. .

smalltalk

Seaside on Twitter

October 4, 2010 6:08:55.935

There's a Seaside Twitter feed I just noticed - looks like an aggregation feed of Seaside related items.

Update: Fixed the link

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Silicon Squeak

October 4, 2010 6:34:41.045

Torsten reports on Morphie - a new startup providing an interesting form of Seaside hosting using Squeak and "virtual hardware".

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/04/10: Using xAuth

October 4, 2010 6:57:20.585

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at using xAuth to connect to a public web service - in this case, Twitter. The code I used in the screencast is below - to load that code, get the packages OAuth and MinXAuthTwit from the public store repository. To skip to the video, click here..


"the entire conversation with Twitter"
auth := XAuthenticator fromSettings: (OAuth.Settings fromFile: 'twitterOAuth.ini').
accessData := auth executeXAuthAccessTokenRequest.
postCollection := OrderedCollection new.
postCollection add: 'status' -> 'Testing xAuth to Twitter from Smalltalk'.
auth 
	executeXAuthCallFor: postCollection 
	with: accessData 
	to: 'http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json'

"save the results as a file for addition to any RSS/Atom aware tool"
file := 'calFeed.xml' asFilename writeStream.
file nextPutAll: xml.
file close.

"Using the simpler package I published"
MiniTwitPoster tweet: 'Test Tweet from simple interface object'

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

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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gadgets

Microsoft Gets Back into the Mobile Game

October 4, 2010 9:31:29.665

A lot of people - myself included - thought MS had lost the mobile space, but they are getting their latest entry out ahead of HP (Palm) - so maybe they can challenge for the third space behind Apple and Google:

Steve Ballmer will be the keynote speaker at Microsoft's New York launch event for Windows Phone 7. He'll be joined on stage by AT&T's Ralph de la Vega and when the pep rally is over, we're promised opportunities to finally handle the official incarnations of retail Windows Phones for ourselves.

I've read generally positive reviews for the Windows Phone, so we'll see.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Streaming the Playoffs

October 4, 2010 10:36:54.542

With all the time I spend at the gym, this kind of thing sounds pretty cool:

The Postseason.TV package, available for $10, provides access to live video (synced with live broadcast audio) from multiple camera angles for every postseason game.

iPad in hand, I can use the exercise bike at the gym and follow along. Yes, they have TVs, but who knows what channels those will be tuned to - mostly,. it's news, and for the first round, a lot of the games overlap.

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posted by James Robertson

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movies

Direct to NetFlix?

October 4, 2010 17:39:31.000

It looks like the "direct to DVD" space died, which is what has stopped the planned Stargate movies from happening:

The only thing that is blocking the SG-1 movie or the Atlantis movie, the only thing, is the fact that the direct-to-DVD market has gone away. We were very fortunate with Ark of Truth and Continuum to be among the last very successful direct-to-DVD releases before it all stopped happening. The market has changed, and it's still changing, and it's not what it was. And, of course, there have been very big changes at MGM that kind of added to that.

Well, what about "direct to NetFlix and iTunes" as an idea then? It's basically the same space, just updated to modern delivery methods.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

October 5, 2010 5:39:17.000

LtU goes back to the archives for the 30th anniversary of Smalltalk:

With Smalltalk-80 nominally turning 30 and PARC turning 40, 2010 is a fitting year to revisit Design Principles Behind Smalltalk by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, known to his German admirers as Daniel Ha-ha Ingalls.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPads Everywhere

October 5, 2010 6:23:40.848

The iPad has been penetrating the consumer market at a faster clip than the DVD player did when it first launched:

iPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April release and its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past the one million units the iPhone sold in its first quarter and the 350,000 units sold in the first year by the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.

My memories are a bit foggy, but I think DVD players started out pretty expensive, whereas the low end iPad is under $500. The article touches on that fact - read the whole thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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GemTools for Pharo 1.1

October 5, 2010 6:37:30.000

The Gemstone Community continues to get stuff done:

Thanks to the hard work of Norbert Hartl, GemTools can now be loaded into Pharo 1.1.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/05/10: Integrating with Google Calendar

October 5, 2010 7:45:30.715

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at integrating a feed from Google calendar with the syndication handling code that is used in BottomFeeder. The code I used in the screencast is below - to load that code, get the packages GCal-Example2 and Syndication-Handling from the public store repository. Make sure to load the latest NetworkAppUtilities as well; the version that loads from disk is not the latest version. To skip to the video, click here.


