. .

copyright

Money Grab

March 9, 2012 16:01:24.000

The insanity of this "search engines should pay" approach should be obvious:

Germany’s government wants search engines and news aggregators to pay news publishers for using pieces of their material.

What they want is to be paid by the people who make it easier to find their material. IMHO, Google (et. al.) should just remove all covered organizations from their search results, and see how well they like that outcome.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

st4u

ST 4U 204: Changing the Fonts in VA Smalltalk

March 9, 2012 10:34:52.267

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at changing the font used across the tools in VA Smalltalk. 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:

Fonts.

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 changing the default font used across all VA Smalltalk tools. To start, notice the little Aa icon at the far right of the toolbar:

Fonts

Open that, and you'll get a chooser tool for fonts. Select something you would prefer - here we are picking the Impact font. Not because it's a great choice for this, but because the change will be obvious:

Fonts

After you accept the change, all the tools update. Open a few:

New Font

All of your tools now use this font.

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.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[st4u204-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 2166358 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

js4u

JS 4U 138: The focus() Function

March 8, 2012 8:20:12.322

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at the focus() 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:

find()

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:

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[js4u138-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 1601076 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

gadgets

Google Plus Ate My iPhone

March 7, 2012 13:00:00.000

Last week, my phone (an iPhone 4) started losing charge rapidly - it would go from fulll to red within 2 hours, just sitting idle on my desk. It was also warm to the touch, indicating that background jobs were obviously chewing up the CPU and battery. But what?

As it happens, I have lots of things providing me notifications - facebook, Twitter, Drudge, you name it. I started turning notifications off, but that wasn't helping. I finally sat back and replayed when this started happening, and came up with it: a friend used the Google "hangout" feature earlier in the week, and I responded to it. Since then, the problem was rampant. I turned off all notifications for Google Plus, and bam - problem solved.

I'm not sure what Google did wrong, but it sure was using up my phone's useful life. I'd be curious to know whether or not anyone else has seen this....

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

Macintosh

Apple Breaks Their Tools

March 7, 2012 11:40:37.258

I had a fairly dismaying time with Lion this morning; one of the changes Apple made has really impacted my workflow in a negative way. The change is pretty stupid, too. Consider how I would deal with an image in Snow Leopard:

 

  • Export a .pct image from a video using QuickTime Pro (the old version; the new version still stinks)
  • Open the image in Preview
  • Crop, resize, save, all in the same session

 

Now ponder the *cough* improved *cough* workflow:

 

  • Export a .pct from a video using QuickTime Pro (the old version; the new version still stinks)
  • Open in Preview
  • Export to a PDF
  • Open the PDF, export to a JPG (or PNG, etc)
  • Open the new file, crop, resize, export yet again

 

What the heck was wrong with Save As? Why do I have to walk through PDF, when it's clear that Preview still handles all the image formats? Who at Apple thought all of these extra steps served a purpose? Who at Apple is going to fix the problem?  And who decided that eliminating Save As across all the stock tools and replacing it with Export was helpful?  I understand the versioning idea, but heck - that's not how every other blasted tool on the planet works.  Give me back my old workflow - if I wanted to have a crappy time working, I'd use Office with the idiotic ribbon....

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

st4u

ST 4U 203: Scratch Editions in Envy

March 7, 2012 9:18:28.076

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at "scratch" editions in VA Smalltalk. If you just grab an application and start coding, it's what you get - and today we'll look at what that means. 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:

ENVY.

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 what a "scratch" edition in VA Smalltalk means. Recall that ENVY tracks every change you make in VA; that means that a version of your code always lands in the repository. So if you don't create a new edition, one gets created for you. Make a small change in some application:

Scratched

You'll get prompted about creating a scratch edition. That's simply a new edition you haven't named. Go ahead and do so; you'll see this:

Scratched

Now all you need to do is tell ENVY to make that a new edition:

New Edition

And you'll have a new "clean" edition to work with.

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.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[st4u203-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 2497262 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

js4u

JS 4U 137: JQuery Find Part 3

March 6, 2012 8:11:48.423

Javascript 4 U

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

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

To watch now, click on the image below:

find()

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:

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[js4u137-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 2630240 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Smalltalk in NYC

March 5, 2012 20:46:16.210

The Smalltalk STUG in NYC is meeting tomorrow night:

The presentation will introduce the debut of S8. S8 is Smalltalk running over javascript execution engines on all major browser flavors. Its a generic framework but with initial implementations and objectives for the development of social networking and mobile applications. The presentation will discuss examples of this including the targetting of Android devices.

