoncoworking.com
    Twitter: @tronathan
  64. Matthew Younkle
  65. Evan Zeimet
    Twitter: @podnov

And of course, you can follow @barcampmadison on Twitter as well…

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Pretty Print XML with Perl

Let’s say you’ve got a file named “file.xml” and want it pretty printed, all indented nice and everything…

For just such an occasion I have a Perl script named “pretty.pl” and I just run my XML file through it like so: cat file.xml | perl pretty.pl

Here’s the code I use:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use XML::Twig;
use XML::Parser;

my $xml = XML::Twig->new(pretty_print => 'indented');

$xml->parse(\*STDIN);

$xml->print();

You can even pass it through right as it comes in over the wire: curl http://example.com/data/file.xml | perl pretty.pl

Here’s an example of data from Foursquare without pretty printing. (I used curl to grab the data. Also, I added in some line breaks, just to make it a little more readable.):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<checkins><checkin><id>123847273</id>
<created>Mon, 09 Aug 10 00:50:33 +0000</created>
<timezone>America/Chicago</timezone><venue><id>2357761</id>
<name>The Kiltie</name><primarycategory><id>79067</id>
<fullpathname>Food:Ice Cream</fullpathname><nodename>Ice Cream</nodename>
<iconurl>http://foursquare.com/img/categories/food/icecream.png</iconurl>
</primarycategory><address></address><city></city><state></state>
<geolat>43.107391</geolat><geolong>-88.464475</geolong></venue>
<display>Pete P. @ The Kiltie</display></checkin></checkins>

And here’s the same data, again using curl to grab it, and then passing it through the pretty.pl script:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<checkins>
  <checkin>
    <id>123847273</id>
    <created>Mon, 09 Aug 10 00:50:33 +0000</created>
    <timezone>America/Chicago</timezone>
    <venue>
      <id>2357761</id>
      <name>The Kiltie</name>
      <primarycategory>
        <id>79067</id>
        <fullpathname>Food:Ice Cream</fullpathname>
        <nodename>Ice Cream</nodename>
        <iconurl>http://foursquare.com/img/categories/food/icecream.png</iconurl>
      </primarycategory>
      <address></address>
      <city></city>
      <state></state>
      <geolat>43.107391</geolat>
      <geolong>-88.464475</geolong>
    </venue>
    <display>Pete P. @ The Kiltie</display>
  </checkin>
</checkins>

I still find Perl extremely useful for this sort of task… I’m sure there are other command line ways to do this, but this one works for me.

(Hat tip to A Curious Programmer where I picked up this Perl code from…)

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13 Years of RasterWeb!

13 Years

13 years of blogging… You can browse through the archives if you like. It’s all there.

I just keep going. I don’t know why… probably because it’s hard to stop. I don’t give up easily, and I like to keep trying. Things were obviously very different in 1997 when we started. There were a handful of blogs and you could read them all during your lunch hour. As much as I’m saddened to see an old friend abandon their blogs, I’m often quite pleased to see some are still at it.

This is the part where I thank Dave Winer, because without him, I wouldn’t have started blogging. (Even if he does block me on Twitter.)

I’m considering a few new taglines, perhaps: “Wisconsin’s longest running blog” or something… I dunno, any suggestions?

Anyway, I’m just here to congratulate myself on 13 years of blogging, and hope for another 13 to come… Keep up the good work, self!

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Mozilla Crash Reports

The Mozilla folks make it pretty easy to send them crash reports… In fact, I think it was Netscape that first implemented a way for the browser to easily submit a report when something went wrong and your browser crashed.

I did find some instructions for reporting a crash bug in Chrome, and of course Safari can also send crash reports. Hopefully this makes for better software in the future.

In digging into all the crash reporting, I found that Mozilla actually publishes the results they get. Head on over to their crash-stats site and take a look.

Mozilla Crash Reporting

You can do custom queries for a few different Mozilla products, so in this screen shot I chose the current stable version of Firefox running on Mac OS X. Hmmm, looks like the Flash Player caused the most crashes…

I couldn’t find if Google or Apple has anything like this, but if they don’t, they should think about it… There’s some great data in there.