. .

gadgets

E-Books Crossing the Chasm

July 20, 2010 7:19:19.753

Between iPads, Kindles, and other devices, I think a tipping point has been reached - Amazon now says that digital books are outselling hardcovers:

Over the past month, the Seattle retailer sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books it sold, it said.

Now, that's a clever statement that doesn't include paperbacks, but still - it represents a big uptick for e-books. I have to say, I like the reading experience on the iPad a lot. The last three books I've read have been on the device, and now, when I see a new book I'm interested in, I look specifically for the Kindle edition.

Reading on my flight yesterday was very pleasant, and battery liofe was great. Even though Air Canada had seatback USb (and standard US plug) power, I didn't have any need to use it. It's just so easy (at least when you have WiFi) to buy books with the Kindle app (or, I suppose, the Kindle) - you finish a book, pop over to the store, and in less than 10 seconds (for me so far), the new book appears. Contrast that with anything else, even Amazon Prime.

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posted by James Robertson

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blog

Redone Windows Media Format

July 20, 2010 8:23:25.655

If you've tried the new Windows Media format exports I've been doing for Smalltalk Daily, you've likely noticed something - they were all screwed up. I'm re-exporting all of the ones I've done thus far, and will be uploading them in a few minutes. As well, all future exports will be done in a way that actually works - so if you need that format, just check back in a few minutes.

Thanks for being patient with me on this.

Update: The WMV files have all been re-uploaded, and going forward, there shouldn't be any more muffed ones.

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Smalltalk Daily 07/20/10: Ad Hoc Polymorphism

July 20, 2010 10:09:50.371

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how polymorphism is commonly used in Smalltalk. If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that 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

Cincom Smalltalk Digest

July 20, 2010 11:49:53.995

The July Digest has been posted!

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

I Feel Their Pain

July 20, 2010 14:50:45.824

Now this is a pair of visuals, explaining why web developers hate IE6 so much :)

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posted by James Robertson

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media

Let Them Eat Paper

July 20, 2010 14:59:07.874

While I understand the thinking behind the new paywall that Murdoch's UK newspapers are using on their websites, I think it's a doomed plan. First, the bad news, from GigaOm:

The paywall at the Times of London’s web site has led to a drop of at least 65 percent in the newspaper’s online readership, according to early estimates.

Supposedly, they aren't worried about this - what they want is to keep their print subscribers paying for the print edition, by not letting them see the website unless they pay. There are two problems with that theory though:

  • It's a no growth play. New prospects can't see anything, so they are unlikely to buy in. Younger people are buying less print news period, so the entire market for this plan is shrinking.
  • Even for the existing buyers, it assumes that they can't find the news elsewhere. That's clearly not the case.

Add it all up, and it seems to me that this plan puts a clock on the lifespan of any business that uses it. No growth, and constant attrition from your existing customer base. Not a good way to go, IMHO...

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posted by James Robertson

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BottomFeeder

New BottomFeeder Build

July 20, 2010 21:20:58.466

BottomFeeder

I've just pushed up a new BottomFeeder build - this one is based on VisualWorks 7.7.1 - since that's just about released, and I never got a 7.7 based release out, it's time to move up to the latest.

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posted by James Robertson

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law

The Facebook Ownership Suit Gets Weird

July 20, 2010 22:13:39.769

When I first heard this claim about a New York guy who claims that he owns Facebook, I was sure that it was bogus. Now I'm wondering - are the statements from Facebook's lawyers typical legal stuff, or is there actually something there?

A lawyer for Facebook Inc. said she was “unsure” whether company founder Mark Zuckerberg signed a contract that purportedly entitles a New York man to 84 percent of the world’s biggest social-networking service.

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media

No One is Entitled to a Business Model

July 21, 2010 7:46:48.362

Via Jeff Jarvis comes a link to Google's response to the FTC "discussion draft" on the troubles newspapers are having:

The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.

That's exactly right. You can't go back in time and restore the scarcity of news, anymore than you can go back in time and "rescue" various software businesses from open source. When the world shifts because of a new technology (and how it gets used), old business models often get chewed up. That's just the way it is.

