One of the few websites I visit regularly is one for the public radio show Prairie Home Companion for their old show archive.  There is one section in their home page is letters to the host of the show, and this time, someone asked about the Scandinavian principle of "good enough." The show is from Minnesota, many people there are of Scandinavian origin, and the host regularly jokes about his own origin.  So the good enough principle is one of them.

So writer of that letter was commenting how he has trouble finding that principle anywhere online, including Google search, and so of course next thing I do, I google for "Good Enough".  First result, POGE from wikipedia.org, I was like, of course the Wikipedia.  But it's not quite the Scandinavian principle, but the rule of software and system design.  Then I remember back in the school days, I may have learned something about POGE in Software Engineering... The reasoning behind it is simple, we can take forever trying to improve the program/system, trying to get it perfect.  So the only way to know when to stop is to achieve Good Enough.

It also reminds me of someone telling me just a short while ago, seeing one of the clients have this saying on the wall, "Ask for the Impossible, Receive the Good Enough" Fairly common mentality in my industry (sadly).

MSN Sync from http://www.lightrelay.com/?p=84

I'm this close of getting rid of my MSN Live Space blog page...

While I continue being impressed by WordPress I installed in lightrelay.com, Live Space is quite restrictive.  It doesn't allow embedded Flash or Javascript in the blog (although they do provide a Sandbox that allows those, but there could be only one Sandbox)

So while I added a Flickr slideshow to lightrelay.com, I know it wouldn't work in Live Space.  I did try the Sandbox, and it was alright.  But then it is not associated to the blog entry, and it takes quite a bit of time loading Live Space.  So I was thinking maybe I can live with just a HTML Flickr Badge. 

To my surprise, even the HTML Badge provided by Flickr requires Javascript.  So I figure it can't be that hard to convert it into straight HTML.  By "can't be that hard", I meant being able to google search it.  But after hours, the best thing I see was someone's online service that reads from Flickr sight.  http://flickrbadge.theducky.com/  It's a fine service, and it's free, but it could be crashing this guy's hosting service.  So I would rather not using it.

After google-exhausted, I thought maybe I can do it myself, figuring out what does the Flickr's Javascript do.  The key is the URL Javascript Call like this: http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne... After spending another hour or so, I finally figure out how to see the source code; I just need the Firefox browser, and enter the URL Javascript Call, then the browser would just display the code.

I do understand why Flickr made this a Javascript call, it is because it allows the Badge to display different pictures (if you have more pictures in the pool than you are displaying)  But that's not what I have, I just want to display all 4 pictures in the Badge.  Now knowing the source code, I can change the code from Flickr Badge to not having Javascript (and CSS definitions, another Live Space limitation)

So in the end, is it worth the trouble?  I'm not sure either, after all, the work of converting the code is not that quick and easy, but at least it's not complicated.  And I just like the way Flickr does it... the look and style.  I guess it's worth it if I post more Flickr Badges, like here...

www.flickr.com More of Kwong Yee Cheng's photos tagged with gini11

MSN Sync from http://www.lightrelay.com/?p=77

Another news article I've been keeping for the longest time, and I found it online again:

http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/usingnet/20050428-saranow.html

I do want to visit some of these sites.  Maybe I do that when I am back on the road. Unlike the article in newsapaper, the online article doesn't have a table to summarize the sites.