"get the request token"
gAuth := AuthRequest 
	requestTokenFor: 'cl' 
	user: username
	password: password
	clientName: 'Cincom-VisualWorks-771'.

"get the response as XML"
serviceResponse := ServiceRequest
					makeRequestWith: gAuth 
					requestPrepObject: ExampleRequestPrep new.
xml := serviceResponse contents.

"get the feed object"
feed := Constructor getFeedFromStream: xml readStream.

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

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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Making Smalltalk Use More Cores

October 5, 2010 9:31:07.700

I saw this pass by in one of VisualWorks mailing lists - it's a Cincom customer successfully using multiple cores via multiple images, with a library we call Polycephaly:

We are successfully using Polycephaly in our project. One thing we use it for is to parallelize execution of (time-consuming) unit tests that check code quality. These tests execute at 28% of original time, when using Polycephaly on a quad-core box.

That library is in the preview directory of the distribution (for ObjectStudio as well!) - take a look.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Scratch for Arduino Interview

October 5, 2010 9:46:41.780

The Scratch for Arduino team has a ten minute interview posted:

"We want to explore Scratch for Arduino applications on interactive science museums and art digital centers"

Follow the link for the video - it's in Spanish, btw.

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posted by James Robertson

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esug2010

ESUG Video

October 5, 2010 10:30:05.000

Can't wait for me to get the editing job done on ESUG video? If you want to watch the raw videos as they were shot, they all available here. It's all Flash, so if you're on a mobile device, well, get thee back to a desktop :)

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Staggering into the Playoffs

October 5, 2010 12:16:16.721

The Yankees didn't exactly march triumphantly into the post-season - they went 9-17 to end the regular season, and have decided on a three man rotation for the Twins:

Because of A.J. Burnett's miserable season, the Yankees will use Sabathia, Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes in the best-of-five series that opens tomorrow night against the AL Central champion Twins at Target Field in Minneapolis.

Thank goodness they benched Burnett. He has not impressed me as a guy who does well under pressure. With luck, Jeter's bat will wake up now that it's October...

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Mobile Skype

October 5, 2010 12:27:12.000

Engadget Reports that Skype has found its way to Android, but with limits:

Finally, at long last, after so much waiting, Skype has made its debut as a full-fledged Android app. There are no Verizon-related limitations anymore, but Android Police reports that calling through the app is only available via WiFi, you can't use your mobile's data connection -- not yet, anyway.

I wonder how much of a hand the carriers have in that. When Skype first arrived on the iPhone, the same limitation was in place. It was lifted later, but there it is. I can't imagine that Verizon would be cheery about this.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Ottawa

October 5, 2010 16:24:07.000

David Buck reports on the next Ottawa STUG:

Alan Knight will present his talk on Store from the European Smalltalk User Group, discussing recent developments, possible upcoming work, and demonstrating an extremely rickety prototype of a "Store Server" that can load packages from a server running in the Amazon EC2 cloud in a single round-trip rather than needing to connect directly to the database.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Finished Red Dead Redemption

October 5, 2010 18:26:58.000

I finally finished the main plot in Red Dead Redemption - without giving anything away, I have to say that I was a bit surprised by the way the game "kept going" after what I thought was the ending. It made sense though, and there's a side quest available for you to tie up the loose ends that are left from the game's "ending".

That's not the end to what you can do in the game by any means, either. Like Fallout 3, the game world is still alive, even though the plot is done. Random encounters still happen, and there are plenty of challenges left to accomplish (not to mention the gamer trophies).

I might work at some of that, or I might shuffle back to my in progress Dragon Age game - while I wait for October 19th and Fallout: New Vegas :)

Now Listening to: Twisted by Katie Melua from: The House

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posted by James Robertson

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games

More Alan Wake

October 5, 2010 22:24:41.211

I've enjoyed Alan Wake, so I'm looking forward to the October 12th release of the next DLC - sadly, it'll also be the last DLC for the game:

'The Writer' will be the second and last downloadable episode for Alan Wake, following on from the well-received 'The Signal', and Remedy has already been vocal in saying it'd like to return for a sequel to the game.

