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tutorial

Using Excel with VisualWorks

March 16, 2010 16:57:41.324

This morning I did a screencast on using Excel with VisualWorks; I thought a simple walkthrough might be handy as well. The first thing you need to do after starting VW is pull up the Parcel Manager, select "OS-Windows" on the left, and "COM-All" on the right. Right click and load:

Next, close that window, and in a workspace, add this little script. Once you try it out, you can experiment on your own - and use the "Browse Automation Classes" option under the COM menu in the Launcher to explore the interfaces available to you:


"Start Excel, get dispatch driver"
excel := COMDispatchDriver createObject: 'Excel.Application'.

"Open Excel visibly"
excel setVisible: true.
excel getWorkbooks Add.
sheet := excel getActiveSheet.

"Write some data"
(excel getRange: 'A1') setValue: 'Name'.
(excel getRange: 'A2') setValue: 'Fred Flintstone'.
(excel getRange: 'A1:A2') getFont setBold: true.

"Read a cell"
(excel getRange: 'A1') getValue.

"Copy Cells"
(excel getRange: 'A1:A2') Select.
excel setCutCopyMode: false.
excel getSelection Copy.
Transcript show: Screen default getExternalSelection.

That code creates a dispatch driver, and then calls various COM APIs exposed by Excel. You'll see a few dialogs like this pop up as you execute that, as the message sends are going to COM, not Smalltalk - and thus, they don't exist in the image:

Just use the "proceed" button to dismiss those. Once you've executed all the code, you should see something like this:

Which should be Excel with the data you entered highlighted, and the copied data sitting in the Transcript, where we printed it. That's it - you're now working with Excel from VW. Go ahead and use the automation browser to explore the full API set.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Toronto

March 16, 2010 15:19:47.058

The Toronto STUG is meeting on March 22:

The next Toronto Smalltalk User Group meeting is on March 22. We'll take a look at the state of Seaside 3.0. Feel free to bring material to present, or questions to ask. We start at 6:30, Ryerson University, room ENG288 245 Church Street (at the SE corner of Gould, just north of Dundas).

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posted by James Robertson

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games

DragonAge Awakening Arrives!

March 16, 2010 14:38:13.266

It's the middle of the workday, so the only person who really gets to look at the game now is my daughter - who is camped in front of the TV as I write this. Me? I'll have a shot at the expansion this evening.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeak 4.0 - Clean License

March 16, 2010 11:27:53.829

Squeak just hit an interesting milestone - earlier this month the Squeak website posted the following:

The Squeak Oversight Board plans to finalize the multi-year effort of re-licensing Squeak. Squeak 4.0 is scheduled to be released on Monday, March 15th, 2010 and will be licensed under the MIT License with some original parts remaining under the Apache License.

Then a few minutes ago, Randal Schwartz let me know that 4.0 was out, and downloadable. So the long awaited Squeak with a clean license release has arrived. It's a great time for Smalltalk!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Pharo Gets Closer

March 16, 2010 9:21:27.418

The website hasn't been updated yet (as of this writing, anyway) - but Serge Stinckwich has posted a link to 1.0 RC3

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posted by James Robertson

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events

Conference Suggestions?

March 16, 2010 8:55:49.692

I figured other people may well have suggestions on this that I haven't thought of - what conferences do you think it would make sense to submit a Smalltalk oriented talk to? For that matter, what sort of talk do you think would be of interest and have a good chance of being accepted? Leave a comment, or drop me a line. Thanks!

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Working with Excel: Video

March 16, 2010 8:05:41.572

Today's screencast looks at working with Excel from Smalltalk. Here's the workspace I used in the screencast:


"Excel Demonstration"
excel := COMDispatchDriver createObject: 'Excel.Application'.

"Open Excel"
excel setVisible: true.
excel getWorkbooks Add.
sheet := excel getActiveSheet.

"Write some data"
(excel getRange: 'A1') setValue: 'Name'.
(excel getRange: 'A2') setValue: 'Fred Flintstone'.
(excel getRange: 'A1:A2') getFont setBold: true.

"Read a cell"
(excel getRange: 'A1') getValue.

