Eddie Welker.com

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.  […]

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.

My roommates and I have decided to try to watch a horror/thriller every night of October.  Unfortunately, the Red Sox and a few other distractions have prevented watching one every night, but here’s what we’ve got so far: Nightwatch – Not a fan of this movie.  I thought that the scary parts were kinda cheap, […]

Oct. 8, 2009 – 12:32am Right now I’m… Sitting on my bed reading the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (my favorite) on how to bake a 9.25lb ham.  Page 201. Remembering how I tell everyone they can’t take it into the kitchen, because I don’t want it getting dirty. Thinking about how I need a roasting pan, […]

They just keep popping up. I just scrolled down my own blog, and saw a post titled “Down to three bugs.”  Funny enough, three months later, we’re still trying to push the website out. (Wow, those were some really big bugs!!!  Haha, jk…)  In fact, I’ve been pressing for the last 2 days, trying to […]

Sweet, Django 1.0 has been released.

“Forms suck.  If you don’t believe me, try to find people who like filling them in.” Are you kidding, I paid for a book that begins like that?  My first reaction was that I could have written that!  Well I didn’t write it, and I also feel that I got my money’s worth out of […]

Last weekend, I FINALLY had a chance to clean my room, and I’m pleased with the results.  Really, though, this post is just an excuse to do one of those “this is my desk, this is my bookshelf” posts that everyone seems to do.  🙂 My favorite books are mostly at the top (actually, there’s […]