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Just reading The Design of Sites, my new web authoring book. The bulk of the book is a bunch of design patterns for web developers, some of which are pretty obvious, others are new to me (at least I've yet to apply them).

Patterns are interesting because they provide simple recipes to solve simple problems, but when you combine several patterns together you can solve much bigger problems. This made me think, is there any limit to this combinatorial approach? Would a site that simply collected and catalogued patterns in all domains be useful? You would carefully structure the pattern input process and provide features for linking to other patterns in the database (including some form of backlinking) and allow users to rate the quality of patterns as they apply them.

Given that nothing is as discrete as we would like to believe, I think that this might be quite a useful site and I may get off my ass and make it. I had a quick look around but all I found was a lot of software patterns and some architecture and web patterns. I started out looking for business patterns. E.g. "I've learnt a lot about the subtleties of my trade, but I'm finding it hard to teach my clients about the subtleties and manage my projects in such a way that means we don't fall into these known traps." I'm not the most amazingly skilled businessman ever and a set of simple small business patterns or freelance patterns could help me out a lot sometimes. It also seems likely to me that a repository that's based around statements of problems would be knowledge in a form that's easily applicable in a way that web browsers tend to like.

I have been reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold. LaBerge is apparently the head honcho of lucid dreamers and the book is quite interesting. The first few chapters have instructed me to log my dreams in order to find patterns. Recognising these patterns whilst dreaming, combined with a few other exercises, whill hopefully induce lucidity.

It's obviously not effective to only post my dreams to this log. By the time my machine boots I will have forgotten. However, I intend to note them and then post them later for posterity.

So here goes... BTW feel free to post comments on my dreams or your own dreams, could be interesting.

The flux creates, the corporation permeates. In the trans-gender reality, art objects are reproductions of the iterations of the flux -- a flux that uses the corporation as a zeitgeist to enmesh ideas, patterns, and emotions. With the rationalization of the electronic environment, the flux is superseding a point where it will be free from the corporation to consume immersions into the parameters of the delphic reality. Work of Meta-Art in the Age of Generative Reproduction contains 10 minimal flash engines (also refered to as "AI modules") that enable the user to make ridiculous audio/visual compositions.

measuring chains, constructing realities
putting into place forms
a matrix of illusion and disillusion
a strange attracting force
so that a seduced reality will be able to spontaneously feed on it

Yamamoto Brown's work investigates the nuances of surveilance cameras through the use of stopframe motion and close-ups which emphasize the Generative nature of digital media. Brown explores abstract and overwhelming scenery as motifs to describe the idea of hyper-real reality. Using irresistable loops, vectors, and allegorical images as patterns, Brown creates meditative environments which suggest the expansion of space...

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Courtesy of playdamage.org.

Paul Graham, in his essay Revenge of the Nerds, says:

When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. The shape of a program should reflect only the problem it needs to solve. Any other regularity in the code is a sign, to me at least, that I'm using abstractions that aren't powerful enough - often that I'm generating by hand the expansions of some macro that I need to write.

This has really stuck in my head! I keep thinking it when I write code. It's like a little angel sitting on my shoulder saying "No. No, Afternoon, abstract this, use a list comprehension, create a function, or a class, or a higher-order function, don't just be lazy." It's a force for good.

I just finished my first site of my second bout of freelancism. Certa Solutions went live about half an hour ago. I didn't do the design, BTW, just the build.

Building the site I fell into the same patterns that I often do when building straight HTML. The effort of maintaining consistency between 40+ pages outweighs everything else. To this end I've thought about converting all the content to XML and then building a set of XSL transformations to generate the site. Then the computer can do the repetive bit! Ha! The trick would then be to balance the content out between nodes - much easier than distributing it around one document.

I may try to rebuild Certa using this technique, but more likely I think I'll leave it until next time I have to do something similar. Hypothetical is a priority, and Fog needs a page which means rebuilding this site.

Also today I joined the Smarty mailing list and found out that my problems with it are not due to it, but my PHP build. Installing it on a more predictable BSD machine (this one) worked fine. Smarty is a template engine, the PHP teams measures to seperate logic from design. It's pretty fast, although I don't have the numbers for other systems like Zope or JSP. I'm going to use it to provide theme support for Hype2.

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Last updated at 0:35, Monday December 1st, 2008. All times are shown in 24-hour clock format and are GMT.

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