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smalltalk

Cincom Smalltalk Server Offline

June 7, 2010 6:32:33.613

The server that runs the Cincom Smalltalk websites is having some kind of issue this morning; I'm exploring that with the IT group. When it comes back to life, I'll post an update.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside at Epicenter

June 7, 2010 6:39:25.243

Julian Fitzell wil be presenting Seaside at Epicenter on JUne 10th:

Find out why Seaside is driving a new generation of developers to pick up a powerful and productive language called Smalltalk. Long a secret weapon in the finance, manufacturing, and transportation sectors, Smalltalk is now being used by more and more businesses to develop complex applications faster and more cheaply than their competition. Shared Nothing, REST, HTML templates: these all have their place. But leave your conventional wisdom at the door and see if you can't discover a better way to develop your next online application

There's also the evangelist evening, which Julian will be participating in.

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posted by James Robertson

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cincom

Cincom Smalltalk Downtime

June 7, 2010 7:38:21.256

It seems that the outage isn't simple - there's a hardware problem on our server, probably the hard drive. I'm working with the IT group at Cincom to get that resolved, but it's going to take a bit - if the HD needs replacing, we'll have to do that and restore from our backups. I'll keep you posted on our progress, but in the meantime, you can still access all of our media, if not in quite as organized a fashion as we have in the archives.

For general Smalltalk news, or my take on whatever I'm thinking about, you can just follow this blog :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/07/10: Inspector Tricks (3)

June 7, 2010 7:51:26.786

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a few more tricks in the VisualWorks inspector - adding attributes and editing code. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Direct Manipulation in Pharo

June 7, 2010 8:27:23.850

Fernando Olivera has announced Gaucho, a direct manipulation framework for Pharo:

Gaucho is a direct manipulation environment for software, targeted at programmers who firmly believe that programming is modeling.

There are screencasts on the site, so check those out.

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Can I Stop Getting a Phone Book, Too?

June 7, 2010 11:35:34.000

If only my local carriers would do the same:

Yellow Pages Group Co. said last week that it would no longer deliver residential phone books in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal and Quebec City, except to customers who request them. A Yellow Pages spokesperson said Winnipeg could soon join that list.

Every year the residential listings go straight from my driveway into the recycling bin. I can't remember the last time I looked up a non-business number in a printed phone book...

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posted by James Robertson

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cincom

Cincom Smalltalk Back Up

June 7, 2010 14:05:46.521

We still need to diagnose what happened, but the server is running and serving pages again.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in London

June 7, 2010 16:07:49.609

I'll be at the Camp Smalltalk event in London next month - July 16-18. I'll have the video camera along to record the event - and i intend to pigeonhole a few people for the podcast. See you there!

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posted by James Robertson

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esug10

ESUG 2010 Call for Contributions

June 8, 2010 6:47:25.445

ESUG 2010 is approaching, and they are asking for contributors:

18th International Smalltalk Joint Conference - Call for Contributions

  • Where: Barcelona, Spain
  • When: September 13 - 17, 2010; Camp Smalltalk September 11-12
  • Information

This call includes:

I'll be at the event with my camera, as per usual - with luck, I won't have my hard drive die on me this year :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

JNIPort - Works in VW and Pharo

June 8, 2010 8:04:04.911

JNIPort is now available for both VisualWorks and Pharo. What's JNIPort?

JNIPort is a Smalltalk library which allows Java code to be invoked from Smalltalk. It acts as a bridge between the world of Smalltalk objects and a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) where Java code is executing.

That makes the (huge) set of Java libraries accessible to Smalltalk developers. It looks like cross dialect Smalltalk works is expanding nicely.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/08/10: Adding Custom Browser Tabs

June 8, 2010 9:50:48.976

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at extending the Smalltalk Browser by adding custom tabs. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can download the code here, or just load the package RBPrintHierarchyTool from the Public Repository in order to see how it all works.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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

Apple Winning the Long Flash Grind

June 8, 2010 10:25:33.000

It doesn't really matter that Android supports Flash, or whether Android based tablets do - Apple's major market share in the mobile space is driving change. Here's one developer's story, about why they are ditching Flash for their site:

Why? Because many of our employees and customers use iPhones. As it stood, the several Flash components on our home page either showed up as blank spaces on iPhones, or didn't provide the content we really wanted to deliver. We also anticipated a time when customers, the media, industry analysts and others would be viewing our pages on iPads -- perhaps even more so than on iPhones. In other words, we had to future-proof our site by removing Flash.

