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skyrimAAC

Thu'umcast 10: Stormcloaks Vs. Companions! (AAC)

December 12, 2011 23:32:29.808

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 10 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today we speculate about the eventual DLC, gripe a bit about the perk/leveling system, and cover a fascinating quest glitch involving a dremora, the stormcloak guards in Whiterun (after the end of the civil war, obviously), and The Companions. Hot tip: don't summon a Dremora in Whiterun to "help" fight a dragon :)

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page

.

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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Thu'umcast 10: Stormcloaks Vs. Companions!

December 12, 2011 23:31:54.918

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 10 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today we speculate about the eventual DLC, gripe a bit about the perk/leveling system, and cover a fascinating quest glitch involving a dremora, the stormcloak guards in Whiterun (after the end of the civil war, obviously), and The Companions. Hot tip: don't summon a Dremora in Whiterun to "help" fight a dragon :)

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page

.

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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Games are the New Movies

December 12, 2011 12:27:24.121

At least financially speaking:

Modern Warfare 3 racks up $1 billion in sales in less time than James Cameron's megabucks 3D film.

Personally, I am much, much more engaged in the games I like than in any movie or TV show...

posted by James Robertson

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ST 4U 169: Refreshing an Object with GLORP

December 12, 2011 9:20:15.805

Today's Smalltalk 4 Youlooks at refreshing objects that we have previously read using Glorp - this may be necessary if another process (or user) has updated the source database information since we last read it. The initial setup used is described here. 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:

Refreshing.

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 how to refresh objects that you have read out of the database. For simple client/server apps, this might never be needed, but in any app where multiple users could be reading and writing the same data, you'll likely end up using this. First, let's read an object into memory:


"read one"
emp := session readOneOf: Emp where: [:each | each firstName = 'Fred'].


Now, assume that some time has passed, or an event has been received indicating that the object in question has changed on the database side. To ensure that we have the most recent copy, we do this:


"time passes....
emp := session refresh: emp.

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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We Can Bring the CD Back

December 12, 2011 7:35:47.671

The title I've used seems to be the operating assumption behind music label deals with digital music systems (such as Spotify). GigaOm has lots of details, but it boils down to this: "heads we win, tails you lose". The more I read about this stuff, the more I question the very concept of copyright. The basic idea seems sound, but I'm having a hard time seeing how artists would do worse under an utter free for all system.

posted by James Robertson

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IM 57: Smalltalk for Newbies (AAC)

December 11, 2011 12:33:20.217

Welcome to episode 57 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week dave Buck and I spoke about two things - the talks I gave at Peak6 on December 8 (2011), and Dave's experience with teaching his 11 year old son Smalltalk.

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!

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IM 57: Smalltalk for Newbies

December 11, 2011 12:32:39.227

Welcome to episode 57 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week dave Buck and I spoke about two things - the talks I gave at Peak6 on December 8 (2011), and Dave's experience with teaching his 11 year old son Smalltalk.

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!

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Amazon S3 From Pharo

December 10, 2011 18:27:54.722

I may have to try this out - I upload to S3 a lot:

I needed a client to interface with S3 from Linux to store and retrieve archives and backups up to 100s of Mb large. Although I had already written a client for this web service in Pharo some time ago, I thought it would not be good enough for these amounts of data. Furthermore, it had no command line interface. So I Googled and found s3cmd. This installed easily and quickly in Ubuntu. Uploading/downloading some small test files went OK. However, uploading large files gave all kinds of strange errors, even though I was doing this from EC2 directly on the Amazon network. I don't know Python so I was not capable of debugging the tool.

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posted by James Robertson

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Thu'umcast 9: It Takes Two to Daedra (AAC)

December 9, 2011 23:48:13.229

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 9 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today Michael, Austin, and James talk about the Daedra quests, the somewhat underwhelming end to the Alduin dragon quest, and the glitches that seem to pile on higher the later in the game you go.

