I have just completed a draft version of an article I wrote this afternoon titled “Distributed Computing”. It gives a brief overview of web services with examples using Amazon’s web services API. More importantly it describes how to read Amazon’s WSDL file. It doesn’t contain all the details, just enough to get you started.

If you have any comments, let me know.

Keep It Simple Stupid. Yes, that’s right. Simplicity. Simple isn’t it. Apparently not. Somebody clearly didn’t tell the guys over at the World Wide Web Consortium when it came to writing the specifications that are supposed to define how the web works!

The other day I attempted to use Amazon’s web services API. In order to figure what methods were available I had to read the WSDL file. All well and good providing you can actually read a WSDL file, especially one as extensive as Amazon’s. Anyway, not being completely familar with WSDL I trudged over to the W3 site to the read the spec. I won’t bore you with the details but needless to say it was painful. I was lost after the first couple of paragraphs. This seems to be the case with all of the W3C’s specifications. They are unreadable! Contrast this with the specification for XML-RPC: short and easy to understand. Sure it may not have all the bells and whistles of SOAP, for example, but it’s good enough. How are developers supposed to implement the W3C’s specs if nobody understands them. Could the reason why we haven’t seen an explosion in Semantic Web applications simply be the fact that nobody understands how the damn thing works? Well, except Tim Berners-Lee, and he doesn’t give interviews to the media.

If specifications are to be implemented they need to be understandable. So the next time you are about to write a technical specification remember, Keep It Simple Stupid!

So you are heading off to New York for the weekend. What are you going to do? Visit the Statue of Liberty? Go shopping on 5th Avenue? Go for a run? Me neither, but if you do feel like dusting off your trainers then check out Running Dave’s running database. No, it’s not a database with legs, it’s a database full of routes that people have suggested for running around New York. It’s pretty cool. It lets you plot your route on a map, courtesy of Google Maps, simplying by pointing and clicking.

It’s day 2 sin café. Yesterday wasn’t too much of a problem. I had a few cravings during the day but nothing I couldn’t resist. One more day and I will have equalled my record. Not a very high bar to clear is it.

No coffee or tea for me for the next week. The last time I tried doing this I lasted about 3 days. Why? Mostly for health reasons but I will probably save a lot of money as well. I overhead a guy in the gym the other day tell somebody how he stopped going to Starbucks because his accountant told him he had spent about £900 on coffee at Starbucks last year. Good enough reason as any I guess, although presumably if his accountant told him he must have been keeping receipts. Who the hell keeps receipts from Starbucks, that’s what I’d like to know.

It’s amazing what you can find if you don’t look for it. I was looking for something on iTunes the other day, can’t remember what exactly, when I came across the theme tune for Cheers. For a bonus point, who wrote the song? You can find the answer here. You will need to have iTunes installed in order for the link to work.

Yet another example of the long tail, once again proving that there are people out there who will buy anything 🙂

In the early hours of this morning I downloaded the Mac version of Dave Winer’s new OPML editor. It looks interesting. It allows you to create outlines. All I have to do now is figure what an outliner actually is and how I can use one. I am going to play around with it to see if I can figure them out.

I have just finished reading Lance Armstrong’s book “It’s Not About the Bike”. It’s a great book. I couldn’t put it down. I only started reading it yesterday morning.

In the book he writes about his childhood, albeit briefly, as well as his battle with cancer and his career as a cyclist. It’s certainly a frank account of his life. He talks openly about his treatment for testicular cancer as well as the IVF program that he and his wife had to go through in order to have a child.

There a number of things to take away from reading this book. Firstly, I guess we could all do with taking a step back from time to time to look at the big picture and appreciate what we have instead of complaining about that which we don’t. There are people worse of than ourselves. Secondly, there’s hope if you are prepared to do what it takes. Sure, having talent helps but it’s not everything. I don’t remember who said it, but I remember somebody telling me a long time ago that you create your own luck. What he meant was that if you work really hard at something, you are more likely to succeed to at it. Well, that’s what I read into the story anyway.

Last night I uploaded the final lot of photos from my Spanish trip. Most of them are pictures of Segovia and El Escorial. As usual you can view them here.

I’ve been playing around with the new version of iTunes with the podcast directory built-in. It works quite well. It’s reasonably easy to find what you are looking for and subscribing to podcasts is easy – just find the one you are interested in and hit the subscribe button. The interface also makes it easy to receive previous episodes of a podcast that you may have missed.

Maybe I’ll start listening to podcasts again on a regular basis. I used to listen to them regularly way back in October 2004 but I got so annoyed with the lack of decent tools for subscribing to and receiving podcasts that I gave up listening to them.

The latest version of iTunes with the podcast directory built-in is available. I have just downloaded it. I’ll post something about it later on when I have had chance to play around with it.

Want to play Windows media files on Mac OS X? Then download Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X.