The basic shared hosting server I was on at Joyent was dreadfully slow. We’re talking 10+ seconds per request before the server would even respond, much less serve up a page. Was it MySQL? Was it Apache? Was it having 30 other neighbors all running MySQL?
I don’t know. But I’ve moved this site onto the premier level shared hosting and it’s much snappier. So, all good.
There are robots among us but I have taken a poll and we are not afraid.
But somebody wake me up when there’s a robot that can build a human who can build a robot. Because that would finally get us somewhere.
Reading this will probably be a waste of your time. It’s not an official document. It’s a preference.
Some time back I wrote a little ditty on how to pronounce MySQL. The article, having lived on a UW server during my tenure there, is now gone. The gist: It’s “My S-Q-L,” not “My Sequel.” Yes, that’s how it’s pronounced, even if they’re flexible about it.
Arbitrary? Yes. Truth? Yes.
Normally I don’t write about things like this because they get me into trouble and they tend to start the worst type of flame war: one that is based solely on preference. I love language and the pronunciation of language. My rules for pronunciation are fairly arbitrary but I like to adhere strictly to those rules. Does that make sense? I’m irrationally rational.
NASA = nă-sŭh
Tron = trŏn
Megatron = mĕh-gŭh-trŏn
JSON = Jason = jā-sŭn (not jā-sŏn)
Clear? It’s Jason, like the boy’s name, like -and-the-Argonauts.
Why? Because of the obvious similarity in spelling to the boy’s name and the ease of pronunciation that similarity affords. The “O” in JSON stands for Object. Fine. That’s still not a good enough reason for me to change the way I say it.
When possible, acronyms are created in such a way as to ease their pronunciation. Why? Because it makes them memorable, even catchy, which aids in their adoption. Remember the Ajax story? The reason why XMLHttpRequest became such a big hit all of a sudden in 2005–even though developers had been using it for quite some time–is because 1) Jesse James Garrett wrote about it and 2) he used a catchy name.
The name itself is arbitrary. There is no reason why this data format that we label JSON could not have been called JSOLDTF: JavaScript Object Literal Data Transfer Format.
So why didn’t Douglas Crockford call it that? Because it’s unpronounceable.
LASER is not pronounced lă-sēR, even though the A is “Amplification,” the S is “Stimulated,” the E is “Emission,” and the R is “Radiation.” It’s pronounced like ley-zer. Why? Because it sounds better.
Arbitrary? Yes. Truth? Yes.
Now, saying all of that, I promise not to correct you or make fun of you if you pronounce JSON like you’re trying to name a new Transformers character, even if you are Douglas Crockford. Just please don’t try to correct me, either, and everything will be yacht rock.
I submitted a patch to the geokit gem to add nautical miles and Andre merged it into version 1.2.1. This means the geokit gem is now suitable for use in marine and aviation applications where nautical miles are the default unit for distance.
I’m already using it in Jetrecord for distance calculations on routes. Give it a go!
Trying out a new design in which I Helveticize myself. Bold. Perhaps a little too bold. I haven’t decided yet.