Getting Help
I have a hard time asking for help on listservs and USENET. I’m not sure why.
I was getting better before I cranked into ThinkNOLA. The XML-DEVers where most helpful with questions about Unicode while I was designing an B+Tree index for Momento.
Otherwise, I get stuck. It’s difficult to ask questions about Java or XSLT because the examples are always so ridiculously verbose. Some of these new projects I’m looking into are discussed in IRC, or stranger things.
I’m generally curious about best practices questions, which are can be hard to ask in a way to get meaningful answers. The XML-DEVers do like to ponder such things, if i ask the right way, they will reopen a perma-thread and put down say, the problems with XML Namespaces that were discussed to death back in 1999-2000.
I’m rebuilding my blog roll, and adding developers that have always been insightful. Looking over articles from Leo Simons about switching to mutt, and he has a great older post on . Norman Walsh is always on top of everything in XML land. Peter Cooper was someone I found off of Hugh Macleod and started to follow.
I’d like to create a question stack somewhere in ThinkNOLA. Open questions looking for answers. This is something that can take the place of a mailing list, before a mailing list can reach critical mass.
I suppose, if I have a plan it is to channel everything through http://thinknola.com/ all requests for help, announcements, whatnot.