Paul M. Jones

The Belmont Club today talks about bloggers and blogging as an emergent phenomenon made possible by the internet.
The blogosphere is a specific manifestation — and by no means the only one — of the networks made possible by the Internet which can be imperfectly compared to the emerging nervous system of a growing organism. Once [...]

Hook scripts now execute in an isolated scope, instead of directly in the calling Yawp method.

From Belmont Club:
In an abstract way, the information flows surrounding the Tsunami of December 2004 structurally resembled those preceding the Pearl Harbor and September 11 attacks. The raw data announcing the unfolding threat was there, yet the pattern so evident in hindsight was invisible to those who were not looking for it. But if tsunamis [...]

I love it when other people say what I’ve been saying (although other people usually say it better). This is from Agoraphilia.
Here are some highlights:
Like it or not, some people are just not college material; they would be better served by vocational or on-the-job training (or by a better high school education than our [...]

This story about a professor of applied physics isn’t real, but it sure is funny, and highlights the differences between practice and theory (which of course is much bigger in practice than in theory). I found it via Joanne Jacobs.
A typical Gaston exam question involves asking students to choose between catching a small metal [...]

Lots of fun for kids, but maybe not as much for the parents. Jim Carrey is thoroughly “on” in this movie as the cruel, somewhat disturbing, but imcompetent-when-it-counts Count Olaf who covets the fortune that the children have inherited. I might go so far as to say he’s the star of the film, [...]

Pixar’s “The Incredibles” (from Brad Bird, who did “The Iron Giant” before this) is simply magnificent. It’s a family film in the best sense of the word; everyone will enjoy it immensely for different reasons. The movie is fun for kids (but not too young, 6 or 7 years old it probably the [...]

This page is to track issues related to the new “secure” compiler for Savant. A number of people (notably and most recently RevJim) have opined that Savant needs a decent secure compiler so that untrusted users can be allowed to edit templates. I agree.
Note: The compiler is not a required element. The [...]

These are my two dogs, Zoe on the left, Wendy on the right. This is a rare picture of them together in calmness.

Zoe is “big dog” between them, but Wendy wants very much to be “big dog.” I believe that Wendy is plotting to take over the world, but her immediate goal is [...]

My article on Savant has been published in the 01.2005 edition of International PHP Magazine. I subtitled it “How I learned to stop using Smarty and love PHP for template markup” (so what if I love old movies?).
In the Development track, Paul Jones elaborates on how he learned to stop using Smarty and love [...]