Eddie Welker.com

I’ve been… not away, but simply taking pictures. I should get back to writing… more JavaScript (to refresh myself), more XLST, a little Django/Python here or there. I’ll do that soon.

On Mar 31, 2009, at 11:45 AM, Edward Welker wrote: >> Aaron wrote: >> This may be one of the best URLs I have ever seen: >> http://www.ringling.com/FlashSubContent.aspx?id=11654&parentID=320&asset >> FolderID=340 >> >> Just looking at it, I can tell exactly what I can expect when I click >> it. *** To me, that URL tells […]

I ran across a mention of “Prototype-Based Programming” back when I was first learning JavaScript.  I thought it would be an interesting read, but forgot to bookmark it, and forgot to look into it further.  Once I finally remembered it, it proved hard to find (and an expensive gamble from Amazon), until I found it […]

Based on the title, Expert Python Programming, (by Tarek Ziadé) I had expected a book covering the Python language… syntax, advanced data structures, maybe some functional programming… stuff like that. This book surprised me. Rather, it contains a hodgepodge of information about the world of Python development, from setting up editors to distributed version control […]

My orchestra is playing Sibelius 1 tomorrow in Columbia, Maryland. It’s not my favorite symphony, seems a little naive, though he wrote it when he was 35. If you wanna check it out, first check out the site.

I love reading programming books, especially to learn a new programming language.  Learning XSLT, I read a large number of books, as there are quite a few available.  The quality of the XSLT books struck me as particularly all over the place, some were quite good while others weren’t even worth the time to skim.  […]

Simply put, thanks to everyone who visited in the past year. Still amazing to me that people from nearly 80 countries took a look at something I did. Cheers to the new year, may it be good to all of us!

Recursion is one of the core concepts in programming. It’s valuable not only as a technique for writing programs, but as a general concept for solving problems. XSLT provides many useful elements such as for-each (and apply-templates), but occasionally you will run into a problem which must be solved with recursion. Let’s take a look […]

Using XSLT to copy elements is extremely common when you’re transforming a source document of a certain type (XML, HTML, etc.) to the same type. Often, you need an exact copy of an element verbatim, but other times you need to selectively choose certain elements to copy and others to discard. XSLT makes this process […]

I don’t typically link to other blogs/articles, nor do I mention classical music particularly often, but I found this article and blog entry so interesting and thought-provoking that they deserve a re-post. First, a moving blog entry from David Finlayson, trombonist in the New York Philharmonic, and second, the New York Times article describing the […]

Working with more than a few new-hires over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that new XSLT developers often write pull-style XSLTs by default. However, this tends to defy XSLT’s functional heritage, and is not as useful as the opposite form, push-style XSLTs. Pull-style XSLTs reach into the source document and pull out the data […]

The final installment… a little late. Amityville Horror – (The OLD one, not the new one.)  I’d watched this before, but it was so much better than I remember it.  In fact, I felt it was the scariest movie that I ended up watching.  The scene at the beginning where the priest goes into the […]

Latest installment… The Blob – Pure 60’s cheese (well, technically 1958, but close enough). Not scary, more silly than anything else. I was amazed that at one point, there was 24 minutes of no blobbing. Instead, we were shown a nearly 30 year old McQueen pretending to be a high schooler.  At least I can […]

Continuing the reviews of my house’s October horror movie film-fest: 28 Days Later – Rick told me that this was among the most realistic zombie movies ever made.  While it had a realistic look and feel, I had a problem with the unrealistic (and porous) plot line.  Of the 4 or so main characters, the […]

I recently read Object Oriented JavaScript, by Stoyan Stefanov. In reviewing it, I found it was one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while, for some good reasons and a few more curious reasons.