As for not having luggage, many people (including me) ship it via Fedex ahead of time. [More...] United Airlines has an easy feature on their website where for $79., Fedex will come to your house or office, pick up your suitcase and deliver it to your hotel or other place in the destination city. Considering the airlines charge $25.00 or more to check the bag, and the requirement that you have to check it 45 minutes ahead of departure, the extra $50 is well worth it.
I try hard not to have to check anything, but some people have issues carrying heavy things - like, say, a person with knee or hip trouble. I can see it being well worth the time of someone with minor health issues to just ship everything to their destination.
Yesterday, my iPhone suddenly started playing the same song over and over, even though it was on shuffle. I could manually proceed it, but by itself, it repeated. I put it in recovery mode after an attempt to reboot it ended in a lockup, but it retained the same setting. I had looked under iPod prefs and seen nothing, so I was starting to get frustrated.
As per usual though, I should have turned to the web first. A quick search showed me this, and - sure enough - the little loop button under the the time showed "repeat 1". I hadn't even noticed that there was a setting there before :)
I have no idea how that setting got turned on, but I suspect I did it accidentally. At least I know it's there now.
When you specify the type of an input field as "Password", the "Read Only" setting becomes a problem in VisualWorks 7.7. Today's screencast looks at that, given that the two worked in VisualWorks 7.6
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Now, a very few of those lines are getting even more appealing with Amtrak announcing that Acela lines between Boston, New York, and Washington will be receiving WiFi upgrades in March. That the service will be free is great news -- that the word "initially" is inserted before the word "free" isn't so very great
So the next time I have to head to NYC, it looks like I'll be able to stay online. Cool!
We'll be broadcasting the next podcast tonight at 9 PM EST on justin.tv - it's going to cover the new Xtreams work that Michael and Martin Kobetic (fellow Cincom Smalltalker) have been working on.
See you then! It'll be posted for download on Sunday, as per usual. You can get more of a feel for what Xtreams is all about by loading the bundle from the public store - and by checking out video from Martin's recent presentation on it.
Here's an interesting little new media legal dilemma for you: apparently there are several paid apps in the iPhone App Store that bill themselves as "readers" for publications like the New York Times, CNET, and the BBC, but aren't actually licensed or official in anyway -- they're just pulling RSS feeds. That means people paying for an app like The New York Times Mobile Reader aren't actually getting an app from the Times -- and, perhaps more importantly, the Times isn't getting anything from anyone. Seems like Apple should probably just shut these apps down, but that's the interesting part: all these apps are pretty much just custom-built feed readers, and you can generally access all of the same content using Safari.
I noticed this because the idea of a "Smalltalk Daily" reader like the ones discussed above seemed like a good idea, and a friend of mine built a proof of concept that I like. White label is one thing; this gray label thing is the sort of thing you would think the app store approval process would weed out.
I find this whole Leno/Conan thing terribly amusing. The entire contretemps was set into motion years ago by Zucker himself, when he promised the Tonight Show to Conan. Then, he let Conan find out about the "bring Leno back to 11:35" move via media reports. Now, he's "talking tough":
But now the NBCU chief has been talking tough during the negotiations with Team Conan. To counter O'Brien's principled public statement which the late night host issued this week, Zucker "is threatening to ice Conan", according to his reps. "Zucker said, 'I'll keep you off the air for 3 1/2 years.' Which doesn't have a chance in hell of happening.
I've written about Zucker before; he might well be the dumbest man in the TV business. He's certainly a living example of the "Peter Principle" in action...
The big winner in all this? CBS and Letterman. The more Zucker does, the bigger they win, I think.
You know, I should really know better than to buy anything that involves a service visit from Sears. After all, there's all of this history.
Sigh. We bought a new dishwasher last week, because ours has been doing a terrible job, even after a repair recently. installation was scheduled today between 2 and 5. That's fine; I work out of the house, so there wasn't any issue that way. However....
it's now 5:01 PM, and nothing. I called the local number, and got their "closed for the day" answering machine (that's the contractor, not Sears). So I called Sears. That was moving along untill they tried to transfer me, at which point they dropped the call. So, it's back to the phone.
