My wife has had no joy getting voice activated dialing to work on her new phone (a Samsung Transform running Froyo) - it simply refuses to use the bluetooth headset in a reasonable way. She'll tell it "Call Jim Cell", and it'll prompt her on the screen as to what it should do. Seriously?
This wasn't making her happy, so we headed to the mall to go to the Sprint Kiosk where we bought the phone a few days ago. There was a sign there:
We waited an hour, doing a couple of other errands nearby - the Sprint guy never came back. So now we blew an hour on that, and we still have this crap phone that doesn't do voice calling well. Awesome, Sprint - if you guys wonder why I plan to stay with Apple, you can read this post and ponder it a bit. They might cost more, but the customer service is always awe inspiring
Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using JQuery selectors to modify multiple CSS attributes of 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:
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.
From hate to love back to unmitigated odium, it looks like Portal 2 customers are gaming review aggregator Metacritic in an attempt to both sabotage and rehabilitate the average user score by playing “score tennis,” tagging the physics puzzler with extreme scores and pithy appeals.
That happens to be about Portal 2, but you can see the same dynamic at work with Dragon Age 2. Probably with other games I haven't looked into as well. To see this for yourself, just google "XX Review", where XX is the name of the game you want to know about. Other than universally loved or hated games, picking through the plethora of results isn't easy.
Relying on the "major" sites isn't necessarily an answer either; I was listening to the Joystiq podcast on Dragon Age 2 yesterday, and it was clear that their knowledge of the game was superficial - at best. The best you can do is read widely, then make up your own mind as to whether it's worth taking the plunge.
It's not enough to write unit tests - you need to have a handle on how good your test coverage is. For Pharo, there's Hapao - and this morning, a new screencast on using it.
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at one way of exploring VA Smalltalk. One of the things I like to do with a system I'm not terribly familiar with is start from something I do know, and explore from there. In this screencast, we take a bit of code I know well, and use it to jump into the tools and system. 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:
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:
One of the best ways that I know of to explore a new Smalltalk system is to take a piece of code I've written quite a lot in other Smalltalks, and start exploring the system using that as a jumping off point. That way, I'm not stumbling over both the less familiar system and the code at the same time. Translating that to VA Smalltalk, I took this as my starting point:
It's the core of just about every server process I've ever created in Smalltalk - except that the real ones do actual work instead of writing to the Transcript. For our purposes here though, this is perfect. Let's start by highlighting Processor in the workspace, right clicking, and selecting inspect. This is what you should see:
From there, it might be interesting to look at the implementation. So back in the launcher, select Tools>>browse class:
You should see the class browser, allowing you to start looking at the implementation:
One thing that's different about VA, at least compared to Squeak, Pharo, or VisualWorks - look at the three tabs above the selector pane on the right - public, private, all. In VA, private methods are a bit more segregated. There's nothing in the system that prevents you from invoking a private method, but VA does make them visibly separate in a way that most Smalltalks don't. This makes it much more obvious when you are crossing the divide between a public API and a private one.
Now we might want to look at the actual Process class - we have one running, and it would be useful to be able to control it. Let's go back to the workspace, and inspect the proc variable:
From here, you can browse the class directly. On the toolbar for the inspector, find the Browse Hierarchy button and click it:
Clicking around we spot the #terminate method, and we go back to the workspace, invoke that code and kill the running process:
In future tutorials, we'll start examining each of these tools - browsers and inspectors - in depth. Today's goal was to show you how you can use a small bit of pre-existing knowledge as a jumping off point to explore VA Smalltalk
Need more help? There's a screencast for this topic which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.
I am glad to announce that the Squeak Port for Android Tablets [1] has reached its first milestone. Work has been done towards fixing certain usability issues such as better integration with Android Input Methods, access to local file system, etc.
There's more info at the link, including download info. The one big downside so far - no socket support yet.
Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using JQuery selectors in conjunction with css, in order to change specific css properties on a page . 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.
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at interrupting a Smalltalk function in order to see how it works (and thus be able to customize it in the environment). While we're looking at VisualWorks for the example, the methodology applies across all Smalltalks. 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.
Welcome to episode 25 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 Avi Bryant's keynote address on "Smalltalk and Big Data". If you would prefer to watch the presentation (and/or see his slides, visit the STIC site. I've also embedded the video below.
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!
Welcome to episode 25 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 Avi Bryant's keynote address on "Smalltalk and Big Data". If you would prefer to watch the presentation (and/or see his slides, visit the STIC site. I've also embedded the video below.
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!
The new high speed Comcast service - available in my area - sounds interesting. 105 mbps down, and a not terrible 10 mbps up (FIOS gives me better than that up, and while 105 is better than 20, I'm not unhappy with what I have). Here's the killer though: the 250 gb data cap is still on that deal. That may sound like a lot of data, but at that b/w, that's 5 or so hours of HD video. I can totally believe that I'd blow through that much in a month - 3 Netflix rentals might do it.
Why do that? Well, Comcast wants to sell you their triple play (phone/net/tv), and shove you over to on-demand, which won't be capped (but will be charged on a per use basis for all the good stuff). Net Neutrality, you say? Hah - look into the proposals. They all aid and abet this sort of thing with the blessing of law. The net neutrality advocates are today's "useful idiots" as far as the big ISPs are concerned.
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at Cuis - a smaller, more focused Squeak derived Smalltalk created by Juan Vuletich. 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.
Thanks to a combination of DRM idiocy and technical and communications failures on the part of EA and Bioware, I (along with thousands of fellow EA/Bioware customers) spent my free time this past weekend needlessly trapped in troubleshooting hell, in a vain attempt to get my single-player game to load. The problem, it turns out, was the Bioware's DRM authorization servers, and as of Tuesday afternoon, the situation still is not resolved. For four days now, those of us who made the mistake of shelling out for Dragon Age:Origins (especially the Ultimate Edition) have been unable to play the single-player game that we paid for. And the unlucky souls who bought the game on Friday haven't yet seen it work properly.
DRM is a fairly complex scheme that makes a number of assumptions about how things should work. If anything breaks down along the way, you just get locked out of stuff you have a legal right to use. In my exercise room, I ended up setting up an ancient PC in order to share a connection with my XBox (the Wifi adaptor for the 360 is priced really stupidly). Why did I do this? Because a few months back, when I was playing ME2, I noticed that the game started demanding a connection in order to authorize DLC (and thus let me play).
THis all leads to very fragile systems, with end customers being on the short, irritated end of the stick. And for what, really? Go google for cracked versions of games, and you'll discover that they are easy enough to find. All DRM does is stand in the way of legitimate users. The people willing to steal are doing that anyway.
I should note that this specific DRM issue was fixed by EA, and DAO apparently works again. That doesn't change the facts though.
Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at using JQuery selectors in conjunction with events. 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.