How many people are mourning the loss of all the businesses that used to support horse transit back at the turn of the 20th century? I'm sure there was plenty of hand wringing about that as well, but the world didn't stop spinning.

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smalltalk

The Cog VM in Video

July 21, 2010 7:52:15.792

Eliot has posted a screencast on his Cog VM and how it does some of what it does. It's 163 MB, so you might want to just download the video and watch it locally.

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web

Welcome to Per Bit Pricing

July 21, 2010 8:03:37.925

Now that AT&T has gone to tiered pricing, it sounds like Verizon is following:

Hang on to your megabytes, folks, because it looks like the Brave New World of limited data is truly upon us. AT&T and Verizon tend to follow each others' moves pretty closely -- the two carriers regard each other as their nearest competitors, after all -- and we're hearing that Big Red intends to move to some sort of tiered bucket strategy on July 29.

We're into an interesting divide here - at home, things have gone to an increasingly big pipe of unlimited data at a flat rate. Meanwhile, wireless plans are clamping down to pretty low limits with high prices.

I say "llow limits" because of how we expect to use our devices. Consider an iPad on 3G, where you have Netflix, the ABC tv app, and maybe Hulu+. You're taking a trip in the car, and some of the passengers would like to watch something. Bam - you'll hit those 2 GB limits and run into overage charges pretty quickly.

There's going to be a real battle between Apple, Google, and the carriers over this stuff. The device makers are delivering gadgets that make it increasingly easy (and pleasant) to consume massive amounts of data. Meanwhile, the carriers, relegated to being dumb providers of bandwidth, are having a lot of trouble keeping up with demand - and trying to stifle it.

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Smalltalk Daily 07/21/10: Polymorphic Behavior

July 21, 2010 9:18:21.959

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how #perform is used in Smalltalk to drive different behaviors from the same code, depending on outside input. If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that 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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social media

Overwhelmed

July 21, 2010 9:45:59.699

I've seen a bunch of chatter float by about Flipboard (a new iPad/iPhone app) this morning - it creates a "magazine style" layout for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It sounded cool, so I gave it a try. Sadly, it's already over capacity, and failed to add my Facebook account.

Hot tip - if you can't handle massive load, don't go for the huge splash launch....

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general

Real LIfe Adventures

July 21, 2010 14:11:51.041

My daughter passed her written driving test today - so now we start the whole learner's permit process. In a few months she can try the driving test, and get moved up to a provisional license. Time doesn't stand still :)

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Verizon Gets a Turn in Data Hell

July 22, 2010 8:53:04.033

Engadget Reports that AT&T just got some company in the "omgz, smartphone users like data" parade:

Jennifer Byrne, a business development executive director at Big Red, has shared with us the shocking stat that early data usage from Droid X owners is five times what other smartphones are suckling down

This explains the rumor that's been floated about Verizon getting ready to dial back unlimited data plans. It was apparently easy when all the phones had crappy web interfaces; now, not so much.

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 07/22/10: Better Transcript Reporting

July 22, 2010 9:04:05.207

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a small package that makes Transcript reporting simpler. If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that 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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BottomFeeder

Let's Try the BottomFeeder Build Again

July 22, 2010 10:21:49.154

BottomFeeder

Two days ago, I posted a new BottomFeeder development build; turns out my build scripts had some issues, and not everything that was posted was correct. So - I just ran through the whole process again, fixed the scripts, and bam - I have a clean build. I should be able to release this as 4.7 soon.

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smalltalk

Cairo Graphics Kit

July 23, 2010 10:23:30.215

Chris Thorgrimsson has announced the Cairo Graphics Kit over on his VW/Cairo blog. It's a set of new view objects for VW done up in Cairo - to get going with it, make sure you load Cairo (the parcel that comes with VW) and the UIPainter first. If you see load time exceptions, it most likely means that you forgot to load the UI Painter.

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

Down the Drain

July 23, 2010 10:50:47.245

How can you tell that a business has reached RIAA/MPAA levels of stupid? When the trolls arrive:

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money

That strategery worked so well for the RIAA...