I wonder how long this saga will last?
Update: The installers showed up at 5:30 with the new dishwasher, and it's going in now. So the main question is, how frakking hard would a short "we'll be late" phone call have been?
This series of before/after satellite photos of various parts of Port au Prince makes it clear just how much damage the earthquake did. If the "after" shots were black and white, you might think they were WWII era photos of some European city that got bombed a lot...
The Cincom Smalltalk team will be coming to Seattle for a one day event on Thursday the 21st - you can register here (free). You can get more details over on the Cincom Smalltalk Events Page- the event will run from 9 AM to 1 PM
Searchlight is a new search tool for Cincom Smalltalk - instead of separating senders/implementors, it unifies results for them. Inspired by Apple's Spotlight, it's a new take on finding things in Smalltalk - learn more about it below:
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
I have a question - you can either email me, or leave comments if you want to answer it :) When you go to a site, and see an an offer to watch a video, or read a document (assume for the sake of argument that it's about something of interest to you) - how do you react to a mandatory form? Do you:
Bail on the content, even though it sounds interesting
Fill in the form, but with bogus information
Fill in the form
I know how I react, but I'm curious as to how other people see this.
Our good friends at the RIAA are back, trying to help us:
ISPs should have authority to block subscribers from sharing music and other files without permission of the copyright owner, the RIAA said. "ISPs are in a unique position to limit online theft," the RIAA said in its comments. "They control the facilities over which infringement takes place and are singularly positioned to address it at the source. Without ISP participation, it is extremely difficult to develop an effective prevention approach."
Right, and we can trust that no false positives would crop up, and that no innocent people would get caught up in this. Just like with their "sue the world" strategery...
I guess that price drop to $199 helped Nintendo move units:
According to The NPD Group (via Wired), Nintendo moved 3.81 million Wii consoles in North America last month. That's 1.66 million more units than December 2008, and the record for most consoles sold in a single month. No surprise, then, that the games industry had a record month overall, besting December 2008 by 4 percent.
I like the XBox, but the Wii is still very cool. Apparemtly, lots of other people think the same thing
All I can say is - wow! George Martin keeps his story moving, and keeps throwing curve balls at me. I was pretty well stunned by the final paragraph of the book A Storm of Swords
. I've ordered the next book, and I'm hoping that he gets the next few books out as soon as he can.
On of our car's has to get its emissions checked, and the deadline (before a fine) is Tuesday. So, I went down to the station this morning... only to discover that they are closed today and Monday for Martin Luther King observance.
Well, this is what I get for putting things off to the last minute, I guess...
Ever since Christmas, my daughter and I have been spending a lot of time with EA's Dragon Age: Origins. It's a pretty immersive RPG we have on the XBox. The kid is positively obsessed with the game, and - I must say - I've spent a fair amount of time with it as well. I liked Modern Warfare 2 and Gears of War 2 well enough, but this is a much bigger game. I'm not even all that far into it - I'm dealing with the last battle in the tower of the magi right now. Speaking of which, I think the XBox is calling me...
A San Diego school vice-principal saw an 11-year-old's
home science project (a motion detector made out of an empty
Gatorade bottle and some electronics), decided it was a bomb, wet
himself, put the school on lockdown, had the bomb-squad come out to
destroy X-ray the student's invention and search his parents' home,
and then magnanimously decided not to discipline the kid (though he
did recommend that the child and his parents get counselling to
help them overcome their anti-social science
behavior).
I have a better idea: fire the
idiot vice principal, congratulate the student for trying to build a cool science project, and send the entire staff at that school back to grade school. Or let them and the students swap places.
Seriously, what the heck is wrong with the staff there? Based on
the
reporting, it looks like the
vice principal is listed here. After someone fetches him
clean underwear, can they also hand him a remedial education
course?
