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podcast

Independent Misinterpretations 14: Smalltalk Build Systems

January 23, 2011 11:07:49.499

Welcome to episode 14 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk about build systems for Smalltalk applications - something I've been working on in my new job.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

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.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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[im14.mp3 ( Size: 9402293 )]

posted by James Robertson

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Independent Misinterpretations 14: Smalltalk Build Systems (AAC)

January 23, 2011 11:07:53.769

Welcome to episode 14 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk about build systems for Smalltalk applications - something I've been working on in my new job.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

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.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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[im14.m4a ( Size: 13131184 )]

posted by James Robertson

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humor

What Social Means

January 23, 2011 19:37:21.635

This is funny, but also very true.

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posted by James Robertson

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st4u

ST 4U 38: A Look at Morphic Halos

January 24, 2011 7:44:18.229

Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes a first look at Morphic Halos - from the user's perspective (where the user is a developer).. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

Morphic Halos

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

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posted by James Robertson

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media

Paywalls and Internal Politics

January 24, 2011 13:30:00.000

The New York Times' new paywall just doesn't make much sense. Not the overall concept, just the specific implementation. Here's what they supposedly plan to do:

The person familiar with the matter said the Times has considered charging around $20 a month for the digital bundle and less than half that for the Web-only offering

But there's a problem with that approach, as Felix Salmon notes:

This strikes me as peculiar. The idea seems to be that if you want to use the NYT iPad app at all, that’ll cost you a hefty $240 per year, over and above the cost of the iPad itself. But if you want to read the nytimes.com website on your iPad, that’s probably free — and even if you’re in the minority of power users, it’ll still be less than half the price of the app. Essentially, the NYT is doing everything it can to drive its iPad-owning readers away from the app and towards the built-in browser.

Exactly - what would possess me to try their iPad app under this deal? Why not just stick with the website? If they want to attract me to a pay model (where the website is free until I cross a threshold), then they need to make it more attractive, not less.

This looks like the result of an internal political battle that the iPad backers at the Times lost. They get their app, but in a "guaranteed to lose" fashion. The website side will then point and laugh, and not lose any of their budget.

posted by James Robertson

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games

Fallout Fan Fiction

January 24, 2011 21:59:37.682

Take a Nuka Break:

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posted by James Robertson

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js4u

JS 4U 26: Math Functions

January 25, 2011 7:39:17.238

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at the built in Math library in Javascript. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube.

Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

Booleans

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

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[js4u26-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 1816490 )]

posted by James Robertson

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movies

3D Films: Doomed by Evolution?

January 25, 2011 13:51:50.000

Via Roger Ebert, Walter Murch says yes:

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.
...
We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix.

Read the whole thing, which has a lot of detail I left out. Bottom line - it sounds like 3D is an expensive gimmick that most people simply can't adapt to, through no fault of their own...

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Limited Unlimited with Verizon

January 25, 2011 18:37:12.915

Verizon is going to offer the unlimited $30/month data plan for the iPhone (apparently with the mobile hotspot). That's a ton better than the data plans ATT has now, but: it's a limited time offer. There's a possible reason to switch over now if your contract is in the right place, I guess.

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posted by James Robertson

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st4u

ST 4U 39: The Squeak Browser

January 26, 2011 8:35:09.530

Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes a look at the Squeak Browser. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

Squeak Browser

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

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[st4u39-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 7413043 )]

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeak and SSL: HowTo

January 26, 2011 14:40:23.000

Andreas Raab explains how to use SSL with Squeak in a nicely detailed post. Check it out.

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Weather Differences

January 26, 2011 22:01:39.044

This is what things looked like as I walked into work today in Dallas:

Meanwhile, back home:

Looks like my daughter gets to shovel some snow

posted by James Robertson

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js4u

JS 4U 27: Regex in Javascript

January 27, 2011 8:15:02.045

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at the built in Regex library in Javascript. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube.

Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

Regex

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

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[js4u27-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 2242460 )]

posted by James Robertson

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weather

No Power At Home

January 27, 2011 8:42:51.735

As I write this in my hotel in Dallas, there's no power back at home:

BGE claims it will be back on by 11 AM; it's apparently getting pretty darn chilly in the house....

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Headless Pharo

January 27, 2011 9:15:00.000

Pharo is getting better at headless running:

the last two days we worked hard with Marcus to incorporate this new stuff into image, and now we're done. All images past #13021 now have non interactive ui manager (NonInteractiveUIManager). We fixed almost all broken tests caused by introducing it (there are only few minor ones left).

The open source solutions are getting more and more reasonable - the commercial vendors are not going to be able to sit back and relax...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside Adaptor for Apache Updated

January 27, 2011 10:23:27.000

The Seaside adaptor for Apache has been updated again:

The AJP server adaptor for Seaside has been updated. The biggest difference is a new backend that should result in better performance when serving byte arrays from the image. Note that this is not an HTTP adaptor, you need an Apache frontend.

