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smalltalk

Balkanization and Smalltalk

February 11, 2010 8:59:40.542

I just got done reading Kent Beck's "The Balkanization of Smalltalk" piece. While he makes some good points, I simply don't see an organized effort getting us to the place he wants things to go:

The thing about a Nash Equilibrium is that what is rational from within the game can be absurd from an outside perspective. I'm calling bullshit on the state of Smalltalk. Vendors, you're acting crazy. Have the tiniest possible core defined in terms of test cases. Build a shared library on top of that, implemented in terms of the core. Include numbers, collections, meta-objects, code structure, and code loading. None of this parcel/bundle/package/pundle/category nonsense. Compete on VMs, graphics libraries, and enterprise-y tools.

Let me draw a small analogy here - this argument reminds me of various wishes I read from people who dislike the suburbs. "If only people would all live in small towns and cities, then we could have working mass transit..." etc, etc, etc. The trouble isn't with the vision - it's with the reality of the built environment we have. Getting from here to the desired nirvana of such people is a less than trivial task, regardless of what you think of the desire.

And so it is with Smalltalk. Had ParcPlace set itself up like Sun back in the late 80s, instead of letting anyone run wild with Smalltalk anyway they wanted to, things might be different. But they aren't - we not only have commercial distros, we have lots of free ones as well (listen to our recent "State of Smalltalk" podcast for an idea of how big the field is)

But let's say you limited your scope to just a few players, on the assumption (possibly flawed) that the rest would follow. Cincom is heavily committed to Store (as are her customers) - Instantiations is even more heavily committed to Envy (as are her customers). How do you get from here to the core loader Kent speaks of? What's the incentive to build that? What paying customer would rather have that than, say, compliance with (insert your favorite spec here)?

If any such standardization is to come about, I suspect it'll happen via a mechanism Kent touched on. He spoke about Grease, a portability layer that Seaside uses. Every Smalltalk implementation that supports Seaside also supports Grease. There's your starting point. As Pharo gains traction (especially commercial traction), I suspect that the commercial vendors will start to feel pressure to comply with "the emrging standard". That's the way this will play out, if it plays out at all. I just don't see a new standards effort getting a whole lot of formal traction.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Obsolete Packages

February 11, 2010 11:13:11.367

Today's screencast takes a look at the obsolete packages in VisualWorks, and what you can do if your application(s) depend on one or more of them.

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

Pharocasts explained

February 11, 2010 11:30:38.777

How the Pharocasts get made on Linux

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

The Day After Snowmageddon 2

February 11, 2010 12:01:52.776

It's the day after our second big storm within a week - dig out time. I took a short walk this morning and shot a few photos; I'll have another short video up later:

My Street Front End Loader
my street Front End Loader
Back Exit from neighborhood Uncleared Driveway
back exit from neighborhood uncleared driveway
Joys of Snow and Traffic Calming Joys of Snow and Traffic calming
Traffic calming and snow Traffic calming and snow
Unplowed side street Unplowed side street
Unplowed side street Unplowed side street

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Son of Snowmageddon: Aftermath

February 11, 2010 15:08:06.938

This morning I went for a short walk through the neighborhood with my video camera, and shot a few segments as I ran across things of interest. So - here's what things looked like a bit after 9 AM this morning:

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

About Buzz and Privacy...

February 11, 2010 20:21:47.688

I'm getting to be more and more glad that I've just been avoiding Google Buzz. I love this "feature" Forrester found:

Some of the people using Buzz in the last 24 hours have discovered that, in an attempt to be helpful, it exposes the list of people with whom you regularly exchange e-mail. As the Silicon Valley Insider said, "Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor."
There's nothing in the Buzz UI that tells you, loudly and clearly, about the visibility of the followers list that it auto-generates from your frequent active e-mail correspondents. To make a bad situation worse, even if you learn about this problem, it's hard to fix it.

Replace "executive" with "recruiter". Or plug in your own set of embarrassing revelations on a personal level. I wonder whether Calacanis has figured this out, since he's proclaimed this to be a real Facebook killer?

