On the newsstand, a beloved blogger

Our beloved culinary sweetheart, Julie Powell, reappeared in my RSS aggregator today. But rather than showing up in her old haunts at the Julie-Julia Project, she’s in the New York Times under this misleadingly dry description: “Using recipes from the major food magazines, the author puts together a completely absurdist Thai-Scottish-Southern fusion menu.”

My wife, who was reading the paper version of the article next to me, commented, “She can certainly write, can’t she?” I wasn’t certain whether this was in regard to the note about starting the ice cream maker at 7:30 am on a Saturday “like every other American family,” or another note, but I said, “She certainly can.” I’m waiting for that book, too.

Real Live Preacher confesses

Lots of interesting stuff in my RSS aggregator (my backup airplane reading), including this little tidbit from Gordon Atkinson of San Antonio, Texas, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church… and Real Live Preacher:

So here we are. After eighteen months of anonymity it is time to come out of the closet. I guess the thing to do is just say it, so here goes.

My name is Gordon Atkinson. I live in San Antonio, Texas, and I’m the pastor of Covenant Baptist Church.

Yeah, Baptist. I know; I can hardly believe it myself. Real Live Preacher a Baptist? How can this be?

It be.

He also writes that the cover of his book and its publication dates are coming Friday. Can’t wait.

Xamlon reaches beta 4

Xamlon, the product (and company) of my old friend Paul Colton, just reached Beta 4. As I wrote before, Xamlon is a XAML engine that runs on Windows 98 through Windows XP. And XAML is the user interface development language for Longhorn.

In addition to the new beta release, Xamlon-the-company now has sponsored a community blog site about XAML at XAMLBlogs.com. This means that Paul finally has a blog (subscribed).

The big news on the blog at present appears to be the members’ participation in the XUL Grand Coding Challenge. The screenshots and sample code on the blog show some really interesting UI stuff created entirely with vector graphics declared in XML.