First Internet-based Elementary and Secondary School Open Doors. That's a very interesting concept to say the least.

Windows: McAfee VirusScan Definition update.

OS X: Think quality, not schedule. "OS X needs maturity, not age" -- Amen!

Mac version of StarOffice next summer? That would be nice.

Macintosh: Icab 1.3 Preview.

Slower Than Its Predecessor: Pentium 4. "Intel has spent five years creating this slower, hotter, much more expensive chip (and eliminating the Roman numeral from its name). What on earth was the company thinking?" -- Amen!

The best Salon Technology & Business stories of the year. Courtney Love's math, Napster clones, do-it-yourself giant brains and more.

Episode II In Trouble? Also see the related Slashdot discussion.

IBM claims fastest Unix workstation. Neener, neener… Mine is bigger than yours.

Book Review: Core Servlets and Java Server Pages. I have it but haven't had a chance to read it, yet.

Palm opens MyPalm Portal. I'm going to have to check it out.

Lead programmer for Microsoft's Internet Explorer moves to Java. The Evil Empire brain washing can be overcome! ;)

CNET: E-commerce Systems Examined. Blue Martini, BroadVision, WebSphere, iPlanet, MS Commerce Server.

FireWire CD-RW Review: Sony Spressa i.Link & QPS Que. I've been looking at both FireWire and USB CD-RW to replace my SCSI-based one. I need to get more educated before making a decision.

We're going to attend my wife's nephew, Evan, Christening today.

Vicki got me the X-Men Monopoly for Christmas. We played it yesterday nite, loads of fun. I won.

Adam Curry celebrates Christmas in style.

Top 10 words of 2000. Interesting how we keep on inventing new words.

The best business books of 2000. Who has time to read books nowadays?

New Year Baby for Britney? That's what I call a sucker-bet.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had the highest per screen average over the weekend.

Full-Auto Washer With Holeless Tub. Can you say Cyclone Reverse Washing without laughing? ;)

The best (and worst) of TV 2000. The best shows I don't watch.

Have a Rockin' Christmas Day!

Where is Santa? NORAD tracks Santa every Christmas eve, following his trek around the world for children everywhere.

Salon Entertainment: Editors' Pick. The year's best (and funniest) articles. If you haven't figured it out by now, Salon is one of my favorite news site.

Nomad Portable Jukebox MP3 Player Reviewed. I've been thinking about getting some king of MP3 jukebox player, but I'll probably wait a little while longer for newer/cheaper models.

Vintage Computer Ads. Brings back some memories.

OS Showdown: Windows 2000 vs. Linux. Not quite your usual comprehensive review.

S. Koreans Clash on Internet Sex Video. Apparently the Koreans have their own Pamela Anderson Lee.

Catherine Zeta Jones to be next Bond girl. If the role is anything like her head-strong performance in Entrapment, she'll get this avid Bond fan stamp of approval.

Merry Christmas!	Joyeux Noël!
Feliz Navidad!	Frohe Weihnachten!
Buon Natale!	Merii Kurisumasu!

We went to see Miss Congeniality yesterday. I was expecting somewhat of a dud, but we actually had a pretty good time. I gave it 3 ^1/2 stars.

A sneak peek at the new season of La Femme Nikita. When I heard the show was coming back after being canceled last season, I became a little worried they had gone too far with the series finale. Looks like they've done a pretty nice job putting the story line back on track. Should definitely make for an interesting new season.

Real new millennium approaches. Someone had to set the record straight. BTW, the New Orleans' river cruise mentioned in the article is what Vicki and I went on last year for New Year's Eve.

The World Wide $#@%@$ing Web. As far as search engines are concerned Google rules in my book, but is also far from being perfect; especially when searching for sample code.

We saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon yesterday nite. The afternoon showing we were going for was sold out. It was well worth the wait. I gave it 4 ^1/2 stars.

Hackers crack Egghead.com. Talk about having eggs on your face.

FileMaker Pro Mobile Reviews. I haven't had a chance to install the Palm conduit yet.

Are you ready for Mac OS X? The final chapter of MacWeek series on moving to Mac OS X.

Christmas Songs of the Week: Vicki really likes Little Drummer Boy by Jars Of Clay. I'm pretty partial to All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey.

The year the hype died and The Floppies.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is finally playing locally. We're planning on going to see it this afternoon.

Apple Computer's Shares Aren't Flying Like Jobs. Yada, yada… not funny… blah, blah… yadi, yadi.

Ich bin Mac OS X.

Red Hat 6.2:

• python-1.5.2-27.6
• python-xmlrpc-1.2.1-0.6
• up2date-2.1.7-0.6
• up2date-gnome-2.1.7-0.6.x.i386

Sun: Server-Side Up. Forte is indeed a great tool. Win2k not supported? I don't think so! Get your facts straight, people.

I just discovered a nitfy set of Java tools:

• JODE: Java Optimize and Decomplile Environment
• Jopt: The Java Class Optimizer

Gates, Allen lose billions in market. I wonder how Larry's fairing?

Another update to my IE bookmarks to OPML script is now available. It specifically deals with inconsistencies between Windows and Mac OS exported bookmarks. Thanks to Nat Irons for pointing out some of my Perl idiocrasies.

While dealing with the update, I've been faced with an interesting problem involving Perl's regular expressions. As I have yet to find an elegant solution, I'll try to summarize the problem below. Hopefully someone will be able to provide some assistance.

Here we go…

Regular Expressions Dilemma

Given the following example string:

"Tango & Cash, Batman & Robin, First & Last , AT&T"

The goal is to create a matching regular expression which replaces all occurrences of "&" with it's HTML entity, "&". Other valid HTML entities, such as "&", ">", "&", etc., must also remain untouched. Of course using the standard "s/&/&/g" would fail miserably.

Please share you thoughts. Join now if you're not already a member and/or click the discuss link below.

[Update]

Aaron Straup Cope sent me the following matching pattern:

s/&(?!(#[0-9]+|#x[0-9a-fA-F]+|w+);)/&/g

He found it at:

http://xmlhack.com/read.php?item=638

I've updated my script accordingly.

Thanks Aaron.