"Copy Cells"
(excel getRange: 'A1:A2') Select.
excel setCutCopyMode: false.
excel getSelection Copy.
Transcript show: Screen default getExternalSelection.

To watch, click on the viewer below:

You can download the video directly 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 in the UK

March 16, 2010 6:17:55.471

The UK Smalltalk group is meeting on March 29th at the Counting House.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Anticipation

March 15, 2010 22:06:21.962

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of Dragon Age: Origins Awakening, the expansion pack to Dragon Age: Origins . I've been playing that game since Christmas, although I moved on to Fallout 3 this week, after my third run through of DAO. Now, I'll have to ponder which game I really want to spend time with :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

SqueakDBX: ESUG 2009 Video

March 15, 2010 12:47:53.310

Here's another ESUG 2009 video - Mariano Martinez Peck talking about SqueakDBX, a database layer (cross platform) for Squeak. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly.

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

SqueakDBX from James Robertson on Vimeo.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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culture

The Coming Hiring Disconnect

March 15, 2010 11:34:29.954

Here's something that young adults are going to need to pay attention to:

Maximum PC (April 2010, page 10), of all places, reported on a study by Microsoft which found that 70%-yes 70% of HR professionals turned down a job candidate based upon their online reputation.

More specifically, what does reputation mean here? Well, the sorts of things too many people do on Facebook (etc):

The top three reasons cited for rejecting a candidate were concerns about lifestyle, inappropriate comments, and unsuitable photos and videos.

This may change over time as hiring managers are drawn from the net generation, but then again, it may not - and I suspect that a lot of young people are in for a rude awakening

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Missed The Smalltalk World Tour?

March 15, 2010 8:44:44.880

If you missed the recent Cincom Smalltalk worldwide tour, you can still see the entire thing:

Also, if you would like to see a similar event near you - drop the STAR team a line. While we can't guarantee anything, we do take Smalltalker interest seriously.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Set up a new public store account: Video

March 15, 2010 7:51:41.904

Today's screencast looks at how you acquire a new public store repository account.

You can download the video directly 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

Solving Problems with Smalltalk: Georg Heeg

March 15, 2010 7:23:16.094

The Cincom Smalltalk team recently completed a five city tour - Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, London, and Paris. We filmed the presentations we gave at each of the one day events, and now I'm releasing the highest quality iterations. Today's video is of Georg Heeg, talking about Smalltalk's past, present, and future. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. This post wraps up all the video we have from this series of events, but there's more Smalltalk video being posted all the time - just stay subscribed to the video feed.

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

The Dead Hand of IP Laws

March 15, 2010 6:36:19.878

Like a zombie that just won't drop no matter how many bullets get fired into it, the government keeps pushing ACTA. The good news is that the EU has shot this atrocity down, so maybe - just maybe - some sanity will prevail in this space. So long as the RIAA and MPAA have money to pass around, I rather doubt it, but one can hope.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

The Mobile Future

March 15, 2010 6:30:50.748

Tim Bray has moved to Google, and has some thoughts on the Android/iPhone competition:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.

While I like the idea of wide open competition better than I like the idea of a walled garden, people seem to be choosing walled gardens in droves - Apple products and Facebook being the prime examples. A lot of people think this will be a replay of the rise of Windows, where the open platform (in the sense that anyone can write for it) will win out.

I'm not so sure. In that earlier game, the primary users skewed towards the technical. Now, the user base is broader; it's not just geeks. Apple brings tremendous ease of use and predictability to the party, while Google brings the rough edges and openness. Geeks love the latter; everyone else loves the former.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple's more closed play win, for the simple reason that it's easy, and the mainstream market isn't interested in tinkering or rough edges. We'll see how that plays out.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Industry Misinterpretations 179: BottomFeeder

March 14, 2010 21:24:39.188

We've mentioned BottomFeeder numerous times on the podcast, but this week it occurred to us that we've never actually covered it in depth on the podcast. So, this week we turned things around a bit, and Michael interviewed me about the application. Where it came from, what kinds of things went into it, who helped out on it, and where it might be headed. We also talked about a few related projects, like the blog server, and some of the social media stuff I've been working on.

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.

