The author of this blog, James Robertson, passed away in April 2014. This blog is being maintained by David Buck (david@simberon.com).
How can you tell that you really, really like a game? When you come up with yet another role playing rationale for a character, and start the umpteebth playthrough in search of the last few achievement points :) Dragon Age 2 can't come soon enough :)
James Ladd will be at the NYC STUG on March 17th to talk about Redline Smalltalk:
Redline Smalltalk is Smalltalk for the Java Virtual Machine, because nothing is as productive as Smalltalk and the app has to run on the Java Virtual Machine. Redline compiles from source code directly to bytecode and is compatible with Pharo syntax. While Smalltalk on the JVM has been tried before there are some significant innovations coming with Redline, which will be detailed.
Follow the link for full details.
Welcome to episode 20 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week I have a presentation from ESUG 2010 - John O'Keefe talking about two things:
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!
Technorati Tags: esug, smalltalk, va smalltalk, instantiations
Enclosures:
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Welcome to episode 20 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week I have a presentation from ESUG 2010 - John O'Keefe talking about two things:
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!
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, esug, instantiations, va smalltalk
Enclosures:
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Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at VA Smalltalk - how do you load the various libraries that it ships with into the image? 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:
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:
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, va smalltalk, envy
Enclosures:
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I only just realized that my Google profile was out of date. This is the one big downside to the plethora of social sites and systems that are out there now - if you maintain a profile on each of them, then any serious change in status (like, say, your job), requires an update to all of them. It's easy to miss one or two - I left Cincom back in October, and only just realized that my Google profile was dated. No wonder my old (now dormant) blog at Cincom kept popping up in my vanity searches :)
The script came from Alan Kay's spouse, Bonnie MacBird. According to imdb:
Her script for Tron is loosely based on the work of her spouse Alan Kay (Dynabook, Smalltalk, Vivarium)
Well, you have to take the bad with the good, I guess :)
The growing adoption of Facebook Comments has set off the usual complaints about how one company is "taking over" the web, but Steve Cheney has posted a new level of stupid:
Face it, authenticity goes way down when people know their 700 friends, grandma, and 5 ex-girlfriends are tuning in each time they post something on the web.
Later he says that anonymous posting isn't really his point, so I have to wonder - has he heard of Google? Has he noticed what's happened to every prominent person who's tried to stay anonymous on the net? Exactly what authenticity is the web stealing?
Back pre-internet, if you tried the sort of "authentic" conversation that Cheney seems to want in different venues, word would eventually snake back to everyone else through the grapevine. The only thing that the net has done for that is to make the grapevine bigger and faster. I have to wonder whether Cheney understands the medium he's commenting on at all....
Technorati Tags: stupidity
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at using timeouts 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:
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:
Technorati Tags: javascript, timeouts
Enclosures:
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Today marks the release of the most anticipated game of 2011 in our household - Dragon Age 2 |
Once I get home, I'll be immersing myself in the game (as much as I can, what with StS coming up next week). Once I get going, Michael and I intend to launch a new podcast (like the FNV one, but focused on DA2) - so look forward to an announcement about that.
I've been continuing to work on build automation, because I've also been asked to refactor the package/bundle structure we use here (in order to create a cleaner separation between the various deliverables we produce out of the codebase).
I've talked about the tools I've built for this before; what I did more recently was take the GUI focused tool I built and made it scriptable. So instead of a few menu picks, listbox selections and button presses, it's now more like this:
BuildTool generateFor: logicalName useSmartBundle: aBoolean version: versionString startWithImage: imageName
And that can be fired off via a batch file (this is Windows) - and that in turn could be automated via higher level tools - maybe I'll start investigating something like Hudson. It's coming together pretty nicely, and I can now kick off a complete build, starting from a base visual.im, and within 15 minutes have a development image and a runtime, ready to go.
This is why I'm so skeptical about "alternative" energy - in the UK, one of the bigwigs in their power industry has started explaining what kinds of "benefits" there will be once they move to more wind based power:
Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.
Where I come from, that's a bug, not a feature.
Peter William Lount has been working on Zokutalk as a side project for quite awhile - here's a code example to give you an idea as to what he's been up to. If nothing else, it's a stab at a file based syntax for a Smalltalk-like language.