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Smalltalk Live Shortly

February 11, 2010 21:58:27.461

Michael and I will be live in about 10-15 minutes - you can listen on the justin.tv stream. We'll be discussing the "Balkanizaton" of Smalltalk (something Kent Beck wrote about this morning). For more context, I have thoughts on that here.

posted by James Robertson

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Macintosh

The Long War Ends

February 11, 2010 23:22:51.797

Microsoft has finally relented, and will ship Outlook as part of the Mac Office site in 2011. What does this mean? It means that many of the petty incompatibilities Entourage had go away, and Outlook junkies can freely move to the mac and bring their tools along for the ride.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

String APIs

February 12, 2010 11:17:39.189

Today's screencast takes a brief tour of the APIs for class String - mostly showing you where to look, and how to discover tem on your own.

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

URL? What's an URL?

February 12, 2010 11:59:52.119

Mark Bernstein writes about something I noticed yesterday, but was too tired (more driveway clearance) to comment on: the way an awful lot of people use the web:

The comments of this page are now filled with users who, one after the other, googled “facebook login” in order to log into Facebook. That’s how they use the Web; the Google and assume that the first listing is what they want. When they see this article, they don’t say,

Oops! This is an article about logging into Facebook! I’m in the wrong place!

No indeed. They assume that this is some strange new Facebook design, and they don't like it one bit.

It's easy to sit back, as someone who knows his way around the net (and pretty much only associates with other people of similar knowledge bases) and think "everyone knows what an url is". Then you run into something like what Mark commented on, and you really have to sit back and consider things. When I first ran through the comments, I was sure that the "where's my login" thing was a few people having fun. But then the comments kept going, and going... until it became clear that no, for a lot of people, Google is the net. Things haven't progressed as far past the old days of the AOL walled garden as I might of thought - for a lot of people, the net consists only of what Google turns up in the first page, or even just the first few results. The rest of it may as well not exist.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Primeval Returns

February 12, 2010 12:58:12.271

Spotted in SCI FI Wire: Primeval is back!

Hodges revealed that season four "will be starting a year later [from the end of season three]. All the cast you know will reappear, but they won't all necessarily reappear straightaway or for the whole season. However, we will be giving satisfying answers to all those cliffhangers."

One thing the writers of "Heroes" could learn from this show: having the main characters in actual peril (a bunch of the main characters have either died or been written out) helps the show.

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posted by James Robertson

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blog

Puttering with Silt

February 12, 2010 13:37:11.403

I've been puttering with the Silt codebase (which powers this, and my Cincom blog). There's some cruft in there, but one place I haven't spent much time until recently was in the "how do I set it up" region. The blog creation UI now works properly in 7.7 (under the tools menu), but that's not really sufficient. What I really need is a simple base image, with a listener already running, and a simple "set up a blog for me" tool. I'll have a look at that over the next few days, maybe it'll be worth a screencast :)

For now, grab VW 7.7 NC, connect to the public store (a connection is built into the NC image), and load Silt. Then pull down the tools menu, and try "Blog Manager". Hit the "New" button, add an email address for "maintainer", and you should be good to go with a localhost setup.

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Faster Javascript Everywhere

February 12, 2010 19:01:41.623

Looks like it's Opera's turn to get a big Javascript performance boost:

Opera unleashed a beta version of its browser this morning, and 10.5 claims the lead over Google Chrome and Apple's Safari in the Javascript stakes. The speed improvement is down to a new Carakan ECMAScript engine.

With faster performance across the browser spectrum, browser apps are only going to get more ambitious.

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posted by James Robertson

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movies

They Have the Wrong Guy

February 12, 2010 20:09:49.548

Spotted in Slashdot

Roland Emmerich, the writer/director/producer behind Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 is planning to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The plans include using technology developed for Avatar including 3D and motion capture technology. When asked about using this technology Emmerich responded: 'It has to be done all CG because I would not know how to shoot this thing in real.'

Umm, excuse me? Has Emmerich actually read the "Foundation" books? There's a ton of dialogue, and the action sequences mostly involve scenes no more complex than the ones in "Star Wars", and mostly way less complex. What on earth is there in this series of books that requires more than a trivial amount of CG, much less "all CG"?

