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weather

Let it Snow

January 30, 2010 11:23:19.331

The weather system that was socking the southeast yesterday has climbed far enough north to give us a snow storm:

Supposedly, we'll get 2-4 inches by late afternoon - which around here, is enough to keep us housebound. The road there is completely untreated :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Portability

January 30, 2010 11:30:30.651

Julian Fitzell notes that necessity is the mother of invention:

In our work on other projects, we found the same portability challenges came up over and over and we wanted to use the tools we had developed for Seaside to address them. So we began to split out the Seaside-specific functionality, allowing us to leverage the generic parts it in our other work. And thus Grease was born.

Over the years there have been many, many attempts at portability layers for the various Smalltalk implementations; none has ever stuck. I have a bit more faith in this one, because it's being driven by the needs of an actual project, instead of by the more typical hypothetical needs of some abstract project.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

Backroom Manuevering on Books?

January 30, 2010 11:40:29.541

Is MacMillan engaged in some kind of hardball with online vendors? Venture Beat noticed that they've disappeared from Amazon's catalog:

Go to Amazon.com. Search for any publication by Macmillan, one of the world's largest publishing firms. The Prince of Silicon Valley, perhaps, or Sarah's Key. Or last year's huge #1 bestseller The Gathering Storm.

No details, and everyone seems to be staying quiet - sounds like one of those periodic royalty rate battles to me...

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Dollhouse

January 30, 2010 11:53:15.931

In deference to those who haven't seen the ending yet, I won't talk about specifics. My general take? There was a point midway through season 1 where my interest really started to flag. Once it was clear that season 2 was going to be it, the show came back for me - I think a hard deadline really got the attention of Joss and the other writers, and they focused.

Still, you could tell that the endgame itself was rushed - the last 2 episodes in particular just raced to the conclusion - not unlike the movie "Serenity", where all plot threads got tied up more quickly than they should have been. Which is not to say that I was unhappy with how it ended - it's more to say that I would have liked the end to have taken place over about 2 more hours.

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posted by James Robertson

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blog

Setting up Silt

January 30, 2010 12:41:18.930

When I first set up this site on Slicehost, I pushed up a "how did I do it" post. I recently got an email telling me that I skipped a step of interest: how did I set up the actual Smalltalk blog server?

Well, I do that somewhat manually, because I'm familiar with the process. However, I created tools for this a long while back, and I just refreshed them this morning. There's still a manual bit of intervention - my tools aren't quite as finished as I'd like. However, it works, so here are the steps:

  1. Load Silt from the Public Store
  2. Under Tools, select "Blog Manager"
  3. Click the "New" button
  4. Fill in the required fields, click the Set Up button
  5. Your blog has been set up
  6. Save the image
  7. This image can be used by starting it headless

I should also document how I start the server, since it's a bit different, and structured so that I can do live patching - I'll get to that soon.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Apple Pulling a Fast One?

January 30, 2010 13:57:25.438

Apple Seems to be being a bit slippery about the iPad and Flash:

The iPad-Flash disconnect first came to light by way of Apple blog AppleInsider.com. The gang at AI noticed that promotional images posted on Apple's Web site appear to depict the iPad displaying Flash-based content from NYTimes.com.

While they've been verbally open about Flash not being supported, the ads are something else again. While I understand the issues around Flash - bloat, battery drain, etc - the web is what it is, and Flash is a huge part of it. I think Apple is going to have to swallow hard and let it on board.

Update: Apple has yanked the ads in question, and Adobe has gotten desperate.

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

More Snow Than They Thought

January 30, 2010 15:31:41.282

Looks like the storm tracked a bit further north than the original "1-2 inches" forecast called for:

Update: 5:30 PM, and it's still coming down pretty hard. I think they guessed wrong about the storm track...

posted by James Robertson

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itNews

There are the Fanboys...

January 30, 2010 20:10:12.988

And then there are the people who just don't like Apple at all:

Do you believe that Apple is 100 percent evil in every way? Well we're here to help. Due to the overwhelming demand of 16 commenters, we present to you the Apple-free Engadget!