Since most people (myself included!) use Apache with their Smalltalk websites, this is welcome news.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Seaside at FOSDEM

January 27, 2011 14:25:55.000

Spotted in Planet Squeak

Stephan Eggermont and Willem van den Ende will demo Seaside at the FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium to free and Open Source developers.

You can get more details from the Squeak mailing list and from the FOSDEM site.

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

Did They See the Acronym?

January 27, 2011 18:13:50.286

I watched the State of the Union Speech yesterday - and no, this isn't a political post :) I did notice that the President's catch phrase during the speech was "Win the Future".

So.... when the speechwriters were coming up with that, did no one realize the more common meaning for the three letters: WTF?

Things that make me go hmmmm

posted by James Robertson

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humor

2012 Comes Early

January 27, 2011 19:28:20.780

My wife sent me this - apparently, the world ends at 7PM:

posted by James Robertson

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st4u

ST 4U 40: More on the Squeak Browser

January 28, 2011 7:23:40.538

Today's Smalltalk 4 You continues with the Squeak code browser, looking at the various menus. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

Squeak Browser

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

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[st4u40-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 3683008 )]

posted by James Robertson

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games

Fallout 3 in Parallels 6

January 28, 2011 11:06:48.442

I wanted to give some of the Fallout 3 mods a try, and it looked inexpensive on Steam - under $30. Since Fallout: New Vegas runs under Parallels (after a few tweaks), I figured the older one would, too. And at first, it did, with no real issues. It installed a ton of stuff before it got going, and then came up slowly, but it ran, and looked pretty good. I played for about an hour, quit, and left it alone for a couple of days. Last night I came back, and it started up, but crashed as soon as my saved game was about to start. Googling found lots of references to the issue - and the fix that worked for me was the Windows live removal tool.

After I disabled the Windows Live hookup, the game ran, and it ran well. So next time I decide to sit down with it, I can actually download some of the more interesting looking mods and see how they look.

Ultimately, the biggest improvement in game play came from the upgrade I did to memory on the MBP - from 4 gb to 8gb. After that, I was able to give the Windows VM 4gb instead of 2, and that made a huge difference. The other thing that seems to help is making sure to buy games that have been out long enough for all the really dedicated gamers to have found or created solutions to common problems :)

posted by James Robertson

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travel

I'm So Spoiled

January 28, 2011 21:52:40.364

I had to sit back and ponder the state of my expectations today. We got up to 10,000 feet, and I turned wifi on - and nothing happened. Since I forgot to put Steam into offline mode before I left, that means no Steam games on the flight.

Just consider that for a second - it's not enough that I have power, now I expect to have network access up here, too :)

posted by James Robertson

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weather

Contrasts

January 29, 2011 15:49:24.263

When I left Dallas on Friday, it was almost 70 degrees. This is what I came home to:

At least I didn't have to shovel it - it looks like it was a lot of work :)

posted by James Robertson

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podcast

IM 15: Smalltalk Solutions 2011 Preview

January 30, 2011 10:56:29.712

Welcome to episode 15 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk the upcoming (March 14-16, 2011) Smalltalk Solutions conference. We are both attending and giving talks, and we both like the look of the agenda.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

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.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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Enclosures:
[im15.mp3 ( Size: 12222334 )]

posted by James Robertson

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IM 15: Smalltalk Solutions 2011 Preview (AAC)

January 30, 2011 10:56:32.522

Welcome to episode 15 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk the upcoming (March 14-16, 2011) Smalltalk Solutions conference. We are both attending and giving talks, and we both like the look of the agenda.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (or any other podcatching software) using this feed directly or in iTunes with this one.

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.

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Troublemaker for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

If you have feedback, send it to jarober@gmail.com - or visit us on Facebook - you can subscribe in iTunes using this iTunes enabled feed.. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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Enclosures:
[im15.m4a ( Size: 17014494 )]

posted by James Robertson

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games

Steam Hangups

January 30, 2011 19:37:56.577

It's not that I expect wifi at 30,000 feet to be awesome - but why does Steam refuse to log me in so often, requiring me to delete ClientRegistry.blob, and force this on me:

Sigh...

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posted by James Robertson

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games

High Sneak in FNV

January 30, 2011 20:48:49.860

I posted on the value of high sneak in Fallout: New Vegas a bit ago, but wow - I brought my level 23 character with high sneak and unarmed into Dead Money this weekend, and it was so much easier to make progress. I got into the Sierra Madre just before I had to leave for the weekend, but now I'll have to give Fallout 3 a shot with high sneak.

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posted by James Robertson

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