I think they need to find a guy who's read - and actually understood - the books. Clearly, Emmerich isn't that guy.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Saturday Night Gaming

February 12, 2010 22:25:48.929

We got together with some friends this evening, and played a fun little game - "Vegas Showdown"

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Working with Silt

February 12, 2010 23:52:31.955

I have recieved a few questions about Silt recently, so I cleaned up the blog creation tool some (it could still use some work), and I added some basic documentation to the bundle comment. If you want to try the system out, here's what you do:

You can change the css references in View.ssp to use any of the CSS templates that come down with the installation; you could derive a new one based on them as well, using the same API that View.ssp uses. Alternatively, you can set things up any way you want using the API in class BlogSaver. For example:


blog := BlogSaver named: 'blog'.

"get all recent posts"
recentPosts := blog fetchAllRecentPosts.

"get all recent posts for a category"
recentInCategory := blog fetchBlogsbySearchCategory: someCategory

"get the most recent N posts in a category"
recentInCategory := blog fetchBlogs: howMany bySearchCategory: someCategory

"get a specific post by entry ID"
blogPost := blog entryFor: entryID

"get most recent post"
lastPost := blog blog fetchAllRecentPosts first.

To learn more about the API, look at class BlogSaver, specifically, the api categories

The server also manages "static" pages; you can create one using the administration pages. It will land in a directory named 'blog/content', where 'blog' is the name you used when you set the site up. If you edit the resulting file by hand, you'll need to tell the server that it's been changed (if you edit with the tools, it'll get handled for you). To reset by hand:


blog (Blog.BlogSaver named: 'blog') cache clearHTMLCaches.

Finally, if you want WYSIWYG online editing, you need to install TinyMCE. Download that here, and install it on your server. Edit the file editor.inc to reflect the proper location.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk on Android

February 13, 2010 10:12:57.399

Spotted in Planet Squeak:

If you'd like to be added as developer, please send Andreas your Google Account email address so that he can add you to the project. But, he warns that unless you know how to deal with both the Android SDK and NDK, Java, JNI, and the Squeak VM it will be a very steep learning curve .

Sounds like you'll be able to do Smalltalk on the mobile devices of choice - it'll be Squeak (or maybe Pharo) for now. You can find project information here.

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posted by James Robertson

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security

Privacy: Deeper than you Think

February 13, 2010 10:18:39.649

When Google rolled out Buzz, I doubt that they figured on stalker management as one of the issues they would have to deal with. BusinessInsider points out that they were wrong about that...

Update: As is quite often the case, Dare Obasanjo hits on a great example of the less dangerous - but far more common - issues involved here:

Ignoring some of the privacy issues of the people you email with becoming a public friends listthere is still the question of whether the feature is good for users in isolation. Here s a story; my wife is divorced and has kids from her previous marriage. This means she exchanges a lot of email with her ex-husband and his new wife around kid visiting schedules, vacations, etc. Do you think my wife would consider it a great feature if one day she started getting status updates on how her ex-husband and his new wife spend their days due to introduction of social networking features in her email client?

The "auto-follow" idea seems like just the thing that a young 20-something might come up with as a great idea - but that someone with a few more years under their belt would have had 2nd and 3rd thoughts about...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Overheard

February 13, 2010 10:29:41.179

I've been wary of the Oracle installer tools - especially on Linux - for years, ever since the adventures I had installing on RedHat back in the early 2000's. I would have thought it would be better by now, but I just saw this go by in the Smalltalk IRC channel:

recently I had a problem reading lots of records from PostgreSQL, because the VW driver did not support streaming. So I tried to install Oracle on Ubuntu 9 today.... turned out that implementing streaming was far easier than installing Oracle

That's how I felt about it back then, too...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

What's a "Healthy Clipper" Mean?

February 13, 2010 11:51:25.660

Normally, when the forecast calls for a "clipper" storm, it means a fast moving storm from the west that brings light snow - a dusting to maybe an inch or two. So what does a "Healthy Clipper" mean, then?

That's a DC area station, so the temps here in Columbia will be a bit lower, too. We are seriously getting to the "nowhere to plow the snow to" stage here :)

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

What Could be Cooler....

February 13, 2010 13:08:23.811

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Welcome to the Balkans (Audio)

February 14, 2010 12:33:38.570

This week Michael and I ran across Kent Beck's "Welcome to the Balkans" post - which says in part:

The thing about a Nash Equilibrium is that what is rational from within the game can be absurd from an outside perspective. I'm calling bulls*** on the state of Smalltalk. Vendors, you're acting crazy. Have the tiniest possible core defined in terms of test cases. Build a shared library on top of that, implemented in terms of the core. Include numbers, collections, meta-objects, code structure, and code loading. None of this parcel/bundle/package/pundle/category nonsense. Compete on VMs, graphics libraries, and enterprise-y tools.