This is why I'm happy that I moved away from Wink (which uses Flash to drive the final screencast) back in 2008 - I managed to accidentally future-proof "Smalltalk Daily".

This is a decision I expect to see more of. Having two or more video formats is just too expensive (in terms of time, if not money). It's simpler to just drop out something that's HTML5 ready, like H.264.

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games

You're Doing it Wrong

June 8, 2010 13:10:35.000

Are they kidding me? Making DragonAge into an Anime movie?

Which part of the word "genre" do they not get?

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posted by James Robertson

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education

Better Learning Through Bite Sized Chunks?

June 8, 2010 16:02:45.732

This is interesting to me - the short video lectures on a wide range of subjects that Salman Khan has put together. On a very narrow topic (Cincom Smalltalk), I've been doing something similar since 2006 - short videos to cover a small topic area. The contrast between typical education and this approach is stark:

Watching his videos highlights how little the Web has changed higher education. Many online courses at traditional colleges simply replicate the in-person model—often in ways that are not as effective. And what happens in most classrooms varies little from 50 years ago (or more). Which is why Mr. Khan's videos come as a surprise, with their informal style, bite-sized units, and simple but effective use of multimedia.

It takes a motivated person to learn via self paced instruction, but I wonder - how much do unmotivated people learn in a University setting? A lot of the people I went to school with spent much of their time partying - they could have done that on their own dime, instead on mom and dad, or a student loan. Maybe it's time to really examine how useful the standard lecture approach to education is.

BarCamps are blowing up the traditional conference; maybe it's time something blew up the traditional school the same way...

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posted by James Robertson

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stupidity

Someone Smack the NY Times with a Cluestick

June 8, 2010 18:26:02.000

Oh, this is just awesome. The NY Times claims that the Pulse News Aggregator (iPod/iPad) "infringes" because it allows people to read their RSS feeds:

But by the afternoon, that flush of entrepreneurial success had turned sour, after Apple informed the two that Pulse was being pulled from the App Store after it received a written notice from the New York Times Company (NYT) declaring that “The New York Times Company believes your application named ‘Pulse News Reader’ infringes The New York Times Company’s rights.” In an unusual coincidence, the Times Web site was on prominent display on a huge screenshot of the iPad during Jobs’s speech.

It's hard to begin to criticize this, because there's so much stupid. First, the Times chose to make their RSS feeds available. Second, it's easily possible to configure access to an endoint based on the inbound request source - sure, that can be scammed, but most people don't know that. The bigger issue is the first one though - the Times made these feeds available, so it's not possible for an app that reads them to be infringing. It's sort of like putting a huge rolling sign with headlines in your window, and then yelling at any passerby who has the temerity to pause to read it.

The lawyer for the Times has a pretty stupid take on it:

“The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use*. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.”

If that's true, then Safari needs to be yanked, since it can see RSS feeds as well. As does the Atom browser, and any other RSS reader in the app store - and when I searched just now, there were pages of them. When will the Times and this moron of a lawyer go after those, and Safari?

Update: Seems Apple has a clue. They reversed course, and put the app back. If and when they explain why to the Times, I hope they use small words.

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

Clues for the Clueless

June 8, 2010 20:50:10.000

Today must be the day for piles of stupid. I see that the RIAA expects Limewire to cough up - wait for it - $1.5T $150B

Now it looks as though one Kelly M. Klaus (right) of Munger, Tolles & Olson, yet another RIAA posse, wants Wood to order LimeWire owner Mark Gorton to pay $1,500,000,000,000 [ed: $150B] for 200,000,000 alleged downloads, at $750 per.

Where does a dumb figure like $750 per song come from? never mind the obvious - most trading of music doesn't cost anyone money, because the people engaged in large amounts of file sharing weren't going to pay under any circumstances. The rest (the vast majority) who grab a handful of songs probably end up buying more after figuring out whether they like an artist or not.