This week Michael and I spoke to Martin Kobetic - he's one of Michael's fellow Smalltalk engineers here at Cincom. The two of them have been working on Xtreams as a side project for awhile now; Xtreams is a "Streams library reboot", applying the lessons learned from the existing Smalltalk streams library after the many years of use across domains they weren't originally designed (for instance, network protocol work).
There's a bit of crackling in the audio whenever Martin talks, that I couldn't do a whole lot to get rid of. It's a bit annoying, but it's all easily audible.
To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software.
To listen immediately, use the player below:
If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!
If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!
After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.
While I understand the need to make money, I'm just not sure this is going to work for them. The problem for the Times is that they desperately want to preserve their existing business model in an environment that will support a lot fewer employees nad overhead. Then there's the loss of influence problem - I ran across this commeneary from Ann Althouse:
For me, reading on line is tied to blogging. I'm not going to spend my time reading sites that I can't blog, and I'm not going to blog and link to sites that you can't read without paying.
Now, I'm a very small player, so the loss of links from me won't mean much, but I feel the same way. During the baseball season, I've often linked to stories about the Yankees (and the pennant races in general) in the Times. With this change? I can't link to stories that are going to be invisible to most people either,
Douglas Putnam is looking for a hosting solution to run Seaside:
I recently rented a 256MB slice from Slicehost for my SmalltalkTheGoodParts.com work. I have a Wordpress blog running there, and I'll be installing Smalltalk and Seaside as part of my self-taught Smalltalk course.
I can heartily recommend Slicehost, the service I use.
I know people are anxious to see the new releases - ObjectStudio 8.2 and VisualWorks 7.7 - and we should have them available soon. The holdup has to do with the commercial orders going out to customers - we didn't want to have a situation where paying customers were getting the product after non-commercial users.
The holiday slowed that process down a bit, but things are getting back on track now. I'll make an announcement when it's good to go, so stay tuned.
The new bundles of course don't skimp on the goodies, particularly with the 35Mbps up / 35Mbps down symmetrical service that should be a boon to HD video chats, big torrents and medium-sized torrents.
After each of the upcoming Smalltalk Technology events (check the schedule here; the first one is in Seattle this Thursday), we'll be hosting a short live stream to talk about the event. If you can't make the events but would like to know a bit about what we're on about, head to our Ustream channel.
Apple is holding an event on January 27th to show off something the company is calling their "latest creation."
Unless a completely out of left field play on AppleTV is in the works, it looks like all the Tablet Rumors are going to converge into a real device. We'll know soon; I should be back from Toronto just in time to find out :)
I've added a new link over in the sidebar - "Where in the World". I'll be listing upcoming events and places where I'll be. If I'll be where you are, and you would like to meet up, you can drop me a line via email, or message me on Twitter
That's also the best place to look for updates on all things Smalltalk that I'm involved in, because I can update it as I get confirmations. So - either keep track of that page, or subscribe to the feed.
With the changes to the Cincom Smalltalk website, you might want to know how to keep track of the audio and video I produce there. On that front, nothing's changed - down the right hand side of the new site is a set of links pulled from the RSS feeds for the media products. To summarize all of that:
You could fail to see how the Samuel story on Heroes was going to end up if you haven't ever read or seen anything created in, oh, the last few millenia. It's time for this sorry mess to fold the tent and shuffle off the stage...
It's been an awesome start to the day - didn't sleep well last night, and when I woke up, I immediately got sick. On the upside of that, I felt better afterwards. Then I had to take my wife's car to get its emissions checked, but it failed the test due to a faulty sensor - why they don't just test what's actually coming out of the tailpipe in that situation mystifies me. Let's hope that tomorrow's flight to Seattle goes better...
