There's a good review of the new DLC for Mass Effect 2 on the Escapist site, but here's my complaint about Lair of the Shadow Broker (at least on the XBox) - it's got bugs.
Here's what I mean. At the beginning, after the car chase mentioned in the review, you end up on a roof fighting a few waves of mercs. The fight is fine, except for one small problem: I ran this twice, and both times, the mercs stopped coming, the game stayed in combat mode, and I couldn't progress past the roof. It was bad enough that I just put the game down (which is too bad; I really liked Mass Effect 2
).
My daughter says she's waiting for a patch before she even bothers with it. I think that's where I am, too.
I finished the new Dragon Age: Origins
DLC last night (later than I should have; I'm pretty tired now). It was short, but provides an obvious bridge towards the changes that are coming in Dragon Age 2. The ending of the DLC depends heavily on how you've played your character, and how true to that character you decide that you want to play it. The one I imported was in a romance with Morrigan, so I couldn't see my way clear to ending it with a confrontation. That looks like it sets up one possible encounter between Hawke and the warden in the sequel - things could go very differently if you decide to force a confrontation.
I do have to agree with my daughter though - it looks like Witch Hunt would be more interesting if you bring in a Dalish elf, because the setup is dependent on the origin story from that background. So.... Tonight I'll be off creating another character :)
I'm not going to make an official statement about VSE here - I will note, however, that an awful lot has been written about this long moribund product recently. One of the best things I've seen is Joachim's essay on the subject.
If you are a VSE user, there are good options out there. Cincom, for instance, has a Windows 7 certified Smalltalk product (ObjectStudio) for you to consider. VSE was a Windows 95 logo certified product "back in the day" - what better way to stay current than to move on to the only Windows 7 certified Smalltalk environment?
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you use HTTP authentication (Basic, Digest, or NTLM) in Cincom Smalltalk. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:
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This is a cool sounding device, but while I was reading it, I was thinking about the old days of DOS hard drives a bazillion partitions:
After you've loaded the HyperDrive with your media, you connect it to your iPad with a USB cable and an Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. While the Camera Connection Kit traditionally allows you to connect your iPad to SD cards and self-powered USB devices, it also has a disk-size limit of 32GB, which makes it impossible to connect standard USB hard drives. The HyperDrive works around this limit by turning its individual file folders into virtual 32GB drives that are each separately readable by the iPad.
We spoke to John Maloney about Scratch awhile back (part 1 here, part 2 here) - now Scratch is available for the Arduino, courtesy of the Citilab folks:
S4A is a Scratch modification that supports simple programming of the Arduino open source hardware platform. It provides new blocks for managing sensors and actuators connected to Arduino. There is also a sensor report board similar to the PicoBoard.
I've published some packages that help developing applications that use the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). Dojo is a Javascript library that provides DOM queries and manipulation functions, event handling, Ajax requests, widgets and more.
It's for Squeak now, but it looks like porting it would be simple
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you use HTTP authentication (Basic, Digest, or NTLM) in Cincom Smalltalk. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:
You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.
You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Now I'm just baffled. Last week, I got xAuth working in Smalltalk - I was able to post a few tweets from a VisualWorks workspace. I then pushed the code out to my blog server, and wham, it stopped working. I can't make test tweets from a workspace any longer even, with the same code. Bizarre. It can't be my code; nothing changed. I get "invalid signature" back with every attempt, from code that worked just fine last week.
Goran has posted an interview he conducted with Dan Ingalls over skype. We've wanted to get Dan on the podcast for eons, but haven't been able to arrange it.
It looks like a rough consensus about the database layer is forming across the various Smalltalk dialects, and it's GLORP. We spoke to John O'Keefe about that on the podcast, and today I ran across this post about moving that stuff forward on VA.
The Good news? I have the blog working in a 7.7.1 based image. The bad news? It's not auto-tweeting, and I'm not at all sure why. Time for some exciting debugging :)
How can September 7th be a work day? "Lair of the ShadowBroker" is coming out for Mass Effect 2, and "Witch Hunt" is coming out for Dragon Age. There aren't enough hours in the day :)
Well this is bad news. One of our favorite restaurants here in Columbia - Strapazza - closed. We hadn't gone there in about a month, and we wanted to order from there throught carryoutmenu.com when we got home from Florida awhile back. We noticed that they weren't one of the options, but just figured they had dropped out of that system. Then today, at the Labor Day party we went to, we found out that the restaurant is closed down.
Very sad news for us - we loved that place. I guess we need to find a new Italian joint near here...
The blog has been a bit unstable this morning - and that's because I'm in the process of updating it from what it was running on - VisualWorks 7.6 - to the latest release, VisualWorks 7.7.1.
I'm finding the same thing that many people encounter when they update - a number of small things that only surface when you actually make the switch. My blog server code has been around since 2002, and it's been updated as I've needed to over time. That means that pieces of it are pretty old though, and every so often one of the older bits surfaces and bites me. This morning, it was an old signal based exception handler that did it to me.