But never mind all that - the going price for songs on the net ranges from $0.79 - $1.29. Where the heck does $750 come from? I'm afraid it comes from somewhere the sun never shines...

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Adding a Custom Tab to the Smalltalk Browser

June 8, 2010 21:48:53.338

This is a written companion piece to this morning's screencast - I'm going to cover how to add a custom tab to the browser. The example I'm using is simple - every class understands the method #printHierarchy, which gives you a textual hierarchy diagram. At one time, that was a view possibility in the browser (circa 5i). Today, we'll add that back in a tab. To start, create a new package:

With that package created, we need a UI for the tab. It's a simple one, with a text widget filling the canvas. Using the UIPainter, create something like this:

Once that's created, install it as a subclass of Refactory.Browser.CodeTool. Select the "other" drop down option in the install tool and enter that in:

With that installed, we need to write some code - in this case, three instance side methods:



isActive
	^self classOrNameSpace notNil

#isActive is sent to determine whether or not the tab should be visible. In this example, it should only be there if a class or namespace is selected. You an examine the methods in class CodeTool to see what's easily possible. Next, the tab needs a name:


tabName
	^'Print Hierarchy'

Finally, something needs to actually happen when the tab is selected; we'll add a #postBuildWith: method to fill our text widget with the text for the "diagram"


postBuildWith: bldr
	| classOrNamespace |
	super postBuildWith: bldr.

	classOrNamespace := codeModel classOrNameSpace.
	self printText value: classOrNamespace printHierarchy

That's almost enough. What we need to do now is tell the browser that our new extension exists. To do that, we'll extend class CodeModel

Go to the class side, and add this method:


browserPrintHierarchyToolClass
	<tool>

	^RBPrintHierarchyTool

The part in brackets is a pragma. The code simply tells the browser what class to throw into our tab. That's it; open a new browser, and select a class:

Now, select a class, and watch your new tab in action:

You can download the code here, or just head over to the Public Store Repository and load the RBPrintHierarchyTool package

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Safari Reader

June 9, 2010 6:42:55.830

I'm giving Safari 5 a shot as my default browser, and I have to say, the new "reader" functionality is interesting. IT's also going to infuriate a lot of media people. Consider a typical article in the NYTImes, without using reader (but note the icon in the address field):

And now consider the page in the reader view:

Ads and graphics gone, crisp, clear text left to read. I like it - but I suspect that website that rely heavily on ads won't. Still -it's nothing that couldn't be done with client side Javascript added via something like Greasemonkey.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/09/10: Recovering Lost Code

June 9, 2010 8:15:18.552

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at recovering lost code using the Change List tool. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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podcasting

I Hate Timezones

June 9, 2010 13:22:03.191

The podcast I listed on the events page as happening at noon is happening at 3, because I'm apparently too stupid to figure out timezone differences :)

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

Cry Me a River

June 10, 2010 7:07:00.158

My heart bleeds for poor Zed Shaw:

They have no idea who wrote the web framework they use. They've never met the guy. They could care less about why he designed it one way or another. It doesn't matter because once the programmer was done he wasn't useful. Following his life is pointless because he's poured his life into the software and now they get to keep it. You've stolen his soul like an old sepia tone photo of a Cherokee warrior.

Welcome to reality, dude. Do you know who the designer of your car was? Who designed the LCD screen you watch? I seriously doubt it. Should programmers get more attention? Maybe, but the reality is, outside of the the arts, sports, and politics, there are very, very few "stars" out there. Even in business - beyond Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, only the technorati know who the "tech business stars" are.

Most people labor in obscurity. It's always been that way, and it likely always will be. Put another way: get over yourself.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/10/10: Using ThreePaneSelectors

June 10, 2010 7:56:22.338

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at using the ThreePaneSelectors tool for browsing senders/implementors. You should certainly look at Searchlight, which is a more up to date take on this functionality. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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

posted by James Robertson

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DRM

They Do Seem Desperate

June 10, 2010 8:17:16.000

Radio Head's frontman, Thom Yorke, believes that the major record labels are going down, and soon:

Yorke has now issued a warning to upcoming artists, urging them not to sign traditional record deals because they would be tying themselves to "the sinking ship."