I'd be happy to see a sequel, or another game in the same genre. It's a nice change from most of the other games I've played.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Check Clearing for Everyone

October 6, 2010 6:22:17.177

This is interesting - it makes it far easier for individuals to clear checks into a business account (and safer too, as there's no run to the bank with a bundle of money):

Last week we told you about the upcoming check capture feature in the iPhone PayPal app. This new feature uses your device’s camera to capture checks so they can be deposited into your PayPal account. This feature is similar to the Chase banking app and snaps the front and back of the check you want to deposit.

You wouldn't want to use your iPhone to process a huge number of checks, but this would work for small scale stuff.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Intelligent Load Balancing for Seaside

October 6, 2010 6:33:33.627

Joachim reports on a cool Apache module for Seaside apps (Pharo only at the moment):

How does this actually work? There are two Apache modules involved. mod_advertise sends UDP broadcasts about Apache's location, you might have several on different hosts in the network. mod_cluster_manager allows remote configuration of Apache. Seaside will connect to the advertised Apache instances and tell them where it is (host, port, protocol, urls).

Joachim has an overview of what's been done; the listserv posting by Phillippe Marschall has far more details. Very cool stuff. Setting up a simple round robin load balancer with session affinity has been possible for Smalltalk aps for quite some time, of course - this just goes up to the next level.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

STIC Site Outage

October 6, 2010 6:37:21.217

I've just been informed that the STIC website is offline - due to problems on the physical server that runs the site. It should be back later today.

Update 10:00 AM EDT: The site is back online.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/06/10: Debugging Overnight

October 6, 2010 7:57:48.614

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at one of the cool things about the Smalltalk image - you can save your current state completely - including debugging sessions. Have a hard problem to debug, and you don't want to stay late? Just save the image and come back to it later. . If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

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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itNews

Real World Collides with the Internet

October 6, 2010 12:48:39.880

We usually think of "cyberspace" as its own thing, but it helps to remember that it's run by physical devices in real places. Ben Metcalfe just found that out the hard way - one of the domains they use in the .ly space (Libya) got shut down for political/religious reasons:

The domain was seized by the Libyan domain registry for reasons which seemed to be kept obscure until we escalated the issue. We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.

It also looks like it's easy to be ignorant of the law/rules in some places around the world:

An additional concern is that the clause being used here pertains to Libyan Islamic Law which appears impossible to find listed in English.

Just remember that your site or domain is running on real hardware somewhere, and if that somewhere isn't under the same legal regime that you live under, you could be in for some unpleasant surprises.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

More iPhone on Verizon Rumors

October 6, 2010 15:28:07.191

The WSJ is reporting this one:

Apple Inc. plans to begin mass producing a new iPhone by the end of 2010 that would allow Verizon Wireless to sell the smartphone early next year, said people briefed by Apple. The new iPhone would be similar in design to the iPhone 4 currently sold by AT&T Inc. but would be based on an alternative wireless technology called CDMA used by Verizon, these people said.

Supposedly coming in 2011 - I still have doubts. CDMA doesn't allow for simultaneous voice and data (which would make a Verizon iPhone a downgrade from the current model). Then there's Verizon's VCast store, and their desire to brand everything on their network.

I could be wrong - maybe they've done a deal. If so, I'll bet that it doesn't involve CDMA (at least not exclusively). This story tells us that Verizon is rolling out LTE by the end of 2010 - which would line up nicely with a 2011 rollout.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Micro Squeak

October 7, 2010 6:07:05.056

Torsten reports on some interesting work from John Maloney, highlighted by Eliot Miranda in the Squeak mailing list:

if size matters and you feel like you have to dig into bootstrapping an own Smalltalk system based on Squeak you should have a look at this post from Eliot. There you will find code that will produces a headless 57k image with a few basic classes as a proof of concept. Interesting!

I think the small kernel approach is the way to go.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/07/10: A Simple Seaside 3.0 Example

October 7, 2010 7:37:09.572

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at the Counter example in Seaside 3.0 - as an example of how to get started with Seaside. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

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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esug2010

Xtreams at ESUG 2010

October 7, 2010 8:34:54.770

Here's a video from ESUG 2010, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, the week of September 13, 2010. In this presentation, Cincom's Martin Kobetic talks about the Xtreams library - a modern take on streaming in Smalltalk. You can watch using the embedded player below, or follow the download links at the bottom of the post.