Well, it looks like I'll get to play DA2 before I have more time with the XBox:
My connection speed in the hotel isn't speedy, but I should have the game when I get back from work tomorrow :)
Technorati Tags: da2
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at VA Smalltalk - how do you load Seaside support and get started with it? 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:
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:
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, va smalltalk, seaside
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The ESUG board has made the call for contributions for the 2011 event in Edinburgh:
We are proud to invite submisssions to the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies which is held as part of the ESUG 2011 joint event at Edinburgh. The goals of the workshop is to create a forum around advances or experience in Smalltalk. We welcome contributions on all aspects, theoretical as well as practical, of Smalltalk related topics
Technorati Tags: esug11
I paused my DA2 download this morning, because it was proceeding way too slowly - at the rate it was going, it might have finished before I check out on Thursday.As it happens, I'm heading to my sister's house for dinner this evening, and my plan is to take advantage of their broadband to finish the job. I'll be able to play the game on my flight home this week :)
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at using Javascript to replace an entire document. 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:
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:
Technorati Tags: javascript, dom, tutorial
Enclosures:
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After grabbing the FIOS powered bandwidth at my sister's house, I got Dragon Age 2 |
Now, I don't have a lot iof thoughts on gameplay yet - I've only just gotten past the "one year later" in Kirkwall part, when you start to see the quests that are more related to the main game plot.
I decided to play a mage - I like mages, and it seemed like a fun way to get started with some of the updates. The spell progression system is organized differently, but was easy enough to get into. Playing a mage seems more fun in this game - I'm not sure I can really put my finger on it, but it just feels like there's more going on, even when I'm just using the basic staff power. Maybe it's the updated animations; in any event, it's pretty fun. I'll get further with it on my flight home, and then I'll start playing on the XBox this weekend - I think I'll try a Rogue there, just to do something different.
I'm not sure when Michael and I will launch the new DA2 oriented podcast - it might be next week, since we'll both be at Smalltalk Solutions :)
Peter Fisk has been busy with QuickSilver Smalltalk of late:
Currently, I am porting QuickSilver from ExtJs 3.3 to ExtJs 4.0. There has been a complete rewrite of much of the library and this has resulted in a great deal of work in migrating the Smalltalk widget libraries.
Technorati Tags: javascript, extjs, quicksilver
With the slack sales of the Volt, Chevy is thinking about some course corrections:
The battery pack is far and away the most expensive single component in the car and the thought is that a reduction of the pure EV range to just 20 miles (down from its current 30 - 50) could have a whopping $10,000 reduction in cost.
The trouble is, the price tag isn't the only problem - the range is. Why would anyone want a car with a 20 mile range (extended some by a small gas tank) instead of a regular car that gets 35 mpg, or a hybrid that does better than that? My 1989 clunker gets between 30-35 mpg right now, so I just can't see the point. And mind you, this is from someone who drives less than 5000 miles a year....
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at versioning objects when you use BOSS in VisualWorks. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube.
The code used in the screencast for BOSS is below:
person := Person new. person first: 'James'. person last: 'Robertson'. bos := BinaryObjectStorage onNew: 'people.bos' asFilename writeStream. bos nextPut: person. bos close. bos := BinaryObjectStorage onOld: 'people.bos' asFilename readStream. person2 := bos next. bos close. ^person2.
To watch now, click on the image below:
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:
Technorati Tags: vw, smalltalk, boss, versioning
Enclosures:
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I'm heading to Smalltalk Solutions tomorrow, so the screencasts will be on hiatus for a week. The good news is that I expect to return with a fair amount of audio for the podcast. Wish me luck on my presentation, and I hope to see you in Vegas!
Technorati Tags: sts11
Looks like things are happening at Camp Smalltalk at StS 2011.
Technorati Tags: sts11
Welcome to episode 21 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week I have another presentation from ESUG 2010 - Stephanne Ducasse talking about patterns in open source software development.
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!
Enclosures:
[im21.mp3 ( Size: 7452204 )]
Welcome to episode 21 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week I have another presentation from ESUG 2010 - Stephanne Ducasse talking about patterns in open source software development.
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!
Enclosures:
[im21.m4a ( Size: 10379790 )]