I'm not sure whether his timeframe is right, but heck - he's in a better position to know than I am. Even if he's off in his timing, I think he's right in the broad sense. There's really no place for the labels any longer. They serve as a middleman in a market that has been disintermediating for years now.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Apple Tilts the Mobile Ad Space

June 10, 2010 13:31:32.000

As you might imagine, Google is less than please by the new terms for ad analytics on Apple devices:

Ad analytics collection is prohibited unless it is "provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads," Apple's revised terms read. "For example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent."

It's not entirely clear how broad that ends up being, but it sure tilts the playing field Apple's way. While I'm not a huge fan of government anti-trust actions, I have to wonder how smart this action is for Apple, given the fact that the DOJ is already sniffing around. Also, given how much further the Europeans were willing to go with Microsoft, it hardly ends with the DOJ.

Seems to me that Apple is asking to be smacked around.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

DabbleDB Acquired by Twitter

June 10, 2010 13:34:53.065

This is the kind of technology merger that never seems to go well - Twitter just bought DabbleDB:

Obviously this represents a new chapter in the life of Dabble DB, both for us as a team, and for the product itself. We’d like to assure you that, for now, we will continue to provide our software and technical support to current Dabble DB customers. However, we will be disabling new account signups effective immediately.

What the disablement means is that Twitter doesn't care about DabbleDB as a business; they bought technology and staff. However, that's where I get skeptical. DabbleDB is built on Squeak/Seaside, while Twitter is built on Ruby and Scala (apparently less Rails than it used to be). I have a hard time seeing the Twitter folks adopting Squeak; the typical pattern in these acquisitions is something like this:

  • Those guys have great technology; let's buy it
  • Their tech isn't built the same as ours; we'll take the ideas and rewrite it
  • .... years pass
  • ... original technology dies, completely new project that is less based on the acquisition than you might like to think appears

From the link above, it's clear that the purchase was all about the Trendly analytics stuff - which makes any future for DabbleDB itself even more murky, IMHO. This is obviously a nice exit for the DabbleDB folks, and that's great for them.

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

WebVelocity 1.1 Beta

June 10, 2010 15:04:24.655

We made the beta of WebVelocity 1.1 available last week; to get access to it, just join the mailing list - we post download instructions there

We also have an Amazon instance you can test - again, join the Google group linked above to get access to that :)

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Rock, Meet Hard Place

June 10, 2010 15:41:30.000

The new iPhone, along with the iPad, is set to put AT&T's network into a bad place:

Pity AT&T and their troubled data network. While previous iPhones' data usage was largely confined to static webpages, simple apps and maybe the occasional song streamed through Pandora, the just-announced iPhone 4's (available June 24) hunger can best be described in one word: video. In other words: If you thought the iPhone was a data-hog before, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

There's going to be an obvious disconnect between what you can do on the phone (stream HD from Netflix), and what AT&T is prepared to allow you to do. If Verizon didn't have motivation to get LTE rolled out before, they sure do now.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Shorting Twitter's Future

June 10, 2010 23:11:54.056

When I hear about hiring plans like this one:

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said Thursday that his company has about 200 employees and expects this number would double this year.

It usually means a management team that's gone into empire building mode, and lost touch with reality. Some companies survive that kind of rapid influx of employees, but most don't. The style of management has to change dramatically - you need to move from ad-hoc, go with the flow style to having actual procedures and processes.

Nothing I've seen from Twitter tells me that they have the capability to do that :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/11/10: Customizing Domain Objects for a UI

June 11, 2010 9:57:13.647

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to customize an object's string display, both for a UI and for an inspector. You can download the code used in the screencast here.. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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culture

Pinker Rebuts Carr

June 11, 2010 10:44:56.082

Nick Carr's thesis that Google, or the net in general, is making us stupid is, well, stupid. Steven Pinker makes a point that I made awhile back:

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet.

Put another way, there never was a golden age of mass reflection. Newspapers were a "wuick hit" of information compared to personally delivered news, and radio and TV even more so. It's not as if distraction is a new thing.

Ultimately, I think Carr is looking for an excuse for his own limitations.

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posted by James Robertson

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windows

This is Easier?

