Thursday, May 29, 2008 

http://blogs.cozi.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/27/preloadajaxdata.png

Preloading Ajax data as JSON has helped improve the load time and perceived performance of our family software application. Most of the pages in our web client are dynamically generated in the browser from a complex set of JavaScript and CSS, so we're always looking out for ways to make them appear more quickly.

More at the Cozi Tech Blog.

posted on Friday, May 30, 2008 6:27:17 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Wednesday, May 28, 2008 
Agents of Light and Darkness
Title: Agents of Light and Darkness
Author: Simon R. Green
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
Publisher: Ace
Copyright: 2003
Pages: 233
Keywords: fantasy, noir
Reading period: 26–28 May, 2008

Next book after Something From the Nightside.

The Unholy Grail has come to the Nightside, and the angels of both Heaven and Hell want it. The Fallen and the Elect are deadly and implacable and wholly careless of casualties.

John Taylor, the man who can find anything, must lay hands on it first and keep it from either side.

A fantasy noir with a heavy dose of black humor. Moderately entertaining.

posted on Thursday, May 29, 2008 6:13:09 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Monday, May 26, 2008 
A Princess of Roumania
Title: A Princess of Roumania
Author: Paul Park
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 460
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 21–26 May, 2008

In a parallel world, Roumania is a great European power and America is a barely settled wilderness. Miranda was sent to our world by her aunt, Princess Aegypta, when she was a small child, for her own safety. Now Aegypta and the Baroness each want to retrieve her, for their own reasons.

The book revolves around Miranda and her two friends, lost and confused in the primeval forests of New England, and the Baroness in Bucharest, The latter is the more interesting character: an impulsive former actress who climbed into high society and is now falling downwards, struggling as her plans go awry.

posted on Monday, May 26, 2008 11:59:45 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008 
Un Lun Dun
Title: Un Lun Dun
Author: China Miéville
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: 2007
Pages: 471
Keywords: fantasy
Reading period: 18-21 May, 2008

Deeba and Zanna, both twelve-year-old London girls, find their way into Un Lun Dun (UnLondon). Magic works in the abcity: there's feral rubbish, the ghosts of Wraithtown, words made flesh. Most of all, there's the Smog, an enormous cloud of pollution that's become sentient and wants to consume everything.

This book is aimed at a younger audience than his Bas-Lag novels, such as Iron Council. Supporting characters do die and Deeba must undergo trials, but this book is not grim. Indeed, in places, it's positively whimsical, and Miéville owes a clear debt to earlier English fantasists, like Mervyn Peake and Lewis Carroll.

Recommended.

posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 6:14:37 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Monday, May 19, 2008 

http://blogs.cozi.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/16/espritdecozismall.jpg

I formed a Bike to Work team at Cozi. More at the Cozi Connections Blog

posted on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:21:43 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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The Wee Free Men
Title: The Wee Free Men
Author: Terry Pratchett
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: HarperTeen
Copyright: 2003
Pages: 272
Keywords: humor, fantasy
Reading period: 13-18 May, 2008

Tiffany Aching is a nine-year-old dairymaid with the First Sight and the Second Thoughts. She sees more than others do. She sees the tiny Nac Mac Feegle, the little thieving fighting pictsies, who speak with a Scottish brogue and have nae time for laird nor queen.

When the Queen of the Fairies attempts to invade the Discworld by stealing children and their dreams, it is up to Tiffany to stop them.

Ostensibly aimed at children, any adult fan of Pratchett's Discworld novels should enjoy this book too.

posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 7:05:27 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008 
Garnethill
Title: Garnethill
Author: Denise Mina
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Copyright: 1998
Pages: 402
Keywords: mystery, tartan noir
Reading period: 10-13 May, 2008

Maureen O'Donnell wakes up in her Glasgow flat after passing out drunk and finds her lover tied to a chair, his throat cut. Douglas was a therapist, married to another woman. The police think she's guilty but can't prove it: she has a history of mental illness, her mother's an alcoholic, and her twin brother's a drug dealer.

Mauri is feisty but flawed, coping fairly realistically. She manages to find the real murderer and uncover a nasty case of sexual abuse, against a backdrop of domestic violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Her friend Leslie is a treat; her mother is a horror.