I responded to that here, and that's what we spent a lot of time talking about - how things got to that place, and how they might change over time. We're welcome to any and all feedback - you can send audio or text feedback to Smalltalk Podcasts, and we'll put them on in a future episode.

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

Things that Make me go Hmm

February 14, 2010 13:41:49.215

I ran across this chart os Microsoft's revenues, and the line for "entertainment and devices" struck me:

It makes it clear to me that the XBox was a loss leader for eons, and is only now starting to show a (small) profit. In the grand scheme of things though, it makes me wonder - just how much does that division matter to Microsoft? When things start getting hairy for them (as I expect they will) - what will they decide? If I had to guess, if and when that time comes, it'll be a group that might be spun right out of Microsoft...

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Losing Control of the Message

February 14, 2010 14:40:35.201

This Ted talk makes a point that David Meerman Scott has made any number of times: marketing no longer controls the narrative, and attempts to do so are futile. The good thing is, it's ok - you just need to pay attention and be engaged in the ongoing conversation.

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Chrome Irony

February 14, 2010 14:45:22.851

I find this mildly amusing (from Chrome):

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smalltalk

Portability and Smalltalk

February 14, 2010 18:20:13.120

I was reading Dale Henreich's post about portability and Smalltalk (riffing off Kent Beck's post), and saw something I thought made a lot of sense:

Envy and Store are not viable candidates. Monticello is a light-weight solution compared to Store and Envy. If you can afford to port Seaside, then you can afford to port Monticello.

And in fact, the people doing Seaside (and WebVelocity) here at Cincom have ported Monticello (in fact, I did a screencaston that last summer).

Now, I like Store well enough, and I've worked with Envy. But yeah - both are too tightly wound into vendor specific solutions (Cincom, Instantiations), and both are pretty heavy. This really hit home for me when I thought about the process of loading some library (say, Silt, which I've been writing about recently). To do this with VW or ObjectStudio, you need to:

  • Load Store (the NC download does have it loaded for you)
  • Create a login for the repository (again, the NC provides a read-only one)
  • Connect to the repository
  • List the available packages
  • Going alphabetically, find Silt (the bundle, fortunately I did not create a matching package name)
  • Load it

Contrast that with something from " Talking Meta" this morning, talking about loading up some new filesystem code for Pharo:


Gofer new
     wiresong: 'mc';
     package: 'Filesystem';
     load.

Gofer seems to be a small tool Lukas built on top of Monticello to make loading (etc) easier. Now sure, you can script easy solutions for Store and Envy, too - but porting either one to another Smalltalk dialect would be a pretty big task (yes, Envy did that once. No, it won't be doing it again). Monticello though? It's pretty small, seems easy enough to port, and, being file based, can work pretty easily via http, ftp, (insert your favorite network protocol here). Neither Store nor Envy do that part. And while again, a client could be built to deal with that, it's highly unlikely to happen.

Now that Seaside is a common web framework, it seems like having a common version control system would be a good next step. I think perhaps Monticello couldbe that system - but I haven't personally done any work with it, so I could be wrong. Thoughts?

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

When PR Gets Behind the Curve

February 14, 2010 18:52:38.780

I ran across (via Twitter) this PR response from Southwest to Kevin Smith (of Silent Bob fame). It sounded kind of defensive, but to get "the rest of the story", you need to read back through Kevin Smith's Twitter feed (going back about 15 hours ago from now). To say that his story differs just a bit from Southwest's is an understatement.

Now, many celebrities have something of an entitlement problem, so this would be easy to ignore - but c'mon, he was flying Southwest, not first class on (insert upscale carrier here). It really does sound like Southwest screwed the pooch, and then ran a complete hack out to make a pseudo-apology.

It's like they got the memo about responding quickly, but lost the part about being genuine...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Self and Super: Explaining Method Lookup

February 15, 2010 10:15:44.391

Today's screencast examines how self and super differ for message lookup.