June 11, 2010 14:31:29.045

One of the things I always liked about Windows was the way that mnemonic keys were obvious - there's a little underline. Well, you can tell from that statement that I went straight from XP to Windows 7 (I use a VM under Parallels when I need Windows) - because the default now is to hide the underscores.

Seriously? What complete moron at Microsoft thought that was a good idea?

They normally only show up when you press the "alt" key, which at least makes them visible (if harder to notice). If you want the correct settings, you have to open control panel and follow this path:

Control Panel
Ease of Access
Ease of Access Center
Make the keyboard easier to use

Then, check the box labeled "Underline keyboard shortcuts and access keys". Jeebus. Am I supposed to know what the accelerator keys are through a mind meld with the designer, or what? And yes, this is something that, IMHO, the Mac gets wrong. Show me the damn shortcut keys.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Mass Effect 2: Awesome

June 12, 2010 13:53:37.647

There were parts of Mass Effect 2 I didn't really enjoy - the planet scanning being the main thing. It also took me a mission or two to get beyond how the controls had changed since Mass Effect - but the story was really immersive, and the choices you make during the game impact what kinds of options are open to you later - for instance, if you don't get the loyalty of a character, then the upgrades they have on offer for the ship/weapons/armore just aren't available, period.

In my first game, I got everyone's loyalty except Jack - during the confrontation between her and Miranda, I made the mistake of siding with Miranda. Since I had everyone else locked in, that didn't end up matter much - I still finished without losing anyone.

The end game sets up ME 3 though, and it looks like that's going to be a hell of a tough one. Overall, I think BioWare really has the plot driven RPG thing down. Between the Mass Effect franchise and DAO, they'll keep me happily killing bad guys for a long time. Not only that - I find these games so much more interesting than TV, too. While I love a good story, I like an immersive one I can drive even better.

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music

Thom Yorke Was Right

June 12, 2010 22:17:57.676

TechDirt runs the numbers, and demonstrates exactly why the RIAA is so desperate. Like SCO, all they think they have left is lawsuits.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

When the Sharks Move In

June 13, 2010 9:26:53.545

You can tell that a device has gotten popular when retail outlets start using strong arm tactics to upsell various add ons - like one chain in Australia is apparently doing:

Buyers complained about pressure to buy other add-ons such as covers, chargers, extended warranties and Telstra 3G SIM cards. They reported sales assistants said it was “company policy” or “Apple policy” to sell the devices only with accessories, or not at all.

This sort of tactic probably worked a lot better in the pre-internet era. Most iPad buyers are going to be savvy enough to whip out an iPhone and actually chek for evidence of such a policy, first.

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smalltalk

Can and Should

June 13, 2010 9:56:07.495

One of the things that often ensnares new Smalltalkers (and sometimes keeps them ensnared) is the simple power of the language - the things you can do that are either hard or impossible in whatever languages you used before. For me, when I first started using Smalltalk (many years ago now, I'll admit) it was constructed message sends.

Consider a simple set of messages you might have in a class: #doThis1, #doThis2, #doThis3 (and so on). The idea is simple - you have a set of messages that have almost the same name, but differ in their prefix or postfix. So... the seemingly elegant solution is something like this:


executeMyMethodWith: argument
	| extension |
	extension := argument printString.
	message := ('doThis', extension) asSymbol.
	self perform: message

Seems simple, right? The code is fairly straightforward, and all execution funnels into that one method. Except... when you come back to the code a few months/years later (or worse, a follow on developer does), and find the method #doThis4 - one of the first things you do is check for senders - and you find none.

I've been bitten by that more than once. It's easy to start blowing away the "unneeded" methods to spruce things up, and then have the application die in a stream of MNUs. After a bit of cursing at the debugger, the problem becomes clear, but a lot of time and energy was wasted in the process.

What that gets to is this: just because you can do something in Smalltalk doesn't mean that you should do it. Cleverly constructed message sends are almost always a mistake (it's a nice thing to be able to use when you need it but - there's almost always a simpler solution). Clever handling of #doesNotUnderstand: is another one. Useful for proxy objects, usually just a bomb waiting to go off for anything else. Likewise, message eating nil code. That tends to work fine right up to the point when it doesn't, and then it's nearly impossible to figure out why things are working badly.

