There’s been a lot of talk about APIs recently. Most of it can be summed up reasonably by Evan’s post on the API situation. For anyone bringing a CMS into the world around now, it’s a bit of a nightmare situation.

Everyone (Dave and Evan – the brains behind the two big APIs – included) wants a singular but fully functioning API to hook into. To be able to write once and only once, and forget about it for the near future. Currently, it isn’t possible.

Rather than get into the politics and technical reasons behind the split; I thought I’d say that as the developer of a new CMS, I currently implement neither API. I will, some day, implement one but as of yet haven’t. Why?

First of all, I’m the only person to use a remotely new version of Finetto (the aforementioned CMS). I’ve given other sites stable working versions (Finetto was actually written for a site that I was working on, where the owners didn’t have the knowledge to update manually), and it will be used on other sites (once I get a rather unique feature finished). But for now, it’s really just me, and I’m happy using the web interface for it. I know it’s secure enough to let me log-on from other computers without compromising anything.

Secondly, the browser window is the lowest common denominator of any net capable application. I’ve checked this from a number of devices, and they all allow access through the web interface (hooray for somewhat functional XML parsers embedded in devices). This kind of interoperability puts API interoperability further down the list. More devices support browsers than custom interfaces.

Admittedly, another reason is that there are 2 problems with Finetto stopping me implementing an API. One is trivial, and I could write code for in 5 minutes. I don’t because there are things much higher on my priority list (non-crufty URLs and a comment system have been on the list for too long to ignore now). The other reason is slightly more complicated, but I have the necessary script to remedy it, I just need a lot more time than I have to do so.

Finally, because there’s not enough time in the day. I’m a student. I have exams getting imminently close, a girlfriend, friends to do stuff with, alcohol that needs drunk etc. You get the picture. There’s not enough time to do all that as there is, without having to weigh up two APIs to implement. If there was one, then maybe, but until summer it’s just not going to happen.

I don’t know what the point of this post was if there was any. Hell, I’ll probably do a Zeldman and implement an API by this time tomorrow. But perhaps I’m trying to say prioritise, make sure you do things because you should rather than because everyone else is doing it, and don’t do drugs, kids.

I’m feeling kinda Matrix-y today, so I’ll finally attempt to recreate the essay on the background of the film which was cruelly deleted. I doubt this will be as good as the original (which took about 45 minutes to write), but I want it out of the way. In fact, it’s about a million times shorter and is really just a bunch of links now. For shame.

First up is Reloaded Questions, an article which focusses on the inspiration of the film, and how the sharp philosophy interestingly contrasts the less cerebral kung-fu moments. Keeping a balance between the ideas and the action, the thinking man and the mainstream, is difficult enough but in a sequel of this magnitude it must be damn near impossible.

Next is Tantek’s look at Burning Chrome, William Gibson’s seminal book of cyberpunk short stories. It introduced the concept of an abstract virtual world known as, you guessed it, the matrix. Lots of terminology found in The Matrix originated here and in the remainder of Gibson’s work.

Interestingly, The Matrix starred Keanu Reeves, who also starred in the awful film of Johnny Mnemonic, the first story in Gibson’s Burning Chrome. Gibson defends it as not being the version they shot, and with a writer like that, I believe him.

And that’s it. I did write a lot more originally but fate told me it was not meant to be.

In the build-up to The Matrix Reloaded, focus has been pulled away from an equally interesting project, The Animatrix; a series of short anime films created by the Wachowski brothers, and the best anime directors in the world. Several are already available on the website. Here’s what I’ve seen so far (in order of viewing):

• Second Renaissance, Part 1 – A brief history of how the machine and human war came about. Presented in a realistic anime style, this one is interesting in its details, and brutal in its viewpoint.
• Program – By far the best of the bunch. Set in the construct, one rebel fights in feudal Japan. So Matrix plus ninjas. Does it get any better? I think not.
• Detective Story – The weakest of the 5. A detective is hired to trackdown Trinity. It has an interesting film noir style which, despite being interesting, doesn’t really help the story go anywhere. The ending was very weak.
• Final Flight Of Osiris – This one ties directly into the story of the film, so I won’t say anything about plot. It uses CGI rather than traditional anime, but is all the better for it. Truly one of the best looking pieces of animation I’ve seen. The only problem was having to pay to see Dreamcatcher to see it.
• Second Renaissance, Part 2 – A look at the war itself from a historical viewpoint, including the fateful moment that we doomed ourselves by destroying the sky. Bit of a low-key ending.

Like I said, they’re all up for download (except Final Flight Of Osiris) on the The Animatrix website. Get them!

There’s never enough time in the day. I did plan on updating this site properly today, but after picking up the gamecube pad, I ended up playing Zelda: Wind Waker for far too long.

The game is just so engrossing: beautiful graphics, an interesting story, puzzles which infuriate until you realise you’re being an idiot, hundreds of fun little sub-games, treasure hunts, auctions; the list is endless. I spent 2 and a half hours doing stuff which didn’t really contribute to the story, but made great diversions. Windfall island has been well and truly owned.

With exams coming up, how do I avoid visual crack like this? P.S. Gouging my eyes out is not an option.

This was originally going to be an essay on the background of The Matrix (don’t worry, I’ll get round to doing that at some point). But, after I accidently hit the back button in my browser, the entire thing was gone. Disaster!

So, my question is: just how suitable are browsers for working with long pieces of work? Although I don’t have enough time to really look at this (I spent a fair while doing the deleted essay), it seems to be an important issue. How many people have actually lost work because their browsers didn’t remember the state of forms after an accidental page traversal? I know it’s not the first time it’s happened to me. The backspace button seems particularly prone to allowing this: try to remove some characters whilst getting ready to put in upper cases characters, accidently hit shift and ka-put: An essay gone.

There’s not even a decent way of saving text midway through typing. You know “saving”; that basic and obligatory function in every application since the beginning of back-up media. Sure, we could open a text file and cut-and-paste, but that’s too much hassle for real people to do it. Also, it also supposes that we expect a disaster. If we expected disaster, then we’d make sure to backup constantly. Without an easily accessible save function, it’s not natural to do this. State in other media (pen and paper) is automatically saved for us.

Maybe, I’m just angry at having lost hard work, but it does seem like the sort of feature all browsers should have.