The author of this blog, James Robertson, passed away in April 2014. This blog is being maintained by David Buck (david@simberon.com).
I can't complain about the flight itself - it left on time, and arrived early. It's just that I had forgotten how painful overnight flights are :) Going through the day on the short sleep you manage on a 3 hour overnight flight just doesn't cut it :)
Apparently, taking the redeye from Las Vegas wasn't enough excitement. I was dozing off on my connection from Minneapolis to BWI when the flight attendant announced that the plane had "an electrical problem", and we were diverting to Madison. I wasn't worried, since there wasn't an obvious problem. When we got here there were emergency vehicles all down the runway, and they had us towed to the gate rather than using the plane's power. Then there were firemen meeting the plane, both outside and in the jetway. So.... I'm guessing that we won't just be hopping back on that same plane after a brief stop :)
Bottom line, I have no idea how long I'll be stuck here. My trip just got longer :/
Update: Well, things are defined, but not well. I'm catching a flight from here at 3:30, and then I get a 2 1/2 hour layover in Minneapolis, before I fly from there to Baltimore. That gets in at 10:30 PM. This day just keeps getting longer :)
I had a fairly epic "if it can go wrong, it will" sort of day yesterday - here's what happened:
It was that sort of day.
Google Summer of Code is a global program sponsored by Google that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. The Smalltalk community has a successful record of participation in the scheme, under the aegis of ESUG in recent years, and our organisers are looking for students and ideas, (and even better, students with ideas) for our entry in this year’s programme.
Technorati Tags: esug
Sometimes, a seemingly inocuous decision has long shadows. Consider the rolling blackouts in Japan - which are exacerbated by choices made well over a century ago:
The AEG equipment produced electricity at Europe's 50Hz (hertz, or cycles per second) standard while the General Electric gear matched the U.S. 60Hz standard. That probably didn't seem important at the time -- after all, light bulbs are happy on either frequency -- but the impact of those decisions is being seen today. All of eastern Japan, including Tokyo and the disaster-struck region to the north, is standardized on 50Hz supply while the rest of the country uses 60Hz.
Without enough changing stations (they only have enough to handle 1 GW), they can't share power across that divide. Makes you wonder how many "we really ought to update this" meetings took place over the last century that ended with "nah, we have other priorities right now". Now relate that sort of thing to wherever you work and the legacy systems you have lying around. Less critical to be sure, but still....
The whole genre of sites such as Digg seems to be fading. Reddit is suffering a brain drain, and over at Digg, even the founder doesn't use it much. Computerworld explains why:
Getting on the front page of Digg was everything, because the site's millions of users used to read the front page like it was the morning paper. The early movers who collected a lot of friends were able to get even more friends by getting on the front page. A Digg aristocracy emerged. Influence on Digg became a winner-take-all system, with the majority locked out of meaningful participation.
Which made it not terribly different than any arbitrary news site - editors promote stories either way, it's just that the Digg system involved a more ad hoc set of editors who had self selected at some point in time. Even if you posted a story before one of the editors did, you just wouldn't get the votes - they would. That drives a kind of "meh, why participate" mindset, which in turn closes the circle of participation even more. Rinse repeat a few times, and you effectively have an old style writer/editor cycle.
Their handling of messaging just exacerbated things; follow the link for that bit. At the end of the day, I think Facebook became what Digg could have been.
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I've been playing Dragon Age 2 |
In DAO, you could run a lot of the combats as a button mashing exercise. In DA2, right through Act 2, you really need to run things more tactically. On the Mac (or PC), that's far easier. You can have each character target a specific enemy much, much more easily. Either way though, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit.
Technorati Tags: hawke, da2, dragon age
Welcome to episode 22 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week's podcast was recorded at Smalltalk Solutions 2011 with James Savidge, after day one. We went over the talks we attended, what we thought, and our general impressions of the event.
