Day: 16 January 2006

Conferences I will not be attending this year

I will not be attending two of the choice conferences this year. Xtech 2006 and WWW2006 which both collide with my holiday to the states. Its a shame because both seem very promising but I'm hoping I can get involved virtually or something. But I'm kicking myself after hearing Paul Graham will be delivering a keynote at Xtech 06

One very exciting bit of news I have is that Paul Graham has agreed to deliver one of the keynote sessions at XTech. I'm very pleased about this, and it follows in the tradition we've established of having interesting and challenging speakers, rather than putting plenary sessions up for sale to sponsors.

I was also hoping to put a paper in for Xtech 2006 about the state of RSS when it comes to Languages but its pretty pointless if I cant be there to present it. Oh well, and just when I'm starting to make some progress with a proposed RSS and ATOM extension to declare language and directionality.

In a discussion on a w3c.org mailing list – Stephen Deach from Adobe said the following.

Yes, you'll need to set direction at the block/paragraph-level to properly initialize the Unicode BiDi rule (and above paragraph if you have lists or other indention). It's probably fine to allow setting dir anyplace you set lang (which would include on span/inlines).

Felix Sasaki sent this wiki link which is really interesting in regards to Bidirectional text support.

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I watched brokeback mountain, and enjoyed it

Brokeback mountain

I'm sorry but any man who can not sit there in a cinema and watch Brokeback mountain and not feel something for the characters in the film, has no heart. I've been hearing people saying, oh no could not go to a movie about gay cowboys. Sorry you what? Who gives a rats ass! Quoting Alex from Diggnation. Its got like 1 min of man on man action out of 130+ minutes. And even if it had more, who would give a crap? I just can not understand the narrow mindedness of people who wouldn't even see a film simply because its got a few gay kisses and is about 2 men who actually love each other. I just dont see what the problem is. Actually tell a lie I do see where the problem is, its with little minded people. I mean do they think going to see a movie about 2 men who love each other will turn them gay or something? Do they think people coming out of the cinema will be flying rainbow flags? Geez, get a grip people.

Sexuality is not simply black and white, its a spectrum of grey like most things in life. Do not be put off by the fact this movie is nicknamed the gay cowboy movie. Its a good movie and full credit to Ang Lee for pulling off something which the ignorent few still can't get there head around. I mean come on this is what film is all about right, Storytelling? Just because I watched Crash does not mean I'm into the sexual thrills of car crashes. Just as watching American Psycho does not mean i'm interested in killing people. Storytelling can be powerful and open your eyes to a whole world which you've never seen or thought to deeply about. Take another film I watched on the weekend. Memoris of a Geisha. Really interesting and well told even if not true to the book on which its based. Real eye opener and made you realise how highly regarded Geisha's were. It really put another view on the usual story of abuse which these women recieved and lived with for beauty and some would say vanity. Yeah storytelling is good and should never stop short of some of the most alarming things we can imagine as long as there told in a way that does not alieniate the watcher. Another great example comes to mind. Lolita. Another conversial movie but only for its subject not its actual substance. Good movie by the way, really gets under your skin and makes you realise how dangerious love can be. Go see all the movies I've mentioned…

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