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js4u

JS 4U 52: Prepend and Append

May 3, 2011 6:51:40.244

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using JQuery selectors to select an element, and use prepend and append to modify it. 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:

JQuery and CSS

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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culture

It's Not Hell, but you Can See it From There

May 3, 2011 10:58:47.202

My brain hurts.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

OpenQwaq Released

May 3, 2011 16:57:44.789

Spotted in Torsten's Blog:

The OpenQwaq project is based on the commercial software that Teleplace has been delivering to the market over the past four years. It is a highly-secure, enterprise-class virtual collaboration platform that has been used by large commercial enterprises and federal agencies. The OpenQwaq project enables organizations - large and small, profit and not-for-profit - to implement virtual workspaces for their specific needs.

Licensed under GPL2, so you may need to look into whether you can make use of it in your context.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Learn Smalltalk in French

May 3, 2011 17:26:05.000

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Toronto

May 3, 2011 17:55:37.659

Bob Nemec runs the Smalltalk STUG in Toronto, Canada, and has an interesting post up:

I've been involved with the Toronto Smalltalk User Group for 20 years now, the past dozen or so as the primary organizer. Lately we've had a few people show up that were new to Smalltalk and wanted to learn more. We talk to them about the simple syntax, show them Pharo and Seaside, tell them about the other dialects, and try whatever we can to get them enthused.

He goes on to talk about the things he likes about Smalltalk; go read the whole thing.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

JTalk adds DNU Support

May 3, 2011 22:56:13.000

Jtalk (Smalltalk on Javascript) now has support for DNU.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

OpenQwaq Python Integration

May 4, 2011 6:48:37.146

Andreas Raab has been exploring the OpenQwaq codebase, and has found some cool stuff. For instance:

This is the first part of our series about the Cool bits of OpenQwaq. OpenQwaq has a complete integration with Python. What this means is that from OpenQwaq you can call Python code simply via something like here:


Python initialize. "initialize the bridge"
module := Python loadModule: 'ExampleModule'.
result := module call: 'add' with: 3 with: 4.
instance := module call: 'ExampleClass'.
instance call: 'exampleMethod' with: instance.

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posted by James Robertson

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st4u

ST 4U 78 - Update a VW Bundle

May 4, 2011 9:33:17.735

Today's Smalltalk 4 You shows you how to easily update all of the packages contained within a bundle (including sub-bundles within it). The code I used in the screencast is in the public store - it can also be downloaded as a zip file. 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:

Update a Bundle

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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games

Honest Hearts: May 17

May 4, 2011 10:02:12.335

Looks like the next Fallout: New VegasXbox 360 Games) is coming out May 17, all platforms:

Honest Hearts is an upcoming add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by Bethesda Softworks. Unlike Dead Money, it will be released simultaneously on all platforms[1] on May 17, 2011.

I wonder if the botched patch delayed it more than Sony's PSN shutdown due to the data breach...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeak Being Ported to Google Client

May 5, 2011 6:42:18.929

Yoshiki Ohshima is porting Squeak to the Google native client

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Examining the Smalltalks

May 5, 2011 6:49:07.459

Thomas Koschate looks around the world of Smalltalk - he has some useful advice for both Cincom and Instantiations, and notes that on a personal level, he's looking at Pharo. That accords with my progression as well, in a lot of ways :)

posted by James Robertson

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js4u

JS 4U 53: JQuery Data Function

May 5, 2011 12:20:43.418

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using the JQuery data() function to attach data to a page 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:

Data function

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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st4u

ST 4U 79: Exploring the VA Inspector

May 6, 2011 8:57:19.754

Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes an overview look at the browser set in VA Smalltalk (omitting the ENVY specific ones - we'll go through those in a separate tutorial). If you prefer a written walkthrough to video, then skip down to 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:

VA Inspector

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:


Today we'll look at the inspector in VA Smalltalk. First, open a workspace, and enter something you can inspect - in the example below, it's a simple string concatenation expression. Note that you don't need to highlight the expression to inspect it - simply drop the cursor at the end of the expression:

Inspect an Expression

Inspect an Expression

The inspector shows you the object, and any component parts. For a string, that's the individual slots with characters; for a non collection, it would instead show instance variables:

Inspector

Once you have the inspector, you can drill down on any element by double clicking on it. You can also open a little execution workspace attached to the inspector - go to the Options menu and select Workspace:

Attached Workspace

Finally, if you want to capture a screenshot (of the window or entire screen), you don't need to leave VA for that. Simply open the Options menu again, and follow the Snapshot pull right. There are various options for what you can snapshot, and how to save what you decide to grab:

Screen Capture

Need more help? There's a screencast for other topics like this which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.

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Macintosh

Macs and ARM Chips?

May 6, 2011 12:14:23.910

Color me a bit skeptical:

According to the SemiAccurate website, Apple is planning to move to ARM chips as soon as possible. Sources have told the website that this is a "done deal." The reported deal could also see ARM chips make their way into Apple's desktop range as well.