Heh

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

End Users Don't Care

January 30, 2010 21:56:05.416

In the comments for my earlier post, a bunch of people made the point that Flash "should die" (in my experience, lots of tech folks feel that way). However, you really have to ponder the end user point of viewin banning Flash from a device like the iPad:

Last, I am not buying any device that is intended to become my primary media consumption tool when it won't display most video that exists online, or that someone might want or need to show me. That would be nuts. I get that Apple wants to force everyone to begin offering an Apple video alternative online, along with or instead of Flash-based video, but I am not going to spend $600 or more to be their consumer battering ram on this issue. If I spend that much money on a piece of technology which is primarily designed as a way for me to look at things online, I darn well better be able to see ALL the video that's out there, and see it easily and without hassle.

This is why I think that Apple is going to have to bend on this. Yes, HTML5 is coming, and yes, it'll change things. But- the end user adoption rate of HTML5 capable browsers will be slow, and it will continue to be a safe bet to assume that Flash will work for most people.

Which means that for most end users, the iPad is going to be a sub-optimal video viewing device. Say you take a trip, and want to keep up with some of your TV shows on the road? Too bad for you - Hulu will display a "plugin required" image.

I don't think this will be the slam dunk Apple thinks it'll be without Flash support.

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

More Than They Forecast

January 31, 2010 10:17:45.875

We got significant snow yesterday - not like the huge storm back before Christmas, but 6 inches counts as the real deal around here - especially after the forecast calls for a dusting of 1-2 inches :)

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posted by James Robertson

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development

PHP to Get Faster?

January 31, 2010 10:22:23.845

If this report is true, then maybe PHP will stop being the red headed stepchild that everyone seems to love to hate:

Well, I was able to put all the pieces together on this one, finally, and I now understand exactly what is up: Facebook has rewritten the PHP runtime from scratch. This coming Tuesday, they will make a big announcement around this project, and will make it available as open source software. I'm not really sure of any of the details of the project, but I do know that Facebook hired someone two years ago to do this, and I'm relatively sure this was a one-man project during that entire time.

Still sounds awfully speculative to me, but I guess we'll know the quality of the reporting on Tuesday. In the meantime, if you want a faster web runtime - both for development and deployment - you should have a look at Smalltalk.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Industry Misinterpretations 173: Web Velocity 1.1

January 31, 2010 10:36:39.815

This week Michael and I spoke about the work going into WebVelocity 1.1 - both the work that's improving the editor, and the work in support of cloud based deployment. Michael also mentioned that more screencasts on this stuff should be coming soon, so stay tuned to his blog for that.

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!

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

The Fast Switch Possibilities for e-Books

January 31, 2010 11:04:51.123

Apple brought 5 major publishers to the iPad party, and apparently swooned them with the promise that they could set book prices themselves - something Amazon has been pushing back on. However, I wonder who the rubes really are:

Something's got to give — and before the iPad hits stores in March. Otherwise, given that iPhone's Kindle application will be on the iPad, consumers will have the choice of paying two different prices for the same book on the device. That isn't likely to suit Apple or the publishers.

I can definitely see Apple pulling a shoulder shrug at launch time (or shortly thereafter) and dropping prices down to the level Amazon is setting (or even below as a competitive move) - with the explanation that they really have no choice, given Amazon's market power in the space.

Either way, I expect the price for e-books to drop. The marginal cost of delivery is around zero, and that means that markup will be driven down - just as it has been in the music world via the competition between Amazon and Apple...

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Die Old Browser, Die

January 31, 2010 11:12:06.113

Google is making a good move to cut off legacy browsers (IE 6 being the main legacy browsre, but also the 2.x series of Firefox):

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won’t work properly in older browsers.

They have links to the latest generation of all the main browsers, so there's really no excuse to keep using something like IE6. Even if your corporate intranet was built for IE6 (like *cough* the one I have to use *cough*), IE7 and IE8 both do a fine job of dealing with that. There's really no reason to stay with a browser rev that came out with the launch of Windows XP :)

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

A RESTful Web Service in Smalltalk

January 31, 2010 12:22:55.518

I got a question via Twitter earlier today about creating a RESTful web service in Smalltalk - I'll do a screencast on this tomorrow, but I thought a quick walkthrough might be useful as well. This example uses the VisualWorks Web Toolkit (which would also work in ObjectStudio) - I'll create a Seaside based example later this week.