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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Thu'umcast 9: It Takes Two to Daedra

December 9, 2011 23:47:42.089

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 9 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today Michael, Austin, and James talk about the Daedra quests, the somewhat underwhelming end to the Alduin dragon quest, and the glitches that seem to pile on higher the later in the game you go.

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page.

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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Waving Goodbye to Windows

December 9, 2011 19:37:48.886

My wife's old XP box developed a bad sector problem on its hard drive, and it's old enough that it just wasn't worth it to fix - we dumped the data to a USB drive, and ordered a Mac Mini. She'll still need Windows access for some old apps, but that's what Parallels is for :)

The last non-VM Windows box in the house exists for only one reason now - to provide wired internet access to my XBox when I use the XBox in the exercise room :)

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posted by James Robertson

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Slides from my Peak6 Talks

December 9, 2011 15:43:41.181

I've posted the slide decks (PDF) from yesterday's talks in Chicago. It was a lot of fun, and I think the audience enjoyed the talks as well.

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ST 4U 168: Transactions with GLORP

December 9, 2011 10:37:58.282

Today's Smalltalk 4 You goes through deleting objects using Glorp - which requires us to specify a primary key in our table mapping. The initial setup used is described here. 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:

Transactions.

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 how to wrap statements that will change a database in a transaction using GLORP. As the example, we'll revisit deleting. Recall that the following code implicitly wraps the #delete: in a commit:


"deleting - uses a transaction for is"
myEmp := session readOneOf: Emp where: [:each | each firstName = 'Wilma4'].
session delete: myEmp.


If you want to control that completely, simply put the entire sequence into a transaction, using #beginUnitOfWork


"specify a unit of work so we can rollback"
session beginUnitOfWork.
foundEmp := session readOneOf: Emp where: [:each | each firstName = 'Wilma4'].
session delete: foundPerson.
session rollbackUnitOfWork.

That will rollback the deletion. If you wanted to commit it, use #commitUnitOfWork instead. That's all there is to it.

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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A Good Day in Chicago

December 9, 2011 3:10:08.331

I had a great time at Peak6 today - I want to give a huge set of thanks to Karla Yeh, who made me feel welcome from the moment I walked in the door this morning. The whole group at Peak6 was nice, and the talks I gave were well attended (and had good questions as well). I hope the audience enjoyed the day as much as I did - I'll be posting the slide decks I used soon.

posted by James Robertson

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js4u

JS 4U 113: Selecting Based on Attribute Name Start

December 8, 2011 1:23:19.212

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at selecting page elements based on a partial string match with the start of the attribute value. 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:

selection

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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Cincom Smalltalk Update Changes

December 7, 2011 16:32:34.000

As I previously reported, Cincom is changing the way they deliver updates - Arden Thomas pushed out a few more details today, and asked for comments:

We are also experimenting with the delivery mechanisms of the maintenance releases, with full installations or in-place updates. The fall maintenance release full releases will be:  ObjectStudio 8.3.1 and VisualWorks 7.8.1. VisualWorks will have an optional process to update a 7.8 installation.  The future target will be online updateable maintenance service packs.

I'll share more details as they make them public - I think we'll try to get Arden on the podcast when that happens to talk about it, too.

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posted by James Robertson

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ST 4U 167: Deleting with Glorp

December 7, 2011 9:47:23.191

Today's Smalltalk 4 Yougoes through deleting objects using Glorp - which requires us to specify a primary key in our table mapping. The initial setup used is described here. 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:

Deleting.

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 how to delete data from a database using Glorp - which means that we need to make a small modification to our #tableForEMP: method in class EmpSystem:


tableForEMP: aTable 
	aTable 
		createFieldNamed: 'first_name' 
		type: (platform varChar: 50).
	(aTable 
		createFieldNamed: 'last_name' 
		type: (platform varChar: 50)) bePrimaryKey.