Xtreams at ESUG 2010 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

You can follow the ESUG channel on Vimeo for all the videos from the conference.

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 Videos"? If you would rather subscribe specifically to the ESUG videos, then use this Vimeo feed - which will work in iTunes.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Twitter Irritations

October 7, 2010 14:43:56.434

Ever since Twitter went to OAuth it's been nothing but massive irritation (why they couldn't have kept using Basic Auth behind HTTPS is beyond me; I guess the simplest solution was too easy, or something).

Anyway, here's my issue with their service: it's not reliable. I'll send an API request from my code, with the proper credentials, and it'll work. I'll pick the same code up a different day, and it gives me back 401 (Unauthorized) errors. This is maddening.

At this point, I wish Google would acquire Twitter. Authenticated calls to their services never fail, so maybe the injection of some competent systems people into the Twitter service would help.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Back to the Future

October 7, 2010 19:19:11.127

Now this takes me back:

Enterprising gamers are formatting vintage text-based adventure games such as Zork I, II and III for the Kindle and other dedicated e-readers.

I remember spending many happy hours with Zork....

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalks 2010 - Powered by Seaside

October 8, 2010 7:17:15.795

The Smalltalks 2010 website is powered by Seaside. Looks good, too!

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily 10/08/10: Looking at a Seaside Component

October 8, 2010 7:51:44.605

Today's Smalltalk Daily takes a more detailed look at the Counter example in Seaside. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:

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

Smalltalk and OO in Spanish

October 8, 2010 9:40:27.441

Norberto Manzanos has launched a new blog that concentrates on OO and Smalltalk - it's a Spanish language blog. He's part of the growing South American Smalltalk contingent.

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posted by James Robertson

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social media

Join Groups You Never Wanted To Be In

October 8, 2010 13:31:40.000

There's been a mini-tempest over the last couple of days - apparently, anyone can add other people to arbitrary Facebook groups. That sounds like nothing more than an annoyance until you realize that there are some pretty unsavory groups out there (take a look at this post from Jason Calacanis, and this one from Michael Arrington - I'm not going to link to the nasty example they have).

The good news? You can drop out of groups easily, after which you can't be added back to that group. The bad news? It's up to you to ensure that you haven't been added to some unsavory group. Why should you care? Well, employers (and potential employers) are now scouring things like Facebook to get a glimpse beyond what shows up in an interview. Membership in some groups could paint a picture you would rather not have painted - especially if being in that group wasn't your choice.

It wouldn't be so hard for Facebook to move this one level back, and just allow people to invite you to groups instead of slamming you into them.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Things I like to See

October 8, 2010 16:34:13.000

The Yankees are up 2-0 in the best of 5 series against the Twins - so much for the Twins home field advantage. Of course, keeping the 2004 debacle in mind, it's not time for them to get cocky. Still:

Pettitte turned in a vintage performance with seven smooth innings and Lance Berkman had two big hits in a 5-2 victory by the Yankees over their favorite postseason punching bag on Thursday evening for a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five division series.

Sabathia looked a bit shaky on Wednesday, so I hope he has his good stuff back on Saturday. Wrapping this up in 3 would be a good thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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scifi

BSG in Classic Dungeons and Dragons Terms

October 8, 2010 17:27:42.000

What happens when you map the classic D&D alignment system onto Battlestar Galactica? You get the picture over at Blastr.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Not Getting It

October 8, 2010 19:46:13.966

Verizon explains how we don't really need simultaneous voice and data on our smart phones:

"I think there are fringe cases where something like that could be important," Mr. Higgins said. "For a vast majority of customers, I don't think it's a terribly important use case."

Sure - the fact that I use this all the time screams edge case to me. This all comes in the context of the supposed CDMA iPhone, which I'm still not sure is real. There's another issue (albeit, not for everyone) with a CDMA iPhone - it would be a brick outside the US....

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smalltalk

The Smalltalk Roadmap

October 9, 2010 11:55:33.941

If you weren't at ESUG 2010, you didn't hear Arden's Roadmap talk. Never fear - I'm releasing the audio from that talk tomorrow as episode 208 of the podcast, and the video will be posted soon.

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smalltalk

Xtreams becoming Portable

October 9, 2010 21:39:03.924

Looks like Martin's Xtreams talk at ESUG 2010 has inspired the Squeak Community: Nicholas Cellier has started a port over to Squeak. Having this library portable across multiple Smalltalk dialects will make it much more likely to see real world use.