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 or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

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posted by James Robertson

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education

Screencasts: Quick Learning

March 14, 2010 21:10:19.928

Obviously, I like the idea of screencasts - I've been doing them every day for 3 1/2 years now :) Well, the Pharo crew is heading down the same path, and the latest one they've released looks like a great topic item: how to submit and publicize bug fixes to the Pharo team.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Immersive Games

March 14, 2010 10:34:24.202

The entire entertainment industry is shifting, with movies no longer being the biggest draw. Games are starting to be the biggest draw, and I think it's largely because they are becoming so immersive. Rather than two hours of staring at a story, you can now get many, many hours of becoming involved in a story.

Take two games I've been playing recently - Dragon Age: Origins Awakening and Fallout 3 . I played DAO a lot from Christmas (when I got it) until last week, after my third time through it. I've been playing Fallout 3 pretty continuously since. Unlike simple first person shooters, the story in these games is impacted by the things you do. While I liked Modern Warfare 2, I was pretty much done with it in a week. These games? Well, I just pre-ordered Dragon Age: Origins Awakening :)

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Apple Sells 120k iPads?

March 13, 2010 21:26:10.825

Looks like the iPad is off to a roaring start:

"Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven't touched or for that matter, even seen in person," said Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group. "And, we're still three weeks away. That is amazing."

Interestingly enough, they've sold about equal numbers of the 16, 32, and 64 GB models. I put in an order this morning - my wife has been interested in the device as an e-reader. We'll see how well that works in 3 weeks, I guess :)

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posted by James Robertson

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spam

Endless Spam

March 13, 2010 11:59:35.351

Awhile back, I started seeing an endless stream of spammers joining the Smalltalkers group at Ning. I changed the group from "open" to "managed" - now requests come to me, and I just reject the obviously bozo ones.

How do I know the bozo ones? Well, they are all using gmail address of the form "name5641@gmail.com" Fortunately, the mass suspension option under the management tab is easy to use :)

posted by James Robertson

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security

Oh, the Irony

March 13, 2010 11:01:14.441

I'm not even sure I know what to say about malware that comes with copyright protection:

The latest version of the Zeus do-it-yourself crimeware kit goes to great lengths to thwart would-be pirates by introducing a hardware-based product activation scheme similar to what's found in Microsoft Windows. The newest version with bare-bones capabilities starts at $4,000 and additional features can fetch as much as $10,000. The new feature is designed to prevent what Microsoft refers to as "casual copying" by ensuring that only one computer can run a licensed version of the program. After it is installed, users must obtain a key that's good for just that one machine.

Just when I think things can't get weirder, I run across stuff like this.

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posted by James Robertson

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books

Plugging Away at the Book List

March 13, 2010 1:40:55.271

I plowed through a few more links for the books page I put up; there's still a whole bunch more to go through though :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Video from the Smalltalk Technology Series

March 12, 2010 9:18:13.696

If you didn't get a chance to attend any of the recent Cincom Smalltalk technology events, you can still see what was presented - there's video of everything. You can subscribe to the video feed to have them downloaded directly with your favorite podcatching software, or head on over to the video page for the events.

Smalltalk technology Videos

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Solving Problems with WebVelocity: Video

March 12, 2010 8:49:59.231

The Cincom Smalltalk team recently completed a five city tour - Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, London, and Paris. We filmed the presentations we gave at each of the one day events, and now I'm releasing the highest quality iterations. Today's video is of Arden Thomas, talking about WebVelocity - the best way to get database driven website implemented and deployed quickly. To watch, click on the viewer below:

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

How to Generate a UUID: Video

March 12, 2010 8:10:26.361

Today's screencast looks at generating standard UUIDs using a small library shipped with Cincom Smalltalk.

You can download the video directly 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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news

Wire Services Vs. the Instant Net

March 12, 2010 6:40:39.209

I think life is only going to get harder for the wire services like Reuters. Bear in mind that until the internet era, wire services were Twitter-like - they were the first place that news showed up. Now?

Last night, Reuters released their social media policy, which includes instructing journalists to avoid exposing bias online and tells them specifically not to "scoop the wire" by breaking stories on Twitter.

