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Author Archives: robla
IRS file format for tax stats: .exe files
If you want to get IRS tax statistics, looks like you better have a computer that supports .exe files (Microsoft Windows executable). SOI Tax Stats – Filing Season Statistics / Taxpayer Usage Study There are so many things wrong with this, I’m not sure where to start…
Posted in Tech, Wonk Leave a comment
Spectaclar: I’m not dead yet – news updates
I haven’t had a chance to update things on Spectaclar or engage in a while, but I’ve at least updated the Spectaclar news feed with some interesting things I’ve culled from the past month of backed up blog entries. I won’t be very active on Spectaclar stuff for a little while longer, as I’m working [...]
Posted in Tech Tagged accesscontrol, authentication, authorization, identity, ldap, OpenID, Spectaclar, sso Leave a comment
I hope someone is working on Kwalify-type support for JSON/PHP
I’m working on a PHP app that uses JSON, and I realized I needed a validator. Hrm…nothing seems to be out there. However, if I was using Ruby and YAML instead, I could use Kwalify. Alas, neither is an option for what I’m working on (an election plug-in for MediaWiki), so I’ll have to wing [...]
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer (Flash animation) (via Metafilter). Bravo! From the author: “I chose to illustrate the literal meaning of the lyrics in my animation instead of what it could symbolically stand for, simply because whenever I closed my eyes, that’s exactly what I saw.” Best Flash retro video since We Didn’t Start the Fire.
Posted in Misc Leave a comment
Back from OSCON
Grrr….I’m ticked off at myself for not posting here more. I went to OSCON and shared the love on Spectaclar. I haven’t been as active as I’d like on Spectaclar, but things aren’t completely dormant. I’m starting to mull over the idea of using Electorama as a testbed for some of the work that I’m [...]
Many U.S. Cities Losing Battles To Preserve Their Burger Kings
Every once and a while, The Onion still makes me smile. Many U.S. Cities Losing Battles To Preserve Their Burger Kings Quote: In Seattle, volunteer canvassers went door-to-door, collecting signatures to save the Burger King on Rainier Avenue. As a result of their efforts, Mayor Greg Nickels granted the store historic-landmark status. “There are children [...]
New Spectaclar newsfeed
I’ve implemented a news feed for Spectaclar that’s a general purpose open source access control feed, that will probably also veer a lot into authentication, identity, and other single signon stuff. It includes updates on Spectaclar, but also incorporates outside blogs. It uses the reFeed component of reBlog. reBlog is very, very cool…it makes it [...]
Posted in Tech Tagged accesscontrol, authentication, authorization, identity, ldap, rbac, Security, Spectaclar, sso Leave a comment
First cut at BZ/OpenID integration
It’s still pretty rough around the edges, but now there’s a patch to add OpenID authentication support to Bugzilla. It’s not ideal, as it still requires you to go through the email ping-pong process, but the good news is that once you tie an OpenID identifier to your BZ account, you can authenticate via your [...]
daiycaja
When I was running the Helix Community IRC channel, I would get mildly frustrated with people who would show up and say “can I ask a question?” or something to that effect. Apparently, the phenonena isn’t unique to Helix, and the frustration isn’t unique to me. I’ve seen lots of topic lines on Freenode stating [...]
Spectaclar Updates
I’ve been working on a bunch of miscellaneous stuff this week which are loosely related to the “Spectaclar” project: A lot of wiki cleanup – I think I got most of the dead links, so that there’s at least stub articles everywhere there’s a link Patch to MediaWiki – not a huge contribution, but one [...]
Seattle Bus Monster
The Seattle Bus Monster is one of the cooler examples of Google abuse that I’ve seen yet. Merges Google Maps and the funky real-time bus tracker app.
Monster Engine – Enhancing kid art
Here’s the site for a guy who embellishes the crap out of kids’ drawings. They still are very recognizable as the kids’ orginal work, but he takes them in a freaky, surreal direction.
Spectaclar: Authorization first
More on Spectaclar. Haven’t done much today on the site, as I’ve been working on Mediawiki and riding my bike and enjoying being a slacker. There’s a blurb that I just added to the site that’s probably worth blogging. The primary focus for this site, at the time of this writing, is authorization, as opposed [...]
16 acres of floor space in MO
Want to buy 16 acres (under roof) of warehouse space in Missouri? My parents have just the thing for you. They tend to buy a lot of things they don’t need.
Posted in Misc Leave a comment
Spectaclar
Well, I’m ready to start talking about “Spectaclar“, which is my new website (and hopefully community) around open source access control. I’ve written a rather long explanation of what Spectaclar is about. To summarize, I’m trying to find a few really good open source web applications, understand their access control mechanisms, and begin to try [...]
A new chapter
It’s official: I’m no longer an employee of RealNetworks, Inc.. I’m now starting a new phase, which is one where I’ll hopefully be a visible part of many other open source projects (e.g. I’ve already started poking my nose in on Mediawiki development). I started at “Progressive Networks” nine years ago, on March 11, 1996. [...]
Roblag
So Margaret was hovering over my shoulder, and saw me posting here. In typical Margaret fashion, she said “Roblag”. So, I changed it. (And here’s why it’s not spelled “Roblog”.)
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Coming soon: The Shining