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Smalltalk Daily 07/23/10: Project Launcher

July 23, 2010 11:13:12.357

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a new tool for VW 7.7.1 - the project launcher. It makes it easier to create multiple images, and then easily launch them without multiple desktop shortcuts or shell scripts. If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Another Run at OAuth

July 23, 2010 13:25:55.864

I had another look at the Twitter documentation pages for the OAuth workflow; it seems a bit more detailed than it was when I last looked. With 7.7.1 done (not released, but in the process of being released), it's time I had another look. So - on with the OAuth attempts.

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culture

Channeling Nick Carr

July 23, 2010 17:48:48.642

I keep seeing this kind of nonsense popping up:

The explosion of digital culture is, on net, a very good thing. But it necessarily crowds out some activities and one of the things it must do the very most crowding-out of is one’s capacity to read giant honking novels. I find it hard to imagine myself undertaking a project on the W&P/Moby Dick/Brothers Karamazov scale in the era of ubiquitous connectivity. I think this is something we may just be losing as a society.

I just don't get it. I read a lot, and if anything, the iPad I have has made that easier. I can buy a book and start reading immediately, and do so on multiple devices. If you peruse my book list, you'll see that some of the history books I've read are pretty darn long; I don't think that "connectivity" gets in the way of that.

If anything, these people sound like the scolds from my youth, who were sure that TV was rotting our brains. There were probably anti-radio fanatics back in the 1930's as well. If you have trouble getting into a long book, don't blame the net - find a mirror, and ponder what's there - because that's where the problem is.

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smalltalk

Comparing VW, Cog, and Squeak

July 23, 2010 18:44:47.018

I spent the afternoon taking a look at the performance of VW, Pharo on Cog, and Squeak on a standard VM. I used the package SimpleBenchmarks from the public store repository - I have a Squeak port as well. Here are the numbers (in milliseconds) for the tests, each one running 100,000 times on my Macbook Pro:

You'll have to grab the code to see exactly what the tests do, although the names are mostly explanatory. Bottom line: VisualWorks is still pretty darn fast, but if you're using Squeak or Pharo, Cog looks like a good thing.

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gadgets

Apps Gone Wild

July 24, 2010 1:16:21.443

Apple is giving away free bumpers for the iPhone 4 antenna problem. How do you get one? Well, apparently there's an app for that :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalks 2010 Call For Submissions

July 24, 2010 9:00:19.385

The 4th annual Smalltalks conference in Argentina has issued a call for submissions:

SMALLTALKS 2010

4th Argentinian Smalltalk Conference
Research Track: Call for Papers
November 11th – 13th, 2010

Important dates:

Submission (Hard Deadline): September 7th, 2010 (Argentinian time: UTC/GMT -3 hours).
Notification of acceptance: October 6th, 2010.
Camera Ready Submission: October 20th, 2010.

The Smalltalks conferences have been growing pretty nicely, so it looks like a great opportunity to get in front of Smalltalkers you probably haven't seen yet.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

The Coming Death of the Ad Model

July 24, 2010 14:06:54.439

Jeff Jarvis sees the end of the advertising supported business model in sight; I'm pretty sure I agree with him. The entire ad model is based on scarcity; in a world of effectively infinite content choices, ad dollars are going to end up spread so thin that they won't possibly support an entire business. This has huge implications for the existing media model, and those implications still haven't completely sunk in.

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social media

Facebook Up, MySpace Down

July 24, 2010 21:36:02.795

As Facebook continues to grow, MySpace is getting crushed:

The net research firm revealed that in May 2010, just 3.3 million web users visited the social network, compared to 6.5 million in May 2009. That's a 49 percent drop.

The big problem for MySpace now is perception - with that kind of reported drop, it's definitely "out", whereas Facebook is still "in". A new site might challenge Facebook at some point, but it's hard for me to see how MySpace will ever come back.

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smalltalk

Upcoming Podcasts

July 25, 2010 10:36:08.756

We have a pretty interesting lineup over the next three weeks:

  • Eliot Miranda on his Cog VM (Part 1)
  • Eliot Miranda on his Cog VM (Part 2)
  • Alejandro Reimondo and Frank Lesser on their Smalltalk VM

The last one above is a bit short, I recorded it at Camp Smalltalk London a week ago - but I figure it's of interest to Smalltalkers. Good stuff coming down the pike!