I understand their point, but am not at all sure how they'll accomplish this. When a huge story (like the Chilean earthquake) breaks now, where does the early news flow from? Twitter, uStream, and other similar services. The wire services are in the same position that newspapers were in when the wire services popped up - and they eventually chose to work with the wires.

It'll be harder for the wire services, because they can't work with Twitter (et. al.) exclusively, as the papers were able to do. IMHO, this just heralds more disintermediation.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPad Pre-Orders?

March 12, 2010 6:32:32.879

Does this mean that the Apple store is prepping for iPad pre-orders?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

How to Get a Human from a Chimpanzee

March 12, 2010 6:12:37.109

You'll have to read Travis' post to see what that means :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Moving the VW UI Forward

March 12, 2010 0:07:44.194

Travis Griggs explains a possible way forward that doesn't involve another whole raft of UI look subclasses - complete with a screencast.

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posted by James Robertson

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books

A Reading List

March 11, 2010 15:21:08.481

I need to go back further in my blog archives, but I've put together a partial list of the books I've reviewed - either here or on my Cincom blog. Check it out :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Cairo and Pango

March 11, 2010 14:49:22.477

Chris Thorgrimmsen has put up a really nice post on his usage of Cairo and Pango for some really nice graphics and text effects - follow the link to see just how nice :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Solving Problems with VisualWorks: Video

March 11, 2010 12:17:39.258

The Cincom Smalltalk team recently completed a five city tour - Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, London, and Paris. We filmed the presentations we gave at each of the one day events, and now I'm releasing the highest quality iterations. Today's video is of Arden Thomas and me, talking about the solving problems with VisualWorks. Arden handles the slides, while I did a demo involving VW and ActiveX controls in Windows. To watch, click on the viewer below

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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books

Alternate History, Speculative Futures

March 11, 2010 12:03:22.748

I just finished reading two books - Robert Conroy's Red Inferno: 1945:, and Carl Berryman's 2013: World War III. Of the two, the alternate reality book - Conroy's positing of a few small changes that led to an immediate war with the USSR in 1945, before the one with Germany was really done, was way, way more plausible - not to mention better written.

The Berryman book suffered on two counts - first, if it was edited at all, I'd fire the editor. Second, the premise of a massive Chinese "lebensraum" style war is something I just don't buy, based on the historical behavior of the "Middle Kingdom". Had the text not suffered from such bad editing - spelling issues, poor grammar, you name it - it might have been an enjoyable yarn. As it is, it reads more like an early draft that's in need of major work. I just can't recommend it.

Conroy's book, on the other hand, was a great read, and I found the premise entirely plausible - Truman sends a small force towards Berlin to ensure that the western allies get their promised share of Berlin, Stalin goes paranoid, and boom - Zhukov keeps going west. It's a fast read, and I think Conroy's writing is getting better. I've read some of his earlier stuff, and I can say that I look forward to whatever he does next.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Useful Editing Features: Video

March 11, 2010 8:28:09.576

Today's screencast looks at some useful features of the refactoring browser that you might have missed.

You can download the video directly 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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development

The Stickiness of Decisions

March 11, 2010 8:06:23.837

Way back when data was stored on floppy disks (and then hard drives measured in tens of megabytes), a decision was made on formatting - creating 512k blocks for data storage. Fast forward to today, and that seems ridiculous - but the standard is still there (especially for Windows users), and it's about to cause a bit of grief for people still using XP - hardware vendors are moving to 4k blocks to eliminate some of the wasted space issues:

To help Windows XP cope, advanced format drives will be able to pretend they still use sectors 512 bytes in size. When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.

Never mind whether you should move from XP to Windows 7; what this really points out to me is just how persistent some early decisions end up being. A mostly arbitrary choice in how data is formatted on a storage medium back in the early days of the PC is still with us. Legacy hierarchical databases are still with us. Choices being made now about how to communicate data over HTTP (like JSON) will still be with us twenty years from now too - because lots and lots of stuff will be written to those APIs.