The reason I'm updating? Mostly it has to do with wanting the auto-tweet feature back. I got xAuth working against Twitter yesterday, posted a few test tweets from a workspace, and now I'm just trying to get that wrapped up. I have a party to go to today, so maybe this isn't the brightest timing :)
On the other hand, I have easy access to the VPS from anywhere, and could fire up the 7.6 based sever if I had to. Onward!
Update: Sigh. Not quite yet, apparently. I think I'll leave it on the older version and take a run at it tonight or tomrrow. I don't need to spend the bbq doing sys admin work :)
It's Labor Day Weekend here in the US - which means that after today, most outdoor public pools close down, and schools will all be back in session. While it's still summer weather, the slide towards fall and winter has definitely begun.
Here in Maryland, we hope that doesn't mean more of this in a few months :)
This week's podcast is part 1 of a 2 part interview with John O'Keefe, Principal Smalltalk Architect at Instantiations. With the recent news from them - Google buying the Java business, and Instantiations becoming a pure Smalltalk play - we thought a talk with them would be interesting. We weren't wrong - John had a lot of things to say! We'll have part 2 next Sunday.
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.
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It's the game that won't die. After officially dying last year, it's back - with a 2011 release date from a real vendor:
After what is arguably the longest, most troubled development in the history of video games, Duke Nukem Forever is finally, really, truly here. It's not being shown secretly, behind-closed-doors at some industry event. Instead, it's at PAX, an event that is, more than any other in this industry, consumer facing, and that tangibility is a big part of Gearbox's reveal.
With so many zigs and zags, I think I still need to take a wait and see attitude...
Well, the next step is to upgrade the server. I've tested a VW 7.7.1 based version locally, and it looks ok - now I have to upload the new release to this server, get the configurations done, and have at it. However, I think that can wait for a bit; it's a holiday weekend, and I need to go kill something on the XBox :)
The good news: I got xAuth working against Twitter this morning - my mistake was stupid - you have to double encode things, and I wasn't doing that. So that's good. The bad news?
This server (and the one over at Cincom) is running on VW 7.6. My first try at backporting ran into a number of small problems, so I've decided to take the other route: updating the servers to 7.7.1. It's probably a good idea anyway :)
I'm sure that underneath the hood, iTunes is a mess - any application as old as iTunes, with the number of features that have been added over time, is highly unlikely to be clean. Having said that, I'm always a bit confused by this kind of thing:
The ugly duckling of the iFamily, this program is hard to understand, hard to use, inelegant, and ill-behaved—in short, the very opposite of most other Apple products. I dread booting it up every day, yet I can’t sidestep it.
Hmm. I rarely restart iTunes - for the most part, it sits on my iMac, not bothering anyone, sharing music out to my home network. When I do have to fire it up, I don't notice it taking any longer to start than (insert any browser here).
As to the UI? Well, I'm sure a UI expert could riff on it, but it seems easy enough to navigate to me. I've never had an issue pondering the differences between the music. podcast, and video displays, for instance.
It's a fairly common meme though, the "iTunes sucks" thing. LIke a said, I'm sure that the developers responsible for it would like to start fresh - based on the age and feature set alone. But from the standpoint of the end user, I just don't see the problem. The biggest issue I have with iTunes isn't really with iTunes itself, it's with the need to do direct connection synching. At the very least, I should be able to synch wirelessly.
I finally figured out what I've been doing wrong with the base access token requests - you have to toss an ampersand at the end of the consumer secret. Small thing, but it was the dumb thing I was forgetting. Now I'm looking at making API calls, and that looks kind of painful - you have to embed the API call into the xAuth signature, and the arguments for that need to be sorted. Which makes the whole thing way more painful than it needs to be.
Anyway, if I have time over the weekend, I think I'll have this working against Twitter.
iPad sales are pretty impressive, and Apple is ramping up production to keep pace with demand:
Apple (AAPL) has ramped up production of the device to meet it, but there’s work left to do yet. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says Apple recently doubled its monthly iPad builds to two million.
I'm using mine quite a bit - it's a great reading device, and it's a good way to have internet access when I'm out and about.
The folks behind SqueakDBX - a high level database interface for Squeak - have pushed out version 1.2:
Hi folks. We are realeasing SqueakDBX 1.2, just an small release. For those who doesn't know, SqueakDBX is a database driver to connect to most of the existing databases. For more details, please read www.squeakdbx.org
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at running 32 bit VisualWorks on a 64 bit Linux installation. To get it working, you need to install the 32 bit libs, which typically aren't installed in the base 64 bit distro. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. I also did a write up of what's covered in this screencast here. To watch now, click on the viewer below:
You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.