Maybe - you can't easily predict Apple's future actions. However, consider the success of the Mac in recent years - which has been partially fueled by the higher level of compatibility with stock PC's. It makes it far, far easier to run Windows apps on Macs using Fusion or Parallels - and for home use, it makes a lot of Windows games accessible to Mac users. Would Apple pitch all of that? I have my doubts.

posted by James Robertson

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tv

How Do They Write Out of This?

May 7, 2011 10:53:14.269

I had Peter's location in "Fringe" nailed - the future of the main reality (i.e., not Walternate's). What I didn't see coming was the last minute or two - when Peter disappeared and the Observers note that "of course they don't remember him, he never existed".

So.... if Peter never existed, how did the two realities interesect in the first place? Walter only crossed over to save Peter. No Peter, no cross over. No cross over, no reality collision. Next season has a lot of gap filling to do, I think :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in New Mexico

May 7, 2011 17:05:41.000

Looking for a short Smalltalk gig? If you know Pharo or Squeak - and Seaside - this might be for you:

My apologies for the short lead time, but I need a person that is very conversant with Squeak-Seaside-Pharo-Pier-GLASS plus an interest and ability to quickly learn and mentor others in web-mobile languages and tools. Will be working with English speakers, so facility in that language is essential. The person must be able to be in New Mexico, US, from May 23 to July 29.

If that interests you, contact David West.

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posted by James Robertson

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holiday

Mother's Day

May 8, 2011 6:53:17.000

My daughter made this using Marzipan and food coloring - by hand:

posted by James Robertson

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podcast

IM 28: Xtreams Part 2

May 8, 2011 12:04:32.812

Welcome to episode 28 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 - it's Michael Lucas-Smith and Martin Kobetic talking about Xtreams. This is part 2 of this presentation - part 1 was released last week.

Xtreams is a generalized stream/iterator framework providing simple, unified API for reading from different kinds of sources and writing into different kinds of destinations (Collections, Sockets, Files, Pipes, etc). Streams themselves can be sources or destinations as well. This allows to stack streams on top of each other. At the bottom of such stack is some kind of non-stream (e.g. a collection), we will call it a terminal. Directly above that is a specialized stream providing a streaming facade over the terminal. The rest of the streams in the stack we'll call transforms. Their primary purpose is to perform some kind of transformation on the elements that are passing through. Application code interacts with the top stream of the stack the same way it would with any other stream (or stream stack) producing/consuming the same elements. The goal of the framework is to provide consistent behavior between different stacks so that the application can treat them the same way regardless of what exactly is the ultimate source or destination. For example if the application code analyzes binary data, it should be able to treat the source stream the same way if it is a simple stream over a ByteArray or if it is a stack that provides contents of a specific binary part of a mulitpart, gziped, chunked HTTP response from a socket. Xtreams is an attempt to achieve this goal in a scalable and efficient manner.

If you would prefer to watch the video, scroll down to the embed. The talk was over 90 minutes long, so I've split the audio podcast in half - part two will be out next week..

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!

Xtreams, by Michael Lucas-Smith and Martin Kobetic from Smalltalk Industry Council on Vimeo.

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podcastAAC

IM 28: Xtreams Part 2 (AAC)

May 8, 2011 12:05:25.092

Welcome to episode 28 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 - it's Michael Lucas-Smith and Martin Kobetic talking about Xtreams. This is part 2 of this presentation - part 1 was released last week.

Xtreams is a generalized stream/iterator framework providing simple, unified API for reading from different kinds of sources and writing into different kinds of destinations (Collections, Sockets, Files, Pipes, etc). Streams themselves can be sources or destinations as well. This allows to stack streams on top of each other. At the bottom of such stack is some kind of non-stream (e.g. a collection), we will call it a terminal. Directly above that is a specialized stream providing a streaming facade over the terminal. The rest of the streams in the stack we'll call transforms. Their primary purpose is to perform some kind of transformation on the elements that are passing through. Application code interacts with the top stream of the stack the same way it would with any other stream (or stream stack) producing/consuming the same elements. The goal of the framework is to provide consistent behavior between different stacks so that the application can treat them the same way regardless of what exactly is the ultimate source or destination. For example if the application code analyzes binary data, it should be able to treat the source stream the same way if it is a simple stream over a ByteArray or if it is a stack that provides contents of a specific binary part of a mulitpart, gziped, chunked HTTP response from a socket. Xtreams is an attempt to achieve this goal in a scalable and efficient manner.

If you would prefer to watch the video, scroll down to the embed. The talk was over 90 minutes long, so I've split the audio podcast in half - part two will be out next week..

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!

Xtreams, by Michael Lucas-Smith and Martin Kobetic from Smalltalk Industry Council on Vimeo.