When you sit back and think about it, it looks like a lot more thought should go into this stuff :)

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posted by James Robertson

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games

A Whole New Civ

March 11, 2010 7:51:19.503

Civ V sounds like a pretty big break from previous CIv iterations - no stacks of units, conquest rules are different, the map will be hexes instead of squares, and it sounds like combat will involve a whole lot more tactical level attention. Get the full scoop over at GameSpot.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Metacello in Action

March 11, 2010 6:36:12.868

posted by James Robertson

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development

Enterprises Vs. Scale

March 10, 2010 19:50:23.769

I like this article by Dare Obasanjo on the relational DB/NoSQL divide - and his summary makes a great point, I think:

For these reasons I expect we'll see more large scale websites decide that instead of treating a SQL database as a denormalized key-value pair store that they would rather use a NoSQL database. However I also suspect that a lot of services who already have a sharded relational database + in-memory cache solution can get a lot of mileage from more judicious usage of in-memory caches before switching. This is especially true given that you still caches in front of your NoSQL databases anyway. There's also the question of whether traditional relational database vendors will add features to address the shortcomings highlighted by the NoSQL movement? Given that the sort of companies adopting NoSQL are doing so because they want to save costs on software, hardware and operations I somehow doubt that there is a lucrative market here for database vendors versus adding more features that the banks, insurance companies and telcos of the world find interesting.

I have to agree there - the needs of the enterprise seem to be diverging from the needs of the large scale website rapidly. Mind you, most websites are not large scale things - for every Digg or Twitter, there are tons of sites that get in the hundreds or low thousands of pageviews a day, and scale just fine with databases or even flat files. I think it remains to be seen whether the NoSQL movement will get much attention beyond the huge scale sites.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Enterprise Development with ObjectStudio: Video

March 10, 2010 18:39:07.065

The Cincom Smalltalk team recently completed a five city tour - Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, London, and Paris. We filmed the presentations we gave at each of the one day events, and now I'm releasing the highest quality iterations. Today's video is of Andreas Hiltner, talking about the Modeling and Mapping tools, and how they can aid enterprise Windows development using ObjectStudio 8. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. Stay tuned - there's more to come from this series of events!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

A Personal Repository with MS Access: Video

March 10, 2010 9:17:13.765

Today's screencast looks at setting up a personal Store Repository on Windows using MS Access.

You can download the video directly 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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weather

One Month Later

March 10, 2010 8:21:30.601

It's been a month since Snowmageddon, and my front yard still has a fair amount of snow on it - even after a couple weeks of temps above 40:

posted by James Robertson

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security

The Rootkit that keeps going, and going...

March 10, 2010 6:32:45.903

Looks like Energizer needs to spiff up their internal procedures:

If you've bought the Energizer DUO USB battery charger, you might want to uninstall the software immediately. Why? Because it comes pre-loaded with a backdoor that can let someone remotely access your computer.

This is the scariest kind of security problem, because you tend to default to trusting software that comes from a reputable vendor.

posted by James Robertson

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open source

Enterprise Mashup

March 9, 2010 22:48:55.386

I find this announcement fascinating - a mashup of MS Outlook and Google Docs, using the APIs from both products:

Effective today, Mainsoft is offering full-featured access to Google Docs documents directly from within Microsoft Outlook. Their belief is that e-mail and document collaboration sites need to work together seamlessly — so end users can be more productive. They're also planning to give away software that offers full-featured access to SharePoint document libraries, within Microsoft Outlook. So to reiterate — full use of Google docs within Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint — tools enterprise users are used to, with the significant benefits that the cloud brings.
The Mainsoft product is called Harmony and will be a free product and has been built using SharePoint Web Services interfaces and Google Docs open APIs, giving full-featured access to Google Docs or SharePoint documents from an Outlook sidebar.

I'd love to know what Microsoft thinks of that. On the one hand, it doesn't displace Outlook. On the other hand, if an outfit that wants to go with Google Docs finds that they pretty much only use Outlook from the Office Suite, that could cause some heartburn.

Not having used Google Docs, I can't really say anything about whether they would actually serve as a replacement for Word and Excel. I've been happy enough with Apple's iWork, so I haven't seen any reason to wander over that way.

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gadgets

No iPad Shortage?