Want the code? You can grab that here.

So: step one, load the Web Toolkit - right click and select "Load" after getting the Parcel Manager open:

Once that's in, connect to the public store repository, and load JSONReader - that's just what I'm using in this example. You could just as easily answer an XML document using the SAX driver, or some other format entirely. Anyway, load this via a right click on the latest version:

Next, you need to create a "site definition". You don't need to do this for each service; just for each named site (path) you want to support. You'll have two files: webtools.ini (copy that over from the $(VISUALWORKS)/web directory and edit it), and services-site.ini. The name of the latter file is whatever you want to call it, so long as you reference it in webtools.ini:

Now you can create your new service. Define a subclass of SingleThreadModelServlet:

I added the data instance variable just to have something to respond with. The superclass I'm using ensures that each request will spawn a new instance (thus sharing no data) instead of assuming a stateless model. Next, add these two methods:


initialize
	"Initialize a newly created instance. This method must answer the receiver."

	super initialize.
	data := Dictionary new.
	data at: 'name' put: 'James Robertson'.
	data at: 'title' put: 'Smalltalk Product Evangelist'.


doGet
	"entry point for this service"

	| content |
	response contentType: 'application/json'.
	response status: 200.
	content := self data asJson.
	response contentLength:  content size.
	response write: content

Finally, define a listener so that you can make requests. In the launcher, over on the far right is a button for doing that. Press that, then create the listener (on any available port), and click Create and Start:

I put that on port 8011, so using this url: http://localhost:8011/services/servlet/MyService, I should get this (I'm using Firefox):

If you use some application that expects JSON, you'll get the actual object. And that's it - having the service read from a database (etc) is just a detail - the actual RESTful part is pretty easy. Questions? Send them here.

Want the code? You can grab that here.

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Paging the Past

January 31, 2010 20:32:15.774

While I understand what Mark Pilgrim is on about in this post, I have to say, it made me chuckle:

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they're doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers.

Why am I chuckling? Consider the car tinkerer of the 1950s, transported in front of a modern car. I rather suspect he'd say a whole lot of the same things. Have we lost something since then? Maybe, but then again, cars are safer, simpler, and more reliable now. I think we'll be able to say the same thing about computing devices, too.

The computer sector, like audio systems (back in the 20's) and cars (up until the 50's or so), is moving past the tinkerer stage. It's less something to rage against than it is something that just is...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

RESTful Web Services

February 1, 2010 6:49:02.961

Today's Smalltalk Daily shows you how to build a simple, RESTful web service using the VisualWorks Web Toolkit (the same code may be used in ObjectStudio). Here's a zip file with the example service. If you would prefer a text and image based walkthrough, try my earlier post on this. Here's a zip file with the code. To watch, click on the viewer below:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Neo-Luddism

February 1, 2010 7:15:58.959

I hope no one tells John Dvorak that the smart phone in his pocket has more power than the laptop he carried a decade ago. Oh, wait - that's unpossible, since he claims that there's been virtually no tech progress over the last ten years....

posted by James Robertson

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general

Don't Wash Your Passport

February 1, 2010 11:58:02.250

Well, this makes the next few weeks exciting. I was setting up my trip to London and Paris (for our next round of conferences), and I couldn't find my passport - it wasn't in the place I normally leave it. Finally, I opened the dryer, and sure enough: there it was.

Damaged beyond use, so I investigated the process. I couldn't find my birth certificate (with a damaged passport, you need proof of citizenship along with the damaged passport) - but fortunately, my mom still has a copy (and for safety, I ordered a new one from the state I was born in).

After that, I just need to run down to the local post office, pay a rather large fee, and wait. I'll have to expedite it, but that's just the way it goes...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Print 2 Web: ESUG 2009 Video

February 1, 2010 14:48:17.872

Here's Roland Wagener of the Georg Heeg company, talking about a project he did to match printed graphic materials match up as closely as possible with a website. To watch, click on the viewer below:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Germany

February 1, 2010 20:01:00.852

There's a Smalltalk meetup taking place in Germany (Cologne) on February 18:

Vision Factory GmbH
Soemmeringstr. 75
50823 Cologne
(across the yard at the rear house)

Hat tip Torsten

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Files or Data Stores?