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books

Pondering the Past

July 25, 2010 10:53:58.846

I finished reading Armenian Golgotha on my iPad about 2 weeks ago; it's taken me some time to fully wrap my head around it. (I have my early review of the book here) The genocide perpetrated against the Armenians of Turkey really looks (in retrospect) like a trial run for what happened in Germany 30 years later. Many of the same tactics were used, just in a less "factory-like" setting. In some ways that made the outcomes more terrible to read about; imagine a group of exiles, marching away from everything they've known - only to be set upon with axes and other tools by the inhabitants of the region they were passing through - who then robbed the bodies after desecrating them.

The entire period is filled with things that should have created a "never again" movement. First there was the Armenians, and then, after the ill fated Greek invasion of the early 20's, there was the murder of the remaining Armenians (and Greeks) in Smyrna (et. al.). For the latter incident, various European navies sat in the harbor and watched. During the Armenian genocide, the German wartime government knew what was happening, but stayed quiet - in order to get the rail line to Baghdad built. Afterwards, the architects of the horror were granted asylum in Germany; the Entente powers, after a brief show of arresting a number of lower officials who were complicit, let them all go.

There were various points in the book where I really wanted to just put it down, but I ended up feeling like I owed the author - who wrote the book as both a first hand survivor and remembrance for those who wer lost. After reading that, I had to move on to a light science fiction book.

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 198: A Cog in the Machine, Part 1

July 25, 2010 14:36:34.056

This week's podcast is part one of our talk with Eliot Miranda, about his Cog VM for Squeak and Pharo. We got into a fair amount of depth with Eliot, about the things he's done already, and the things that he's looking forward to doing in the future.

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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games

Mass Effect 2 on Insanity

July 25, 2010 23:16:31.675

I started playing Mass Effect 2 on "Insanity" earlier today, and boy - it's completely unforgiving at that level. On lower levels, if you make the mistake of ducking out of cover at the wrong moment, or taking a sub-optimal party on a mission - you get away with it. On Insanity? You die, fast.

I'll say this - it's certainly a challenge this way. I have to pay much, much closer attention at all times. A moment of distraction, and bam - back to the last save point :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 07/26/10: Process Monitor

July 26, 2010 10:03:48.541

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at the ProcessMonitor, a tool that's available in VisualWorks and ObjectStudio (and in a web form for WebVelocity). If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Jalibreaking No Longer Illegal

July 26, 2010 15:59:37.145

Cult of Mac has the story - there's a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking a phone - specifically, circumvention is allowed for:

Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset….

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smalltalk

Pharo 1.1 Released

July 26, 2010 20:55:54.975

Looks like the Pharo sprint at Camp Smalltalk London paid off:

Pharo 1.1 was released on July 26, 2010. This is the second release. It provides bug fixes, system cleanup, and new features. In total, 883 issues were resolved and went into this version.

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Smalltalk Daily 07/27/10: Setting BreakPoints with Code

July 27, 2010 8:59:36.793

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at inserting a breakpoint programmatically. To do that, you need to grab this code and file it in, and then use code like this:


"get the method"
method := Constructor class methodDictionary at: #determineClassToHandle:.
source := method getSource.
^source

"Insert the Probe"
CodeProbe
	insertProbeIntoClass: Constructor class
	selector: #determineClassToHandle:
	sourceString: source
	offset: 0

If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. Click on the viewer below to watch it now:

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 need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that 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

OAuth Progress

July 27, 2010 11:40:36.295

I decided to take a serious look at OAuth again - since I have a Twitter account and a set of application keys, I'm using Twitter as the service to test against. I had problems the last time I tried this; I spent awhile reading various websites, and this Twitter developer page has a nice sample of what you should be creating. The problem I was having?

  • The callback url needs to be double encoded, something I missed the first time around
  • In creating the signature base, I had managed to drop an ampersand from a spot where it needed to be

So now I'm writing some actual code, instead of just ramming my head against a wall in a workspace. With luck, I should have something working (and posted to the public store) later today or tomorrow.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

StarCraft 2

July 27, 2010 21:18:18.837

I may still be obsessed with Mass Effect 2, but I've been waiting for Starcraft II for a long time

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posted by James Robertson

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