Just read an interesting draft TAG finding called The Principle of Least Power. I find the idea very appealing that one should use the simplest possible tool for the job - in many cases using declarative languages rather than procedural, or data rather than objects.

This is a primary issue we’ve faced in the design of XML and especially XSLT.  There was a lot of customer pressure to add more power, especially recursive processing of the output.  Now that XSLT is being baked into hardware, we’ll find out if we went too far.

I’ve always felt frustrated when forced to use a tool too powerful for the job (like JavaScript to apply a different XSLT in the browser), and thanks to the TAG I can now name (with a URI no less my frustration.

Pictures from the Auburn Discovery Montessori field trip earlier this week are now posted on Flickr as the Fort Ross set.

Fort Ross was a trading post of the Russian Hudson Bay Company, occupied from 1799 to about 1840, occupied by Russian traders and militia and Aleut Indians who were experts at otter hunting.  Our field trip was an overnight to live in the fort as the residents would have (sort of — we had dish soap and sleeping bags :-).  We dressed in costume and were assigned a role which included a Russian name and a workgroup - cooks, hunters, militia, gardeners, artisans.

We were cooks, so many of my pictures are in and around the kitchen fires.  But we also danced, hiked, explored the beach, fired the cannon, and learned a lot about how the traders lived back then.  Turned out to be a great way to spend time with the children!

P.S. Many of the 109 photos are of the children and are marked as private.  If you wish to see them ask me to add you as a Flickr contact.