February 1, 2010 20:25:27.922

Gilad Bracha sees the iPhone and the iPad, and has decided that they portend the end of the filesystem as we know it:

Which brings us to the programmer experience. File APIs will disappear from client platforms (as in the web browser). So programmers will become accustomed to working with persistent object stores as provided by HTML 5, Air etc. And as they do, they will get less attached to files as code representation as well.

Well, not so fast. What's actually happening is that the end user experience (apps manage the file system for you on an application specific basis) is diverging from the developer experience (writing the code to make that "magic" possible. Take iTunes or iPhoto - I never really look at the way either application manages things. From my end user standpoint, there are two folders I don't need to pay attention to (Music and Pictures). Underneath all of that is a mass of files (raw photos, XML metadata, edited photos, etc). All of that stuff is stored in... files.

Heck, even if you think everything will end up in the cloud that won't change. The end user will end up seeing application defined portals into their data, while the back end will be some combination of application specific file storage, databases (etc) - all in a filesystem somewhere.

As to developers moving away from files - well. Anyone who uses a source code control tool is moving in that direction already. It happens to be the case that the simplest artifact to go into these tools is usually the file, but those files are increasingly organized into some kind of package structure that is more meaningful.

posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

RESTful Services in Seaside

February 2, 2010 8:19:03.557

Over the weekend, I demonstrated a RESTful JSON service using the WebToolkit. Today, I'm going to do the same thing using Seaside 3.0 in VisualWorks (the same code should work in ObjectStudio). If you want the code, here it is. First, load Seaside from the Parcel Manager - it's now under "Web Development":

The example I'm building uses JSON (although it could just as easily be XML or anything else) - so we'll connect to the public store and get the JSON code support:

Next, we'll create a subclass of WAComponent that will render the JSON for us. As I did over the weekend, I'll just create a simple dictionary for the example:

Next, we need to write some code. Add the following two class methods:


canBeRoot
	^true



initialize
	"MyService initialize"

	self registerAsApplication: 'SvcPoint'.

In a workspace, execute MyService initialize. At this point, you have a working service, it just doesn't do anything. Go to the launcher and pull down the Seaside menu and start the server. If you go to SvcPoint, you should get a blank page.

Now, you need to create the rendering code to respond with JSON. This is a bit different than it would have been in Seaside 2.8 - the session and request context code have changed.

Write the code above:


renderContentOn: html
	" Render our object as generic json. "


	self requestContext respond: [:response | 
		| json |
		json := self data asJson.
		response contentType: 'application/json'.
		response nextPutAll: json ]

Now browse the entry point again - you should be prompted to download a file (or it'll just download, depending on the browser you're using):

Finally, if you open that response file in a text editor, you should see this:

And that's it! You now have a RESTful service implemented in Seaside. Here's the code in a zip file if you just want to load it and take a look.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

RESTFul Web Services in Seaside: Video

February 2, 2010 8:50:39.877

Today's Screencast shows you how to create a RESTful Web Service in Seaside. You can get the code here; if you would rather see a text/image based walkthrough, go to my earlier post. To watch now, just click on the viewer below:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Objects, Hashes, Closures

February 2, 2010 9:01:56.393

Michael has some interesting thoughts on the unity of Objects, Hashes, and Closures.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Walkthroughs

February 2, 2010 9:46:47.403

I've created a new category for the tutorial style posts - if you want to browse just those posts, use this url. You can also subscribe to those posts in any news aggregator.

posted by James Robertson

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books

Where's that Fifth Book?

February 2, 2010 10:11:24.999

I finished off George Martin's A Feast for Crows yesterday, and now I'm ready for book five - which sadly isn't out yet. Book four focused almost entirely on the south, and there were plenty of surpises. Again, I'll note that martin - unlike the writers for "Heroes" - is entirely ok with killing off characters, including ones that you are utterly convinced are going to stick around. This is a good thing - with anyone at risk, you really want to keep turning the pages.