The notes at the back of the book say that Denise Mina got sidetracked from writing her PhD thesis on mental illness and female offenders. This novel is far more readable than the thesis would have been.

posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 7:05:17 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008 
Sharing Dotfiles between Windows and *nix

Tomas Restrepo wrote a post about sharing dotfiles between Windows and Ubuntu, specifically about sharing .vimrc (Linux) and _vimrc (Windows) and the .vim (Linux) and vimfiles (Windows) directories.

I have a different solution. On Windows, my C:\AutoExec.bat includes:

set HOME=C:\gvr
set VIM=C:\Vim
set VIMDIR=%VIM%\vim71
set EDITOR=%VIMDIR%\gvim.exe
set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Win32app;C:\GnuWin32\bin;C:\UnxUtils;C:\SysInternals;C:\Python25\Scripts

%HOME% (C:\gvr) contains _vimrc, vimfiles, and other stuff accumulated over many years. This directory is stored in a personal Subversion repository at DevjaVu. All my Vim files are stored with Unix LF endings, not Windows CR-LFs, so that they'll work on my Mac OS X and Linux boxen. I play some games with if has("win32") and if has('gui_macvim') to ensure that my _vimrc works cross-platform.

On my *nix boxes, the gvr folder lives under my home directory at ~/gvr, and ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim are symlinks:

$ ln -s ~/gvr/_vimrc ~/.vimrc
$ ln -s ~/gvr/vimfiles/ ~/.vim

In addition, the dotfiles that I keep in SVN are stored locally in ~/gvr/dotfiles without a leading period in their names, which makes them easy to see:

$ ln -s ~/gvr/dotfiles/bashrc ~/.bashrc

This arrangement works well for me.

posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 6:28:36 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Saturday, May 10, 2008 

What the Dead Know

 Title: What the Dead Know
 Author: Laura Lippman
 Rating: 4 stars out of 5
 Publisher: Harper
 Copyright: 2007
 ISBN: 0061128864
 Pages: 369
 Keywords: mystery
 Reading period: 4-9 May, 2008

Thirty years ago, Heather and Sunny Bethany, 12 and 15, disappeared without trace from a Baltimore mall. A cold case, long forgotten by almost everyone. Now a woman, arrested after fleeing from the scene of an accident, blurts out that she's Heather Bethany.

Is she Heather? Or someone else? She knows so much about the case, yet there's something off about her and the police don't trust her. Where's she been? Where's Sunny? And why did she never come forward before?

We learn the truth by the end of the novel, of course. The game of cat and mouse between Heather and the police draws to a satisfying resolution, which makes psychological sense.

posted on Saturday, May 10, 2008 8:02:43 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Sunday, May 04, 2008 
The Unknown Terrorist
Title: The Unknown Terrorist
Author: Richard Flanagan
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Grove Press
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 325
Keywords: fiction
Reading period: 29 April-4 May, 2008

A Sydney pole dancer known as ‘the Doll’ has a one-night stand with a Muslim. The next day she's the subject of a massive witchhunt as a suspected terrorist. After 9/11, the Bali bombings, and the Iraq war, Australians are ripe for the fearmongering of the media. An escalating cycle of hype and fear and ever more lurid headlines plunges the Doll into a waking nightmare from which she cannot escape.

This novel indicts everyone: the ordinary people who unthinkingly condone events; the security forces with their own agenda; and most of all, the media who seize on a good story without caring about the truth. It's all too plausible, alas.

posted on Monday, May 05, 2008 6:32:40 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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Friday, May 02, 2008 

Rebel Fay

 Title: Rebel Fay
 Author: Barb & J.C. Hendee
 Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
 Publisher: Roc
 Copyright: 2007
 ISBN: 0451461436
 Pages: 416
 Keywords: fantasy
 Reading period: 27-29 April, 2008

A half-vampire vampire hunter, her half-elf partner, a human sage, and a very unusual dog travel deep into elven territory, to rescue his imprisoned elf mother. None of the (part) humans are welcome.

This is the fifth book in a series, which I didn't notice when I picked it up. I should have started with the first in the series, but I was able to follow along well enough.

A high fantasy epic leavened with vampire lore. Certain of the elves are concerned with an ancient enemy, which seems to be the creator of the vampires. Cultural clashes, hidden agendas, and betrayals abound.

posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 7:37:36 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 
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