Note the small change - we've designated one column as the primary key. Ideally, that column would be more sensible than the one in this example, but the point is, you need to specify that. From here on out, Glorp will treat that column as the primary key, even if it's not specified that way in the database. Now we can actually do a deletion:


"deleting"
myEmp := session readOneOf: Emp where: [:each | each firstName = 'Wilma3'].
session delete: myEmp.

Executing that now works, and wraps the #delete: in a transaction for us. We can verify this by executing a query:


session readOneOf: Emp where: [:each | each firstName = 'Wilma3'].

And inspecting the results:

Deletion

And that's about it for today.

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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Thu'umcast 8: Guess Who Came to the Wedding? (AAC)

December 7, 2011 0:06:11.151

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 8 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today we talk about some of the more amusing quest glitches, some of the cool stuff we've acquired on the quests, and about the things we've been up to in the game. Make sure to check out the community page for some of the more interesting things we've run across.

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page

.

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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Thu'umcast 8: Guess Who Came to the Wedding?

December 7, 2011 0:05:40.061

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 8 of "Thu'umcast" - a podcast where Michael Lucas-Smith, Scott Dirk, Austin Haley, Makahlua and I document our trials and tribulations in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Today we talk about some of the more amusing quest glitches, some of the cool stuff we've acquired on the quests, and about the things we've been up to in the game. Make sure to check out the community page for some of the more interesting things we've run across.

If you liked our work on That Podcast, you'll probably like this. We intend to stay with the same idea - a gameplay podcast. If you don't want spoilers, don't listen - we are going to be talking about how we play the game, and what we ran across as we played.

You can subscribe in iTunes (or any podcatcher) using this feed, or this one for the AAC edition. We'll add the iTunes specific links as soon as they are available. In the meantime, join the Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter. If you play on Steam, join the Steam Group. Like the music? Pay Sbeast a visit, we thank him for letting us use it!

Links to all episodes and other information can be found on the Thu'umcast page

.

If you want to download the podcast directly, we've provided it in three formats:

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

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JS 4U 112: The attr() Function in JQuery

December 6, 2011 9:29:43.758

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at the attr() function in JQuery. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube.

Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

attr()

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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USB Adventures

December 6, 2011 9:04:44.688

Yesterday I noticed that my music was just cutting out every few minutes (I run a USB cable to my stereo, which lets me use iTunes and a decent sound system). I could "fix" it my unplugging and replugging the cable. So I did the obvious thing - ordered a new cable.

Then this morning the Mac wanted to reboot, so I actually looked at the back. Seems the USB cable to the stereo was hanging a bit out of the socket (meaning, whenever there was a bit of bass, it went loose. Doh. Switched the cables around, and it all works fine - the one coming from my time machine drive into the same socket doesn't look loose.

So I have another USB cable lying around now :)

posted by James Robertson

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Who's On First, or the Joys of Verizon Billing

December 5, 2011 19:16:37.034

Last summer I changed the credit card I use to pay my Verizon (FIOS) bill - my old card expired, I called them updated the information, and moved along. Well, not so much. As I was looking into a work issue, my network dropped. I rebooted the router (that's usually what it is), and instead found a "service suspended notice".

Four different Verizon people (across 3 phone numbers) later, I discovered:

  • They had no card on file for me
  • The last payment was in August, when I changed the card
  • No, they hadn't thought to contact me
  • No, I couldn't pay the bill with the billing department, I had to use an automated phone system
  • Sadly, I didn't know the account number (they don't send me a bill, and I have no idea what it is)
  • My account is not tied to a phone number

Now, I understand why they won't hand out the account number when I called; I could have been spear fishing. Still, this left me with a problem: how to pay the bill? Finally, one of the people I got said she could call the automated system, punch in my account number, and then get off the line, leaving me to pay it.

Then, to add some more misery, my work computer is refusing to get a new IP address. It insists on trying to grab one the router has already handed out. Awesome.

posted by James Robertson

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ST 4U 166: WorkFlow with WATask

December 5, 2011 10:26:53.371

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at using WATask in Seaside to create a workflow in your app. 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:

Workflow

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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