So now I'll be paying attention to the rumor mill on his progress - it's been nearly 5 years since book four, so let's have it!

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posted by James Robertson

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books

The Publishing War

February 2, 2010 10:25:09.909

Charles Stross explains the Amazon/MacMillan affair in the context of what's going on in publishing as a whole. It's easy (from the book consumer's standpoint) to see Amazon as "the good guiy" driving prices down, but it's useful to see where writers and publishers are coming from as well - the picture is way more complicated than Amazon would like us to think...

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posted by James Robertson

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general

What Feels Like Home

February 2, 2010 16:26:45.003

I had to drive my daughter somewhere the other day, and we got to talking about the somewhat artificial feeling that surrounds the place we live (Columbia, MD - created out of whole cloth 40 some odd years ago). There' wasn't any real economic driver for this place; there still isn't. Very few people living here are actually from here; it's a bedroom community, with most people commuting down to the DC suburbs where the local jobs are. The fact that I work out of the house makes me something of an outlier here, I guess.

Anyway - I often read people talking about the supposedly tighter community feeling in a city, but I don't think that has anything to do with it. What I think matters is what you might call local permanence: how many people have their roots in an area (meaning, their family ties to the immediate region go back more than a generation)? The higher that number is, the more a place is going to feel like home for kids born there. The lower it is, the less they'll feel that way. The famous theories about "suburban alienation" don't really have much to do with the suburbs, IMHO - they have to do with transience. I rather suspect that city neighborhoods with low levels of "permanence" have the same levels of alienation.

I don't know whether this actually leads me anywhere; it's just a set of thoughts that grew out of a conversation I had with my daughter. Food for thought though...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

More Snow

February 2, 2010 17:34:17.119

Nothing is hitting the ground here yet - but this weather map says it will be shortly:

With something like three inches on the way, I'm guessing that we'll have at least a school delay in the morning - if that happens, expect "Smalltalk Daily" to be a bit late, as I sleep in :)

posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Remember Your Core Business

February 2, 2010 20:23:23.013

Forrester makes the point that Yahoo and Technorati both headed downhill once they forgot their core businesses and started getting enthusiastic about being "content providers". Is Facebook in danger of going the same way? Well, they are adding RSS/Atom news reader capability to the news stream. Now, this could end here, and be the live "river of news" that Dave Winer always talks about... or it could go down the road to hell:

If there's any risk of the content provider tragedy happening again, someone in the PM team at Facebook needs to speak up now. Why do people use Facebook? To connect with friends. The applications are cute ways to connect with them in more ways than just posting and poking. Anything that interferes with that activity dilutes the core value of Facebook.  (And news feeds aren't the only source of potential dilution, by the way.)

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

More Snowmageddon

February 2, 2010 23:31:18.081

This isn't really Snowmageddon, but I bet it will get my daughter out of school tomorrow:

In terms of actual Snowmageddon, there's a possibility that a storm system tracking into the south will run up the coast this weekend and leave us with another 2 foot + event. Getting a second one of those in one winter would be pretty darn unusual for central Maryland :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

JSON Support in WebVelocity 1.0

February 3, 2010 9:40:14.138

Today's screencast looks at the JSON support that ships as part of WebVelocity 1.0.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Events Update

February 3, 2010 10:35:18.514

If you've registered for one of the Smalltalk events we have coming up (in Paris and London), you may well have gotten inaccurate information in the confirmation email. It looks like the times are off by 5 hours (London) and 6 hours (Paris). The events run from 9 AM - 1 PM local time in both locations.

The addresses you received are fine; just be careful about the times :)

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

Copyright?

February 3, 2010 12:49:49.277

Unless Macheist has Gruber's permission (which sounds doubtful, but who knows) - how is this not a copyright violation:

The team behind MacHeist has just launched "DaringFireballWithComments.net" a website that mirrors Gruber's site with, you guessed it, comments.

There's also the possible branding infringement, although that would imply that Gruber applied for a trademark. Either way, it smells wrong to me. This is the same tactic that spammers use to build link farms. They could have accomplished the same thing with SideWiki...