Follow the link for more details, and for time/location info.

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

skyrimAAC

Thu'umcast 23: Sneaky (AAC)

March 5, 2012 20:34:01.730

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 23 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 went back to the perk trees - check out the Skyrim Perk Calculator to follow along. We talked about the "sneaky" skills - and along the way we got into the dragon priest masks, some of the RPG aspects of the game, and a few others things.

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!

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[thuum23.m4a ( Size: 21854686 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

skyrim

Thu'umcast 23: Sneaky

March 5, 2012 20:33:32.210

Thu'umcast

Welcome to episode 23 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 went back to the perk trees - check out the Skyrim Perk Calculator to follow along. We talked about the "sneaky" skills - and along the way we got into the dragon priest masks, some of the RPG aspects of the game, and a few others things.

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!

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[thuum23.mp3 ( Size: 15966711 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

st4u

ST 4U 202: XML Parsing in Pharo

March 5, 2012 8:54:22.512

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at using XML in Pharo Smalltalk. 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:

xml

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:

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[st4u202-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 4520467 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

podcastAAC

IM 68: There is so a Spoon (AAC)

March 4, 2012 10:29:02.571

Welcome to episode 68 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week I interviewed Craig Latta about Spoon - his technology for making Smalltalk systems small and modular. It's a lot more than that, as you'll hear on the podcast - his approach also brings the ability to use general development tools (i.e., text editors) for development. If you want to see more about Spoon, check out Craig's screencast on it.

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!

Technorati Tags: ,

Enclosures:
[im68.m4a ( Size: 17157626 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

podcast

IM 68: There is so a Spoon

March 4, 2012 10:28:19.761

Welcome to episode 68 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week I interviewed Craig Latta about Spoon - his technology for making Smalltalk systems small and modular. It's a lot more than that, as you'll hear on the podcast - his approach also brings the ability to use general development tools (i.e., text editors) for development. If you want to see more about Spoon, check out Craig's screencast on it.

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!

Technorati Tags: ,

Enclosures:
[im68.mp3 ( Size: 12390016 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

news

Is Anyone Surprised By The Volt Fail?

March 3, 2012 10:29:04.934

I'm not surprised by the failure of the Volt:

GM, which is based in Detroit, announced to employees at one of its facilities that it was halting production of the beleaguered electric car for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees.

I suspect that the production shutdown will be more prolonged than that. Electric cars are a luxury status item, not a useful transit option. Why do I say that? Well, consider: if you live in the suburbs, the range problem makes them highly impractical. If you live in the city, where that's less of an issue, there's the charging problem. Where, pray tell, do you charge one for the multiple hours you need if you usually park it on the street?

Hybrids make perfect sense to me; pure electric vehicles? Not so much. They've been "the car of the future" for a century now, and they'll still be "the car of the future" for a very, very long time.

Update: To clarify - yes, the Volt has a gas tank, so it has the range of a regular car. The fact remains though: the battery is an expensive brick for most people. If you live in the city and use street parking, you'll never get to charge it. If you live in the suburbs, you'll only get to charge it at home (and based on the charge time using a standard 110 outlet, never enough). This car solves no problems, but it sure gives the owner new ones to deal with.

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

st4u

ST 4U 201: Using the Case Statement

March 2, 2012 11:09:21.915

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at using our simple case statement class from last time. 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:

case statement.

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 make use of the case statement code we built last time. Here's the workspace we'll use:


dict := Dictionary new.
dict at: 1 put: [Transcript show: 'This is One'].
dict at: 2 put: [Transcript show: 'This is Two'].

case := CaseStatement new.
case addAll: dict.
case caseAt: 1.
case caseAt: 2.
case caseAt: 3.

case removeCase: 2.
case caseAt: 2.


That creates a simple case statement with two cases (and at the end, removes one of them). Try the first three lines after defining the dictionary and adding it to the CaseStatement - you should see this in the Transcript:

Case Statement

Now execute the removal, and try the last line:

Case Statement

After removing the second case, we get the default case when trying it (as expected). That's it - we now have a working Case Statement object in Smalltalk. Next time you run into someone asking about one, you'll have 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.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Enclosures:
[st4u201-iPhone.m4v ( Size: 3579475 )]

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This