Other languages have their can/should not partterns as well, but Smalltalk seems to have a few that really excite people before they get bitten by them. You kind of need to take the Spiderman thing seriously - "With great power comes great responsibility".

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Industry Misinterpretations 192: A Talk with the Squeak Oversight Board

June 13, 2010 19:26:26.068

This week's podcast features Juan Vuletich and Jecel Assumpcao, two of the members of the Squeak Oversight Board. This is part 1 of two - we'll be releasing part 2 next week. This is our second talk with member sof the SOB; we plan to do regular updates with them over time.

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. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

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

More XBox Rumors

June 14, 2010 6:45:32.276

Ahead of E3, lots of rumors are flying about what Microsoft will announce - there's been a story pulled from USA Today, alleging that Natal has been renamed Kinectic (does that mean that a release date for it is imminent?). This stuff sounds more based on reality:

But the other rumor circulating involves a diet-sized Xbox 360 (slim!) with a 250GB hard drive and integrated WiFi. Now that's something to get excited about. If it pans out, anyway.

Based on the pains I've been going through to get my XBox on the network in my exercise room, that sounds good :)

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Winter is Coming

June 14, 2010 6:51:03.286

SciFi Wire has a (to short!) trailer from HBO for their upcoming adaptation of "A Game of Thrones". Now if only Martin would get book 5 out...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/14/10: Inlining Methods

June 14, 2010 8:19:22.871

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to inline a method within a class. Doing this will not remove the original method, as other classes may have code that references the original method. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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

Javascripted Anchors in Seaside

June 14, 2010 9:08:54.543

When I updated the Seaside tutorial, I ran into an interesting change from Seaside 2.8 - the way anchors work when you have an onClick Javacript action. If you don't include an #url: call with some string, you don't get an anchor. In Seaside 2.8, that wasn't the case - look at the code in WAAnchorTag in 2.8:


with: aBlock
	url isNil
		ifTrue: [
			((self attributes includesKey: 'href') or: [ self attributes includesKey: 'name' ])
				ifFalse: [ self attributes at: 'href' put: 'javascript:void(0)' ] ]
		ifFalse: [ self attributes at: 'href' put: url ].
	super with: aBlock


And now look at the 3.0 version:


with: aBlock
	url isNil
		ifFalse: [ self attributes at: 'href' put: url ].
	super with: aBlock

There was an explanation (I missed it; I don't track the Seaside mailing list that closely):

We removed that because it was causing unwanted side-effects in some cases. I suggest that you create your own #onClick: method that sets the 'href'.

However, for many applications (most, I daresay), it's simpler to just restore the 2.8 behavior. If you don't, you need to do something like this (note the usage of #url: below):


renderContentOn: html

	html paragraph: 
			[(html anchor)
				onClick: ((html jQuery: #count) load
							html: [:h | h render: (count := count - 1)]);
				url: '#'; 
				with: '--'.
			(html span)
				id: #count;
				with: count.
			(html anchor)
				onClick: ((html jQuery: #count) load
							html: [:h | h render: (count := count + 1)]);
				url: '#'; 
				with: '++']

Before you can get the anchor to render. You need to do the same using older Scriptaculous/Prototype code - because the change is in the way anchors render. When I do screencasts on JQuery in seaside, I won't be including this change; I don't want to force people down that path. However, I think it's useful to know. Hat tip to Boris Popov for pointing me in the right direction on this stuff.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside Tutorial with JQuery

June 14, 2010 10:16:09.246

I've added a new segment to the Seaside Tutorial - using JQuery for the Ajax calls instead of Scriptaculous. Tomorrow's screencast will add a video covering the same topic.

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

Using WebVelocity on Amazon

June 14, 2010 13:29:26.000

Ian Prince has some notes on using the Amazon ec2 WebVelocity image (1.1 Beta) we made available over on the WebVelocity list. Worth reading if you intend to give it a try.

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

Third Place Race

June 14, 2010 17:07:41.386

Starbucks wants to be your third place:

At Wired’s Business Conference in New York City, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz announced that the coffee giant is now offering free Wifi to customers beginning July 1.

That's a cool idea - it'll certainly make me look for Starbucks shops when I travel.

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posted by James Robertson

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