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

CORMAS in Germany

February 15, 2010 10:25:10.091

We got a demo of CORMAS at ESUG last summer; now there's a training course being offered at the Cincom offices in Germany:

Introductory training to CORMAS "How to model and simulate ecological and sociological questions?"
  • From Monday, March 1st (12:00) to Friday, March 5th (12:00)
  • Location: Cincom offices close to Frankfurt/Main, Germany
  • Trainer: Christophe Le Page, CIRAD
  • Language of instruction: English
  • Knowledge in Smalltalk would be helpful but isn't required.
  • Requirements: Laptop to run CORMAS (details on request)
  • Participation fee: 1.500,00 Euros, plus VAT per person (when number of total attendees is three or larger)

For registration or further questions, please contact: Helge Nowak

posted by James Robertson

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weather

School's Out For.... Winter?

February 15, 2010 12:27:59.551

It's been over a week since the first big storm now, and nearly a week since the second. And schools are closed tomorrow anyway (today is a holiday). Why? Well, driving through the neighborhoods, the roads are really narrow - there are turns I don't know that a bus can make - like this older shot of some traffic calming (and there's still snow/ice in the middle of it now):

Snowy Turn

The sides of that segment are clear now, but there's still a thick line of snow and ice in the center - and it's just too narrow for a bus anyway; in good weather, they need to drive over the center median (which currently has over a foot of snow on it). Here's what it looks like in good weather, from the other end:

At the far end, the strip is like the foreground one, but without the stakes. Buses usually drive over the edge, given the room they have - but with the snow on the sides and median, that's not really possible. I have real doubts about school opening on Wednesday - because scenes like this are duplicated across the county...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

School's Out Redux

February 15, 2010 12:43:59.961

I just saw this from our local PTA - it's on Facebook, so I've reproduced part of it here:

As many of you may have already heard, schools have now closed for Tuesday. I recently spoke with Dr. Sydney Cousin, the Superintendent of Education, offering the PTA's help in reopening schools. He graciously accepted our offer, and explained that schools have been closed on Tuesday to allow adequate time for clearing of bus loops, walkways at the school, and parking lots. Providing a storm projected to move through the area tomorrow and Tuesday doesn't bring much new snow, it's Dr. Cousin's intent to open schools on Wednesday.

As I said earlier, it's more than walkways. There are still huge problems due to the utterly incompetent plow job that Howard County did.

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smalltalk

Smalltalk at CCSF

February 15, 2010 17:25:34.949

Cool - Doug Putnam is adding Seaside to the repetoire for his students doing an Ajax project:

And about that Seaside course— there isn't one yet. But it is on my TODO list for future courses at CCSF. For the time being, as part of my own Smalltalk education, I'll take this opportunity to complete the class project using Seaside. Since Smalltalk and Seaside are new to me, I'll be starting on the same page as my PHP and Ruby students. This will be fun. I'll be doing this project with Cincom Visualworks Non-Commercial which is free for non-commercial use on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Sounds like a fun project, with some useful comparisons (read the whole thing - he and his students are going to compare how much code was needed for each of the projects - PHP, Ruby, and Smalltalk).

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Alternative App Store?

February 15, 2010 17:48:10.799

So what does this mean - an alliance of phone companies putting together a new app directory?

Twelve of the world's biggest phone networks — including AT&T, Orange and Telefonica — will announce their rival technology tomorrow to Apple's App Store. The combined audience for the app platform will be 2 billion customers. Phone manufacturers Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are also part of the alliance.

If it's going to be "cross phone", does that mean that these are going to be browser based apps? Because I can't see what else would cross the multiple physical architectures involved. I'm also not sure how you would install these apps, at least on the iPhone. For an android device, an alternative store is simple, but for the iPhone? This bears watching.

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posted by James Robertson

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yankees

Murderers Row, 2010 Edition

February 15, 2010 20:20:58.042

I think the Yankees look like the team to beat. 4 solid starters, good bullpen, and this lineup:

  1. SS Derek Jeter: 107 runs, AL-best 289 times on base.
  2. DH Nick Johnson: Career-best .426 OBP for Nats, Marlins.
  3. 1B Mark Teixeira: Led club with 39 HRs, 122 RBIs, .948 OPS.
  4. 3B Alex Rodriguez: 12th straight 30-HR, 100-RBI season (despite missing 38 games).
  5. C Jorge Posada: .891 OPS was second-best among catchers.
  6. CF Curtis Granderson: Newcomer hit 30 HRs for first time.
  7. 2B Robinson Cano: Led second basemen with .320 AVG, .520 SLG.
  8. RF Nick Swisher: Would clean up for some teams (29 HRs, .371 OBP).
  9. LF Brett Gardner: Must beat out Randy Winn, Marcus Thames.

