Always interesting to suddenly see somebody you know popping up on the official Google blogs! Recently:

• Nick Weininger – “Better Flight Stats Results” (Friend from college.)
• John Mueller – “FYI On Google Toolbar’s Latest Features” (Friend from Cre8asite Forums)

Nick, I know, has been working at Google for a couple years (and I haven’t seen him since he left the Twin Cities for grad school.) John was recently hired away from his own company, SOFTplus, best known in webmaster circles for Gsite Crawler, a piece of software for generating Sitemap.xml files.

Commenting on the actual content of the posts, I was interested to see that Google is adding flight delay information on flight stats searches. Yet another reason to never leave Google….

John’s post provides a great overview of new features in Google’s new Toolbar. Which I don’t use, so I can’t really say that I cared that much. Eh, it’s not about the content, right?

Well, I’m back in the saddle — I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but do expect to get a few things posted here in the next few days.

I’ve also got a lot of cleaning up to do. There were major storms here in Saint Paul while I was gone, and I appear to have lost a couple of trees. Just can’t think where they might’ve gone…

So, I’m going to be on vacation for the next couple of weeks. When I return on the 15th, (just to whet your appetite), I’ll have a new PHP script available for download — a user registration and validation script — and a long overdue revision to my PHP poll script. As you may have guessed, I’m planning on spending part of my vacation time working on my own little projects…is it work? Is it play? Who can tell?

Anyhow, I’m going to be quiet until the 15th, unless something really amazing happens.

The “instant viewing” program from Netflix — streaming video for Netflix subscribers — is supposed to be available to their entire subscriber network by June of 2007. I tried it out last night. It was awesome.

Netflix doesn’t yet have a particularly extensive collection in their instant viewing treasure trove, but it’s certainly substantial enough to provide items of interest for most audiences, with about 2,000 videos to watch across genres.

I watched a 45 minute television program at full screen on a monitor with 1400 by 900 pixel resolution. During the course of the viewing there were:

• 0 sound glitches
• 0 video glitches

The video quality was very acceptable for a TV sitcom. I’m not sure that I’d find something more exotically special-effects driven to be quite so satisfying, but that’ll have to be another test later! The relatively simple camera work and audio work of “Ballykissangel” were just fine.

The time between hitting “Play” and beginning to watch the video, including the download and install time for the Netflix video player was approximately 2 minutes.

Sweet. Now, if only Netflix.com were an accessible site…

All right, I confess — I’ve been delinquent. But, to be fair, I have been writing! What I’ve been writing, however, is not for publication on this blog. Actually, I’ve been writing for print — rather a novelty for me! At any rate, I’m having an article published in Qualityworld, the journal of the Chartered Quality Institute.

Quality assurance is not an area where I have a lot of specific experience, but the whole subject of planning and building a high-quality website IS something where I have some vague knowledge. I’m not exactly certain when the article will be out. I think it’s for the June issue, but I don’t know exactly how long the editorial cycle is for the journal.

At any rate, that’s what has consumed a large amount of my available writing time recently. Soon I’ll be returning to the usual rigamarole. If you could see my drafts list, you’d see that I have plenty of half-baked ideas!

My brand-new niece, Ramona Nina:

Congratulations to my sister and her husband!

All right, if you’re expecting to read about web development, prepare to be disappointed (or bored.) I don’t claim to always stay on topic, and right now I’m intending to split off a bit…so here goes.

I was just reading an interesting little article at Humanities Talks: “20 Greatest Historical Myths,” and I have a subtle quibble with one point: (actually, I could quibble with several, but this is the only one I’m going to discuss.)

The article states:

6. America became independent on July 4, 1776

Hold the fireworks! As most American school children (and many non-American ones) are aware, America’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, the war raged for another seven years before independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783. On that day, Britain’s George III and US leaders signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace.

Here’s my question: what’s the signifier of independence? In my view, the concept of political independence must come from the people declaring independence: if they perceive themselves (or declare themselves) to be independent, then they ARE independent. If one resists the government, then one is not ruled by the government. If one is sentenced and shot by a government which one does not acknowledge, then, although the government may perceive you as a criminal, you may perceive yourself having been killed as a prisoner of war.

I would suggest that the Declaration of Independence literally gave the colonies their independence. At that point, it was England’s responsibility to either re-conquer the colonies and re-assert their dominance, or to eventually concede the independence of the colonies, which they did.

The Treaty of Peace asserted that the war was over and that “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”

The Treaty contains an official relinquishment of claims: not a grant of independence. The two are significantly different: the crown COULD NOT grant independence, since the American Colonies had already taken it for themselves. It could only relinquish future claims on the territory and officially acknowledge the newly establish “United States.”

Essentially, independence is a function of self: if a body claims itself to be free and independent, then that condition is self-defining. Alternately, if a foreign body grants independence to an group or individual who does not acknowledge that independence, that group or individual is still not free.

All right. Just had to think out loud. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!