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jobs

How to Get Hired in Software

May 8, 2011 18:18:04.000

This Slashdot post makes a ton of sense to me:

Evans takes a stab at explaining why the new guy can't code when his interviewers and HR swear that they only hire above-average/A-level/top-1% people. Evans fingers the technical interview as the culprit, saying the skills required to pass today's industry-standard software interview are not those required to be a good software developer. Instead, Evans suggests: 'Don't interview anyone who hasn't accomplished anything. Ever. Certificates and degrees are not accomplishments; I mean real-world projects with real-world users. There is no excuse for software developers who don't have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, 'I did this, all by myself!'

I think all of that helped me a lot. When I was asked about prior work, I was able to point to this blog - powered by software I wrote. I was able to point to BottomFeeder - which is largely my code (I did get a lot of help from a lot of people on that one, but it's still largely my code). I could point to my Facebook interface code (and so on, and so on). Having your own site - especially one powered by code you created - is a very easy way of saying "At least once, I did something that works". As opposed to "I received this snazzy certificate that hangs on my wall".

posted by James Robertson

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general

Conversations You Never Want to Have

May 9, 2011 0:21:59.549

All I can say is - Doh!

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

JQuery WidgetBox Ported to Seaside in VA Smalltalk

May 9, 2011 7:22:22.000

Via Joachim:

Sebastian just uploaded a port of the JQueryWidgetBox for VA Smalltalk to VASTGoodies.com.

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posted by James Robertson

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st4u

ST 4U 80: VA Smalltalk Debugger Overview

May 9, 2011 7:26:42.271

Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes an overview look at the debugger in VA Smalltalk. If you prefer a written walkthrough to video, then skip down to 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:

VA Debugger

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:


Today we'll take an overview look at the debugger in VA Smalltalk. It's a tool with a lot of functionality, so expect more on this topic soon. For today, we'll take a simple Smalltalk expression in the debugger and explore it via the debugger. Unlike the inspector, you'll need to highlight the expression in order to jump into the debugger:

Debug it

To execute the currently highlighted expression, use the Through button. That'll execute the expression, keeping the view in the current method. Over would skip past the expression, staying in this view:

Debugging

What if you want to jump into a highlighted method? Use the Into button - you'll jump into that code, and be able to step through the execution at that level. Note the change in the debugger view:

Through

There are a lot of other things you can do from here - on the menu, note the Break option:

Menu Options

We'll get to the more advanced functionality in other tutorials. For now, you should know enough to start exploring the system, and see how various things work. Try it yourself!

Need more help? There's a screencast for other topics like this which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.

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music

Cloud Player Music on your iPod

May 9, 2011 17:55:52.351

I haven't looked into Cloud Player much (between my iTunes collection and Pandora, I feel like my bases are covered) - but adding IOS support is cool. Or would be, if they put even a smidgen of effort into it:

Unfortunately, Cloud Player's interface isn't terribly friendly towards mobile devices; it uses the same layout that you get on your Mac or PC, which ends up requiring a lot of panning around on the iPhone. Amazon even tacitly acknowledges that the experience may be sub-par, saying it recommends accessing Cloud Player via the latest version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari "from your computer."

Makes me wonder. How hard would a mobile version of the website be, really?

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posted by James Robertson

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itNews

So Much for Skype

May 10, 2011 7:28:09.826

If this is true, then I don't hold out a lot of hope for the future of Skype:

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier tonight that Microsoft in what would be its most aggressive acquisition in the digital space was zeroing in on buying Skype for $8.5 billion all in with an assumption of the Luxembourg-based company’s debt.

Why do I say that? Microsoft's track record with this sort of thing. First, they tend to push all staff to come to Redmond - that will cut down on the core development team right there. Second, Microsoft pushes an "eat your own dogfood" philosophy. While I think that's a great idea in general, it's not so great for mature products. If MS does that, and decides to spend an eternity rewriting the core of Skype to be a Windows specific service, then it's just death. Not because Windows is terrible, but because that's an awful lot of wasted motion for an existing application.

That's not all though - consider the revenue picture:

With Skype, which has been aggressively expanding, Microsoft will continue to lose money in its Internet efforts. Skype lost $7 million on revenue of $860 million. Operating profits, which Skype preferred to highlight, were $264 million.

The last thing that Microsoft needs is bigger losses from their online division.

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posted by James Robertson

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js4u

JS 4U 54: JQuery Get Function

May 10, 2011 7:39:53.846

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using the JQuery get() function. 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:

JQuery get function

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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copyright

Copyright Trolling

May 10, 2011 19:58:50.620

More stupid from the trolls, and the judges who don't understand technology well enough to smack them down:

On March 17, a federal judge in the District of Columbia gave the USCG permission to demand from Internet Service Providers the name, current and permanent addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail, and device Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of those accused of copy infringement. Subpoenas are expected to go out this week, according to Wired.

I'd guess that a decent sized minority of those addresses were used by people leaching internet service off of someone else's wifi. It's not as if that's particularly hard to do.

posted by James Robertson

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