Guus Bosman

software executive and technologist

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Preparations

Sun, 11/14/2010 - 11:32pm

Today I prepared for my trip to the Netherlands. Wednesday I'm flying to New Jersey, where I have meetings for work on Thursday and Friday. Friday night I'll fly to Newark to Amsterdam.

The books on the picture are my new goodies; most of them from my birthday. They are: the latest Terry Pratchett, Le Mur by Sartre, Going Dutch or How England Plundered Holland's Glory, a biography of George Washington by Joseph Ellis and the Astérix I wrote about.

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Topic: 
internet

HTML5 for Web Designers

Thu, 11/11/2010 - 7:15pm

HTML5 for Web Designers is a short and pleasant introduction to HTML5.

The book, 87 pages long, is published by the folks of A List Apart, a blog about website design that I follow. It's a quick read -- the book probably took me no more than 30 minutes -- and it gives you the highlights of HTML5 quickly. The introduction, with the history of the development of HTML standards, was interesting.

HTML5

Web Forms 2.0 is very useful. I think the micro-format like elements such as mark and time are good additions, but I'm not so sure about the new structure elements. The article vs section is a little confusing, and I'm not sure what their added value is. I'm not so convinced of the benefits of the more flexible nesting and outlining that the author describes.

Obviously, the standardization of video and audio playback is huge (as long as we can all agree on the encoding...).

For my work, the Web Forms 2.0 elements are probably going to be the most useful: marking fields as required, specifying that input fields can take numeric input only, etc. Today we use JavaScript libraries for this. A library like ExtJS already allows you to specify this declaratively but native browser support would be even better.

The book purposely did not go into the new standardized JavaScript APIs that are part of HTML5, that would be a nice topic to read on.

Jeremy Keith
97809844425008
/images/books/html5webdesigners.jpg
English for work
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dailylife

32nd birthday

Wed, 11/10/2010 - 6:17pm

Thank you for all the comments, phone calls, cards, e-mails and gifts!

We had apple pie with whipped cream at work, and I went out with my coworkers to Amedeo's. Tonight Sasha and I are going out for dinner, and then a nice visit to the bookstore.

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Français

Astérix

Tue, 11/09/2010 - 10:09pm

I've bought a French version of Astérix, one of my favorite comics. The Dutch translations are of very high quality, but I'm looking forward to read Astérix in its original French.

My favorite character is Obélix, and I bought a brand-new copy of "La Galère D'Obélix" from a store in Carrboro, NC; very close to Chicle where I have my language lessons. I look forward to reading it -- a nice early start of my birthday.

"Ils sont fous, ces Romains !"

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northcarolina

Al Buehler trail in November

Sun, 11/07/2010 - 10:36am

We often go for a walk on the Al Buehler trail, around the Duke golf course. The leafs now have beautiful fall colors.

Yesterday morning we were at South Point mall.

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internet

What phone are you?

Fri, 11/05/2010 - 5:53pm

What phone are you?

What your phone says about you...

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foodanddrinks

Belgian andive

Mon, 11/01/2010 - 10:16pm

Tonight I cooked a dish with Belgian andive. I saw this vegetable at Whole Foods when I was there for lunch, and it reminded me of a delicious dish, witlof met ham, that we'd eat in Holland sometimes.

The ham was a little too sweet for my liking but the dish turned out great.

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plants

Budding

Mon, 11/01/2010 - 7:33am

Budding plant.The plant that I had at work for a while but then brought home, was sick 18 months years ago, but it doing much better now. The other day we noticed it is budding a completely new branch.

Yesterday afternoon I helped someone move house.

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plants

New starfish

Sun, 10/31/2010 - 10:07am

When we lived in Haarlem, the Netherlands we had a beautiful cactus; a present from my grandmother. The full name is Stapelia Grandiflora, or Starfish for short.

Several years ago I found a starfish at a local store but it was sick. I bought it for $1 and tried to revive it for several weeks, but all the cuttings were infected.

I'm going to the Netherlands in a few weeks and when making my list of things I'd like to bring back to the States I regretted once again that I couldn't bring the starfish. I searched for starfish on-line and found it at the Tucson Gardener, a store in Arizona.

The plants arrived yesterday, with a very nice letter from Dave, the owner, and the plants are healthy and strong. I've put them in water for the roots to develop.

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Work NC

Study day: HTML 5

Thu, 10/28/2010 - 2:18pm

Today is a study day, and I'm reading up on HTML5. We do a lot of user interface development for my product, and I've always had a strong preference for industry standards above proprietary products such as Flex and SilverLight.

HTML5 has some cool features but the transition to the full spec in the industry will take a while. However, many aspects are already supported by major browsers. Incidentally Secha, a Javascript library we chose for my product at work two years ago, is making a major push into HTML 5/CSS3 and today released a new product to support their vision.

I'm reading "HTML5 for Web Designers" by Jeremy Keith, a great introduction. I'm at the car dealership today to get some major maintenance done. They're fixing the breaks, battery, the engine cooling system... a big job.

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