I'm heading to Seattle for our one day event tomorrow, but never fear - Smalltalk Daily will still be popping up. I have screencasts in the can and ready to go, so your daily Smalltalk fix should keep arriving in iTunes :)
So not only did I have to run the car to emissions check this morning while sick, now - still not feeling 100 percent - I need to take my daughter to the Orthodontist, get on a conference call, and then go to the Sorint store for her broken phone (or usb cable - it's one that doesn't match anything else we have, either).
The Non-Commercial Downloads for ObjectStudio 8.2 and VisualWorks 7.7 are available at last! There's a network installer for OS X, so things should be a bit simpler there. For ObjectStudio, it's a Microsoft MSI file, seeing as how ObjectStudio is the only Windows 7 Certified Smalltalk around.
David Putnam is getting started with a Seaside server on slicehost (the provider I use to host this blog). He's not running Seaside yet, but he did get Seaside running in a Pharo image, serving from his slice. Now all he has to do is create a Seaside app for it, and he'll be off to the races :)
Looks like he'll be charting his progress on his "Smalltalk the Good Parts" site, so go ahead and subscribe.
Today's Video looks at selectively renaming with the Refactoring Browser, rather than the "all or nothing" approach. After I recorded this screencast, Travis let me know that you can pick and choose renamings from the "Show Changes" option without the add-on covered here, so you should give that a try as well and see which you like better.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
When the White House pushes out an iPhone app to "keep you in touch with the Administrayion", you know the device has gone completely mainstream. I think that handhelds are to the field what PCs were back in the early 80s - the next thing. Mainframes never died, but they are no longer front and center, either. Over the next few years, mobile devices will go the same way. I suspect that sometime very soon, most smart phones will start supporting Bluetooth keyboards, and will also be hookable to a display, or able to project a display themselves (like onto a wall).
Instead of carrying a full laptop, we'll have roll up keyboards and project onto the wall....
My cab will be here to pick me up in a few minutes, and then it's off to Seattle. You can find out where I'll be in the next few weeks and months with the handy "Where in the World" link over in the sidebar. See you in Seattle!
I thought there was a problem with the network installers, but it turns out it was a directory naming problem I created myself. My apologies - you can get going with the installers now.
I know that the Times is trying to shore up revenue, but their problem is more basic: their newspaper minded business model is dead, and they just don't realize it yet:
Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper's print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.
The problem with that is simple: if I (or anyone else, for that matter) links to a NY Times story, we have no way of knowing whether any given reader will be able to read the story. Far safer and simpler to just find another source, because that's a problem. As Jeff Jarvis likes to say, links are the currency of the net - and the Times is pushing a wall in front of theirs.
And yes, there is irony in this including a link to a Times story - but it's free for now :)
... I must be delayed. I haven't been on a plane since I returned from ESUG, and the first flight (BWI to Chicago) went off without a hitch. Now, however, I'm sitting in a lounge at ORD with a mechanical delay - which translates to "some random interval of time before you go, and possibly never".
Looks like I'll miss dinner with the crew in Seattle :/
As most of you know, I have been posting notifications of live streams (for the podcast) to the Cincom Smalltalk events page (on the old site). The new events page will still have the best information for all things Cincom, but - it may not have the most up to date info for things like live streaming when I get a confirmation outside of normal working hours (which happens a lot).
I may well be offline much of the day - the room where our event is being held probably has no internet access. If only ATT had gotten their act together and supported thethering by now...
It turns out that there is net access here, just not "open for all" net access. Since I paid for access in my room though, I'm all set. I'm shooting video for all of the presentations, and I'll be posting that over the next few weeks. The downside is, it looks like the brightness of the screen is putting the speaker somewhat in the dark; we'll see how that turns out.
One thing I thought I should point out about the upcoming Baltimore/DC event: it's being held near the BWI airport, within a short cab ride of the airport or rail station. So if you have been thinking of coming, but were worried about traffic down near DC, don't - the roads near BWI are almost never jammed, and it's an easy trip by rail from as far away as NY and Richmond. It's even a short trip by air (and inexpensive) from Boston. So come on down - you can register (and get the specific location details) here.