You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
I wasn't imagining things - Ping is connected to Facebook, it's just that Apple has pulled the iTunes-side UI out. I just went to my Facebook account and saw this:
When I first loaded iTunes 10 yesterday and started up Ping, connecting with Facebook was the first thing I did to find friends. At first, I will say that it didn’t work. I hit the Connect button, entered my credentials, and nothing happened. But I tried again and it worked perfectly. I found a handful of Facebook friends who had just started using Ping as well and connected with them.
So I guess Apple and Facebook are still talking about stuff...
I turned on a month of mobile data for my iPad, and - much to my surprise - I find I'm using it beyond my vacation last week. Now I'm pondering what to do about it going forward - and this story in PC World popped up:
To be clear, jumping on the portable hotspot bandwagon won't relieve you of the obligation to have a data plan for smartphones with the major wireless providers. However, rather than paying $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPhone, plus $20 for the privilege of tethering a laptop to that connection, and an additional $25 for 2Gb of data on the iPad, AT&T subscribers can opt for the minimal $15 data plan for 200Mb on the iPhone, and instead spend $40 per month with Virgin Mobile for unlimited data on a portable hotspot that can be shared among all three platforms--and then some.
Portable hotspots have been around for awhile, but I've never really felt the need for one. Now that I'm considering how I use the iPad, I have to start thinking about it. IT would be another thing to carry, but honestly - when I travel, I carry a lot of stuff anyway. Far from liberating me from my laptop, the iPad has simply become another thing I bring. It's not a laptop replacement - in device terms, it's kind of analogous to a "third place".
Anyway, I'm going to have to consider the whole data plan thing.
Bernard Pottier sent me an update on the network simulation stuff I saw last year at ESUG:
a simulation for a bus encountering networks of wireless sensors that could be installed on bus stop, and computing on the fly on these networks (bounding box)
a similar simulation for a virtual boat reproducing the Azenor navigation in a distribution of sensors along the shore.
It's a pretty cool project, with the CUDA integration done by one of Bernard's students, Thibault Failler. Cool stuff!
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at loading the network clients support (http, ftp, etc) into Cincom Smalltalk - VW 7.7.1 and OS 8.2.1. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:
You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.
You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
And Facebook is nowhere on Ping too. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebook or Twitter or MySpace either on Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.
Except... when I signed up yesterday, I immediately got a Facebook Connect prompt, asking me whether I wanted to share with my existing Facebook friends. Today, I can't find any trace of that in Ping. I know I entered my Facebook credentials in and ok'd sharing; did Apple build the support and then turn it off, due to the "onerous terms" that Swisher says Jobs brought up?
The iPad is no longer the only tablet in town - Samsung has launched the Galaxy. I have to admit, the ad (the link takes you to an auto-play video) looks pretty compelling. Tim Bray has some thoughts on the device as well. It looks like the entire mobile space is going to be pretty well defined without Microsoft - they aren't just playing catch up here, they're not even in the game...
Watching Apple's event today, and seeing the game demo on the iPhone (and then imagining how it would look on my iPad), it dawned on me that the DS (Nintendo) and PSP (Sony) are straight in the crosshairs of this new gaming platform. Serious gamers will stay with consoles or PCs, but the entire "I'm bored, I need to fill a half hour of dead time" market is where the DS and PSP live.
Except that Apple is moving in, with devices that you're more likely to carry around....
Amidst all of the uproar about whether Apple should support Flash on the iPhone and iPod, I came across Kevin Tofel trying Flash out on his Nexus One. Keeping in mind that he tried it on a fast WiFi connection, the results were less than exciting. If this is what Flash looks like on mobile devices, Steve Jobs has a point.
Looks to me like Adobe has their work cut out for them if they want to have something that approaches usable on small devices.
Barry's back, kids! The CEO of Commodore USA just informed us that, in addition to slapping Commodore stickers on various all-in-one PCs, he has acquired the rights to the Amiga name (we only hope that the process went a little smoother this time around). The plan is to sell machines that fully support AROS -- an open source variant of AmigaOS 3.1 that the kids seem to go crazy for.
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how debugging works in WebVelocity 1.1 It's a bit different than it was in WebVelocity 1.0. If you can't see the embedded video directly, you can go directly to YouTube for it. To watch now, click on the viewer below:
You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.
You can download the video directly here. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
As part of the Apple event Wednesday, News Corp.’s Fox and Walt Disney’s ABC networks are slated to be announced as offering 99-cent rentals of television shows through the iTunes store, according to people familiar with the matter.
TV isn't like music. With songs, I want to listen to stuff I like again. With TV, it's rare that I want to see the same episode again. Once I've seen it, I'm done - so buying an episode, or even a boxed DVD set, just doesn't make that much sense to me. Renting, on the other hand? Sure, especially for an episode I've missed, or for a show I'm wondering about.
Add in an inexpensive set top box, which is also supposed to be part of the plan - and it looks pretty good. Especially with Netflix coming to the AppleTV.