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Whither Braille

February 3, 2010 15:28:00.276

This is interesting:

According to the National Federation of the Blind, only 10 percent of blind children learn braille today, down from 50 percent in the 1950s, and only 10 percent of blind people in America read braille.

I'm not sure I have any opinion on whether it's good, bad, or indifferent - I'm not blind, and I don't know anyone who is. I do know that listening (podcasts) is different than reading - that's why I'm far more interested in e-readers (like the coming iPad) than I am in audiobooks. Is it the same for blind people? It seems they're "voting with their fingers".

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Ottawa

February 3, 2010 23:18:47.448

Dave Buck relays news of Cincom customer Igor Dmytryk talking about the trading system at EDC at the next Ottawa STUG, on Feb 10:

The core trading platform used by the Treasury group at Export Development Canada is written in Smalltalk. The system has been under constant development for over 10 years. The talk will demo the system and cover aspects of our development methodology, testing and future plans.

Send email to Dave to RSVP; the talk starts at 6PM, here:

Main Lobby of EDC
151 O'Connor
Ottawa

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Screencasts

February 4, 2010 6:31:55.810

In addition to the screencasts I've been doing, the Pharocast guys have been doing a bunch of screencasts, and the Gemstone folks have been on a tear releasing video, too. Great time to start learning Smalltalk!

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

The Next Step for Kindle?

February 4, 2010 6:46:14.760

Amazon recently bought a small company that builds innovative touchscreen devices, leading to the thought that they might well have a next generation device on the way that would leapfrog the iPad:

Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object -- not just a finger -- and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications.

Now if they were able to add design sensibility to that tech...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Printing with the Windows File Dialog

February 4, 2010 7:09:59.216

Today's screencast demonstrates how to create a Document object and print it using the native print dialog on Windows (rather than the default printer, which is what will normally happen). ,You can download the code used in this screencast here.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Video Goes Mobile

February 4, 2010 10:14:27.611

The future of video is streaming - even ATT has caught up with that fact:

But all that is about to change. AT&T announced Thursday morning that it will now allow the SlingPlayer iPhone app to stream live over its 3G network.

What we really need now is for Apple to release streaming support for iTunes and the iPhone. Then add over the air updates instead of requiring the synch cable. Google has done that for their Android phones, and Apple needs to catch up.

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posted by James Robertson

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web

Adobe, Flash, and Desperation

February 4, 2010 10:50:29.361

First, after Apple's iPad announcement with no Flash, Adobe's Evangelist pulled out the pr0n card:

My friend Matt Drance, Apple's former iPhone evangelist, summed up what this means on Twitter:"Adobe has resorted to playing the porn card. It's over."

Following a link from there, John Gruber noted:

Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow made his little poster showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they’re missing anything because, well, they’re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.

Finally, I came across this thoughtful piece on the problem, which explains that Adobe is actually stuck in C++ legacy-land, while Apple wants developers to work in Objective-C:

Can Adobe just port what they have into Objective-C or use Carbon. Unfortunately no, the Flash Player is written in C++ and going from C++ to Objective-C is not very practical. Objective-C is just another superset of C. It simply adds some OOP logic and a messaging and some of the syntax is similar to Smalltalk. You can compile any C program into Objective-C but that's not currently possible to do with a C++ program

Based on all of this, I've rethought my theory - I don't think Apple will need to reconsider Flash at all. I think Adobe is going to have to reconsider where they stand. Mind you, I've had it pointed out (via Rob Fahrni) that you can, in fact, compile C++ in an Objective-C environment. Based on his post, it still sounds like Adobe has a rather large mountain in front of it...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Getting Large Usually Means Getting Stodgy

February 4, 2010 12:22:05.896

Everything I read about Microsoft lately sounds like a replay of IBM back in the 80s: years of coasting on a profitable business (Mainframes then, Office/Windows now) have led to a very inward looking company. The NY Times has an article from Dick Brass that makes an interesting point about Tablets and Office:

When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn't like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

Rob Fahrni points out that the VP who pushed that POV was Steve Siofsky, who's now even more influential at MS. I think the next few years at Microsoft are going to play out a lot like the 80's did for IBM: a large decline (not death), with the possibility of a second (less influential) act - if they get a management team that can adapt to the new reality fast enough.