March 9, 2010 21:22:08.250

According to one analyst firm, the rumors of a looming iPad shortage are just that: rumors:

Apple is on track to build 5 million iPads in the first half of 2010, according to FBR Capital chip analyst Craig Berger. "We believe various news articles and competitor notes calling for a build delay were just false alarms," he writes. The company, of course, has now set an April 3 launch for Wi-Fi versions of the iPad, with 3G versions to ship toward the end of April.

I guess we'll find out soon enough; pre-orders start this week.

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posted by James Robertson

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stupidity

What Can He Drive off a Cliff Next?

March 9, 2010 17:42:17.562

Hey look - Mr. "I collected a huge payoff for my great success at driving Sun into the ground" Schwartz has a new blog. Looks like he's trying to explain himself. What I'd like to know is this: does he still think that "give it all away for free, and then somehow make it up in volume" is a good business plan?

If so, he's got a great future with the underpants gnomes.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Unintended Consequences

March 9, 2010 11:30:51.793

This is one of the funny things about the way patent infringement suits tend to go - you can aim it as well as you want, but you may get results you didn't expect. Consider Apple's auits against HTC, based on their multi-touch work. They seem to be aiming at Google, which could end up empowering... Microsoft:

Even before the lawsuit, handset makers were having second thoughts about Google, which with the Nexus One had become a direct competitor. Now their faith in Android as the easiest and cheapest way to counter the iPhone has been shaken, says Reiner. The unintended consequence, he suggests, is to send them into the arms of Microsoft (MSFT) and Win7 Mobile.
"Our checks," writes Reiner, "indicate that Microsoft has been quick to sniff out this burgeoning opportunity and has begun to aggressively promote the strength of its own IP portfolio, as well as its willingness to join battle with customers that come under IP attack."

I had been thinking that Microsoft was out of the handset running, but this Apple campaign could actually give them new life. Whether that's better for them than just trying to, you know, actually compete better, is an open question.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Working with the Windows Registry: Video

March 9, 2010 9:32:55.642

Today's screencast takes a look at the Registry package, a contributed piece that makes it easier to work with the Windows registry from Smalltalk .

You can download the video directly 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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windows

The Downside to Running a Windows VM

March 9, 2010 7:13:02.032

Since I don't run Windows every day - and i sometimes go a weeks between runs of my Windows 7 VM - the updates tend to pile up. I was about to look at doing some more VW/COM screencasts, when I discovered that 370 MB of updates had piled up. There goes the next little while :)

posted by James Robertson

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books

Moose in Print

March 9, 2010 7:02:28.392

Tudor Girba is working on a Moose book:

This book offers an overview of the Moose platform for software and data analysis. More specifically it covers version 4.0.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

Living in the Future

March 9, 2010 6:43:15.767

Apparently, I've been living in the future since 1993: That's when I started woking out of my home office, using the net to stay in contact with the rest of the company. Back then it was dialup and email (pretty much only email) - now it's irc, various IM systems, and social networks. Either way though, I've been in the "virtual office" for a long time. Video chat one on one is now feasible (along with screen sharing) with tools like skype and iChat; I suspect that having multiple people on a video call will start being feasible without the expensive hookups soon.

What made me think about this? Dvorak writing about what print publishers should have done (and should still do):

With a single layer of editorial control, establish a virtual office environment with telecommuting, teleconferencing, and a VPN ring for the employees who can work from anywhere in the world.

That pretty much applies to anyone who's not doing collective manual labor, I think. More and more, work is going to get distributed. Management theory will have to do a lot of catching up.

posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Let's Do the Time Warp

March 9, 2010 6:20:27.777

Ever wanted to experience 1993 (at least the web part) again? Well, if you have a modern Linux distro, you can:

Github user Alan Dipert has posted the source code for NCSA Mosaic 2.7 on the code-hosting website. You can download it and run it on any modern Linux installation. It seems to run on Ubuntu just fine, though PNG support is a little wonky. The good news is that the folks on Github are actively submitting patches.

You'll have to ignore Google (or any modern search engine) to get the real feel, but there it is. It's hard to explain why those of us who were in that first wave of online users were so excited, given images like this:

Just seeing that "S" image brings back memories :)

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posted by James Robertson

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