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:
[im22.mp3 ( Size: 12945645 )]
Welcome to episode 22 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week's podcast was recorded at Smalltalk Solutions 2011 with James Savidge, after day one. We went over the talks we attended, what we thought, and our general impressions of the event.
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:
[im22.m4a ( Size: 17988875 )]
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at loading Seaside into a base Pharo image from scratch, using Monticello. 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:
Enclosures:
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I finally pulled the plug on my unlimited iPhone data plan - I needed to travel to NYC this morning, and I needed network access. The Acela has WiFi, but when it's your own nickel, it's a bit pricey (which is really something that the HSR backers need to consider).
Anyway - a quick phone call to AT&T and I was sharing a hotspot with my Mac, my work laptop, and my daughter's Mac. I can work, as the VPN connection worked out as well. A bit slower than what I'm used to at home, but hey - it works. I'll have to watch the b/w usage; I already explained to my daughter that streaming video is not something we want to use on this :)
Here's an idea I've been hammering on for years - complicated pricing kills sales:
One thing many companies — in any industry — can learn from Apple is the importance of simple pricing. If you make it easy for people to understand how much they’re paying, and what they’re paying for, it is more likely that they’ll buy it. Or perhaps this is driven more by the converse: if people are confused about how much they have to pay, they’re more likely not to.
That's obvious, and yet so many companies miss it. You'll often hear that "the Enterprise is different", but remember - purchasing agents are just people too, and if they can't follow your pricing they'll get every bit as jumpy as anyone else.
Also, clear pricing doesn't have to mean low pricing. Apple certainly isn't found in the bargain aisle at the Dollar store...
Update: Along the same lines as this post, I got an email this morning that had this in it:
I’m shocked at how difficult it is to buy a copy of VisualWorks! I couldn’t find a link on the site: “Buy this software” I ended up leaving a generic message.
Make it hard to buy your software, and you'll needlessly limit the size of your user base.
Technorati Tags: sales
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at using Javascript to modify an attribute of a specific DOM element. 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, tutorial, attributes
Enclosures:
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GNU Smalltalk 3.2.4 is out - download it here, and go visit the website for the details on what's new.
Technorati Tags: gst, gnu smalltalk
In the overblown worries department:
Even bigger change came with the rise of social networks and various web apps. Every day more content is hidden in the walled gardens of the web, like Facebook or Twitter, behind the fence of login and password. Just think about it: how much interesting content have you discovered in your friend’s updates, notes and tweets? This content is invisible to Google and other search engines, it’s not backed up by wayback machine or proxy servers. The number of people seeing only the things recommended by their social circle is growing.
Well gosh, a decade ago, Google wasn't indexing my conversations with friends after a golf game, either. How private conversations on Facebook and Twitter differ from that sort of thing is an exercise left to the sane....
Technorati Tags: social media
Business Insider ticks off all the pieces that Amazon has already put in place - they have the full retail experience down pat. If they released an Android based tablet, they would probably blow all the other Android players over to the sidelines and quickly become the main alternative to Apple. It all makes sense, too.
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at running an image you saved after starting up a "one click" pharo 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:
Enclosures:
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Eliot's Cog VM for Squeak and Pharo now has a Google code project.
Leandro Caniglia has gotten a paper he wrote about testing (in the context of a large application he's involved in) in the magazine "Testing Experience". I can't link directly to the article (looks like you need a subscription) - but as I post this, the title of the paper:
Testing PetroVR, a software solution for the Oil & Gas Market
Is in the index.
Technorati Tags: testing
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we start looking at the mos popular Javascript library at present - JQuery. 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, jquery, tutorial
Enclosures:
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There's a short "Flavor of Smalltalk Solutions 2011" video on the STIC site. One caveat - if you try to view that on a mobile device that doesn't support Flash (or doesn't have that support loaded), you'll just get a blank frame.
on both on both my Mac and the XBox - and I have to say, it's been easier on the Mac. Why?