Spring can't come soon enough!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

RetrObjects at ESUG 2009

February 15, 2010 22:35:22.852

Here's another video from ESUG 2009 - Gabriel Honore talking about his Innovation Award winning app, RetrObjects. To watch, click on the viewer below. You can also listen to a podcast we did with Gabriel last year.

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

Getting Started with VWNC

February 16, 2010 9:35:00.297

Today's screencast answers a simple question: once you've downloaded and installed VisualWorks non-commercial, what do you do next? Turns out there are some pointers for that right in the NC product.

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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travel

One of those Years

February 16, 2010 10:03:48.450

So it wasn't enough that I laundered my passport - my daughter is taking a trip later this year, and her passport is set to expire right in the middle of it. We had all the docs ready, but then the big snows hit - we're finally set to hit the post office today. Fortunately, there are months between now and her trip, so things should be ok.

posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Getting Heard

February 16, 2010 11:50:04.819

David Meerman Scott makes a great point about content:

Just say NO to squeezing your buyers, I say. When you give away valuable content with no registration, you are adding to your brand bank account, making your brand more valuable.

There are a virtually infinite number of messages coming at all of us, all the time. If someone comes to your site, interested in your product, why do you want to make it harder? Getting people's attention is hard; forcing someone who's been attracted to you to jump through hoops is just a bad idea. Registration forms for things like video, white papers (etc) - those are hoops. Putting them up just means less attention. Is that what you really want?

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

WebVelocity 1.1: Going Cloud

February 16, 2010 12:40:58.089

The next version of WebVelocity is still in development, but the focus is on cloud development: both in terms of how it works (no GUI console), and what it'll hook to (interfaces to things like the Amazon cloud). There's a lot going on, and I'll be doing screencasts on it soon. Here's a screenshot of the in development admin screen:

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Upcoming Podcast

February 16, 2010 14:26:09.040

Industry Misinterpretations will be live on February 17th (tomorrow) on justin.tv - we'll be talking with Brian Rice about Slate - a Smalltalk derived language.

posted by James Robertson

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humor

Don't Let this Happen to your Marketing

February 17, 2010 7:54:30.013

posted by James Robertson

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social media

Outlook as Uber Portal?

February 17, 2010 8:06:24.347

I've never been a fan of Outlook - this is mostly a matter of personal taste, not a commentary on quality, real or perceived. Having said that, I see that Microsoft wants to turn the software into a hub for everything you do online:

On Wednesday, Microsoft is releasing a "beta" test version of the Outlook Social Connector. The add-on software, which was first discussed last November, adds a new pane to the main e-mail reading screen on Outlook. When a user clicks to read an e-mail message, the new pane fills up with the sender's most recent social-networking activities. Those could include the addition of a professional contact on LinkedIn or a "what I'm doing now" status update from Facebook.

The interesting thing from further down in the article is that there's no "push" capability - i.e., no way to update those streams from Outlook. Heck, I can do that from BottomFeeder, so it's not that hard. I understand the idea, but I have no idea why they would leave it half done...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Installing ObjectStudio 8.2 NC

February 17, 2010 9:17:25.447

Today's screencast walks through the installation process for ObjectStudio 8.2 NC - from initial download to initial startup. All on Windows 7. 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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tv

Overstaying their Welcome

February 17, 2010 10:03:02.383

Spotted in SCI FI Wire:

It's been a good news/bad news kind of Supernatural day. The Good: Supernatural got an early season-six pickup for next season. The Bad: Creator Eric Kripke is planning to step down as co-showrunner, along with his current co-showrunner, Robert Singer.

This is mostly bad news, IMHO. This year's villain for the Winchester boys is Lucifer himself; like Buffy after season 5, I'm not exactly sure what's left to fight that could be bigger. Sometimes, a story just needs to end; this is one of them.