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sports

Sweep!

October 9, 2010 23:56:33.089

Yankees The Yankees just took the Twins apart this year -tonight's final score was 6-1. If Giradi weren't obsessed with pitch count, it likely would have been a shutout. Hughes was mowing batters down, but when he hit that "magic number" - out he came, and the next guy loaded the bases.

It's not that pitch count is irrelevant; it's just that it's only one factor, not the only one. If your pitcher is cruising, here's a hot tip: leave him in. If all you're going to do is go on auto-pilot with pitch count, you might as well put a laptop with a webcam in charge.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk at OSDC

October 10, 2010 10:12:52.623

Serge Stinckwich has been reporting on the Smalltalk goings on at OSDC in France today.

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Celebrating 10/10/10

October 10, 2010 13:15:52.637

How did I celebrate the date? By playing a game of Civilization Revolution on my XBox :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside in the Cloud

October 10, 2010 16:18:18.856

Jan van de Sandt has pushed out a new Pharo/Seaside EC2 instance:

The update to the Ubuntu server makes it easier to run the AMI as a Micro (t1.micro) instance type. This is currently the smallest and cheapest EC2 image type. The image type is very well suited for running Seaside web applications. When your application becomes more popular you can scale by using a bigger instance type or by running multiple instances.

Follow the link to get the particulars, such as the AMI instance id.

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 209: Cincom Smalltalk Roadmap, 2010

October 10, 2010 22:40:18.944

This week's podcast is Arden Thomas presenting the Cincom Smalltalk road map at ESUG on September 15, 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. He spoke about ObjectStudio, VisualWorks, and WebVelocity, and took a few questions at the end of the talk. You can see the slides he used here.

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 - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes.. Interested in Cincom Smalltalk? Why not download it now and try it out yourself? If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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Smalltalk Daily 10/11/10: A Simple COM Example in VW

October 11, 2010 9:46:32.289

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at interfacing to a simple COM api in Windows - specifically, the speech API. The code to get the dispatch driver is a little involved, so the #setupDriver method in the video is included below - to skip to the video, click here. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it.


setupDriver
	"set up the COM driver"

	| ref descs ifc guid  refs |
	refs := COMRegistryInterface extTypeLibraryIDMap select: [:each | each name notNil].
	ref := refs
			detect: [:each | 'Microsoft Speech Object Library*' match: each name]
			ifNone: [nil].
	ref ifNil: [^nil].
	descs := ref containedTypeDescriptions.
	ifc := descs
		detect: [:each | 'SpVoice' match: each name]
		ifNone: [nil].
	ifc ifNil: [^nil].
	guid := ifc guid.
	driver := AdvancedDispatchDriver
		on: (IClassFactory 
				createInstance: guid 
				iid: External.COMConstants.IID_IDispatch 
				context:	External.COMConstants.CLSCTX_SERVER).
	^driver

To watch now, click on the viewer below:

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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general

If It's Not One Thing Department...

October 11, 2010 10:51:03.169

It's been a bad few days in terms of irritating device failures. First, the handle broke off our over the stove microwave oven, rendering it mostly unusable. Then, my wife's old PC (the one with all her photos) stopped booting. The latter thing turns out to be a problem with the heat sink, so it's fixable - just annoying.

The joys of having old stuff :)

posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Next Podcast

October 11, 2010 15:44:16.977

We just spoke to Ernest Micklei about his soek.goodies.st site - and it turned into a broader cloud and Smalltalk source code conversation. Tune in to the next Industry Misinterpretations podcast to listen in

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Galaxy Tab Priced Out

October 11, 2010 23:08:32.541

I don't think the Galaxy Tab is as primed for success as some people think it is - PC World notes an issue with the pricing model:

Users can get the Galaxy Tab without a contract, but with the price expected to be $650, it doesn't offer a very compelling challenge to the $499 16GB iPad, or even the contract-free 3G iPad at $629

It's cheaper with the contract, but unlike the 3g iPad, you have to sign a contract for 2 years. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that will limit the appeal. Here's the real takeawy quote from the PC World piece:

People expect Apple products to cost a premium and it is just assumed that non-Apple products should be cheaper.

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posted by James Robertson

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