I lived in East Fishkill, NY when IBM started to run into trouble, and it really left a mark on that area - most jobs were either directly with IBM, or in businesses that served them or their staff. It took a long time before that area was able to diversify off being such a "company town" - I suspect Redmond is in for a lot of the same.

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Here It Comes

February 4, 2010 23:13:56.465

With this huge storm on the way, thank goodness I'm not traveling this weekend:

Now the forecast is calling for 18-25 inches of snow - should be a wild ride over the next couple of days. The local school system has already decided to let school out 3 hours early...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using Write Barriers for Object Tracking

February 5, 2010 8:23:21.183

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you can use WriteBarriers to track object changes. You can download the code example here.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Oracle Squelching Rumors

February 5, 2010 10:39:11.007

I find it interesting that Oracle feels it's necessary to put out a "Java isn't dying" video. What I find disturbing is the color scheme on that page. Seriously, I felt like I was back in the Deep Roads in Dragon Age Origins...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Snowmageddon Begins

February 5, 2010 10:42:16.377

Here it comes - supposedly, 2 feet of the white stuff is on the way:

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Cairo Graphics: Getting Started

February 5, 2010 13:54:43.463

Next week I'll be redoing some of the Cairo screencasts - they are all outdated, simply due to the fact that you can load cairo much more easily now:

On Windows and OS X, you'll have the shared libraries installed as well (assuming you picked those when you ran the installer. If you didn't, re-run the installer and do so). For Linux or Unix platforms, you'll have to get Cairo installed yourself.

Once you have it loaded, try this as a simple "Is Cairo Working" test:


| win component |
win := ApplicationWindow new.
win
	component: (VisualBlock block: 
					[:gc :box |
					gc newCairoContextWhile: 
						[:cr |
						cr
							source: ColorValue red;
							rectangle: (box insetBy: 20);
							fillPreserve;
							source: ColorValue blue;
							strokeWidth: 20;
							stroke]]).
win open.

If it worked, you should get this (make the window bigger to see it:

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Gemstone Video Archives

February 5, 2010 14:17:36.181

James Foster has put up a convenient set of links to the video series he's put out - including a link to a downloadable archive.

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

The Snowpocalypse Begins

February 5, 2010 16:22:42.264

I'll have to think up some new scare terms for snow :)

It's really coming down now - this shot was taken 20 minutes after the one above:

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posted by James Robertson

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Snowmageddon!

February 5, 2010 23:43:04.298

I don't think I've ever seen numbers like this for anywhere I've lived:

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

This is a heck of a Snowstorm

February 6, 2010 2:02:43.766

Fortunately, we still have power - probably because the lines are underground here. Here's a shot I just took of my grill:

And here's my patio furniture:

This is probably too deep for the smallish snow blower a bunch of us in the neighborhood went in on. Tomorrow is going to be a heck of a day, especially since it's supposed to just keep snowing...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Even More Snow

February 6, 2010 9:33:45.239

When I headed up to bed at 1:30 AM last night, I measured 15 inches of snow on my back step. About 30 minutes ago, I measured 25 - and the snow hasn't slacked off. Here's a short video and a few photos, showing how huge an event this is:

posted by James Robertson

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Lots More Snow

February 6, 2010 9:56:30.009

We don't get out of this anytime soon:

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weather

Snowmageddon Ends

February 6, 2010 17:44:14.294

The snowstorm finally ended - I think we got about 30 inches. I have a few more photos - I'm now exhausted, after helping clear four driveways. The blower was only able to help once we cut the snow down, and then it ran into a problem after the third driveway. Tiring!

Update: The official measurement for my area just came in - 33.8 inches. No wonder I'm so tired :)

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Oh. My. God.

February 6, 2010 18:54:03.560

Oh boy, the weatherman just told us that the Tues/Wed storm will be "several more inches"

I seriously have no idea where we'll put it :)

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posted by James Robertson

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