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posted by James Robertson

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traffic

The Wages of Traffic Calming

February 17, 2010 10:14:05.753

It's been a week since the second storm, and 11 days since the first - but because the brilliant thinkers in Howard County traffic control think that the "random shapes in the road" approach to slowing traffic is a good idea, we have this to put up with:

Many of us in the neighborhood have been wondering how plows would deal with those areas after a major snow storm for years; this year, we discovered that the answer is mostly "they don't". That was pretty clear to everyone but the advanced thinkers in the local government. I rather suspect that none of the traffic design folks have atrocities like this near them...

posted by James Robertson

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scifi

Journal of Useless Information

February 17, 2010 14:49:48.776

I got a chuckle out of this "scientific revelation" in scifi wire - apparently, FTL travel would have smoked Kirk (et. al.):

Well, the reality is that he would have fried instantly, and any other Starfleet travelers such as Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise would have perished had they really attempted to travel at faster-than-light speeds.

There are two issues with this:

  • It's sciene fiction, not science
  • Science fiction typically (and most certainly in this case) assumes some sort of scientific discovery that makes the seemingly impossible, possible.

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Smalltalk on the Air

February 17, 2010 15:11:24.910

Michael and I have two interesting podcasts coming up in the next couple of days (the recordings will be released, as per usual, on Sundays):

  • Tonight at 10 PM EST: We'll be talking to Brian Rice about Slate, a Smalltalk derived language
  • Friday at 11 AM EST: We'll be talking to Tudor Girba about Glamour.

You can listen live on justin.tv, at the times posted above.

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posted by James Robertson

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books

What I'm Reading

February 17, 2010 15:50:40.800

As is quite often the case, I'm reading two books right now:

The Well of Lost Plots is the third book in the Thursday Next series. While it's hardly heavy reading, it's an enjoyable set of books - the intertwining of the real world with the book world (characters can jump in and out of books; some fictional characters die and have to be replaced by generics who stand in for them) is quite interesting. The idea of "oral tradition" story characters (think nursery rhymes) going on strike for better working conditions was pretty amusing. I don't want to give awy too much - this is, after all, the third book in the series. However, I can say this: it's a fun set of books to read, and I recommend them

Daemon is a much more involved book, and harder to read in parts - there's at least one character involved in some pretty unsavory things, and it's not clear yet whether he ends up on the "good" team yet - because the sides are unclear to me halfway in.

The protagonist is a rich game developer who set off a series of events after his death, via sophisticated, distributed software systems (and people he has the software recruit as real world actors). I'm still not sure what his goals are, or whether his goals serve a good or bad end yet - which is one of the things I like about the book - at the midway point, it's not clear. This is the first book in a series (and only the second is out) - so if you don't want to get sucked in, there's your warning. I like the book, even though parts of it were hard to get through (from the standpoint of the things going on, not from a writing standpoint).

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Live in 20 Minutes

February 17, 2010 21:43:12.146

We'll be live with Brian Rice, talking about Slate, in 20 minutes (10 PM EST).

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Social Networking, the Dark Side

February 18, 2010 7:53:46.723

The powers of social media can be used for evil as well as for good:

Unfortunately, as PleaseRobMe points out, updating Foursquare on where you are implicitly updates Foursquare on where you're not -- at home.

On the other hand, with so many people doing this kind of thing, you have what amounts to an information flood. If you're already at risk (being stalked, for instance), I can see the immediate danger. Otherwise? It's never been that hard to figure out that a house is empty.

posted by James Robertson

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windows

Windows 7 - Needs 64 Bit?

February 18, 2010 8:32:50.129

One way to read this ComputerWorld story is that Windows 7 is a resource hog:

Citing data from Devil Mountain Software's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company's chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.

A slightly different way to view it is this: Microsoft has seen the future, and it has 64 bits, not 32. Do we "need" 64 bits? Well heck, you could have asked "do we need 32 bits?" a decade or so ago, too. Microsoft would like to have Windows 7 push new hardware sales, and I think they'd be even happier if those sales were at least 64 bit ready, if not actively running 64 bit.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Getting Started with VWNC 7.7: Overview

February 18, 2010 9:01:12.424

Today's screencast walks through the overview material that comes with the VWNC 7.7 download. 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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smalltalk

Smalltalk and Network APIs

February 18, 2010 12:06:19.077

I'll be speaking to the NYC Smalltalkers tonight, about the interfaces I've built to various social media systems (and a few related topics, like building to a network API). Should be fun - it all starts at 6:30 PM here.

I'll be doing demos and talking about the code - see you there!

posted by James Robertson

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