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st4u

ST 4U 309: Code Abbreviations in VA Smalltalk

November 14, 2012 10:07:52.219

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at the abbreviation (keyboard shortcuts) support in VA Smalltalk - it's a nice companion to the code completion support. 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:

abbreviations.

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:


We've already looked at code completion support in VA Smalltalk, but there's another tool that can help you get code written more quickly - abbreviation support. If you go to the options menu of the launcher, and pull that down, you'll see it:

abbreviations

This support is separate from code completion; to get any of the existing abbreviations working, simply type one in, then hit <shift> <space>. It's easy enough to add your own as well - say you want one for #ifNil:

abbreviations

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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Math is Hard

November 14, 2012 8:44:37.275

If you're AT&T, it's so hard that it's a proprietary trade secret:

As many of you know, AT&T has implemented caps on DSL usage. When this was implemented, I started getting emails letting me know my usage as likely to exceed the cap. After consulting their Internet Usage web page, I felt the numbers just weren't right. With the help of Tomato on my router, I started measuring my usage, and ended up with numbers substantially below what AT&T was reporting on a day-to-day basis. Typically around 20-30% less. By the way, this usage is the sum of inbound and outbound. At this point, I decided to contact AT&T support to determine what exactly they were defining as usage, as their web pages never really define it. Boy, did I get a surprise. After several calls, they finally told me they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be proprietary. Yes, you read that right; it's a secret.

I've noticed the same differential on my "usage" tab on my iPhone and the text messages AT&T sends out.

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JS 4U 221: Map Layers

November 13, 2012 9:39:29.609

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at adding different layers to a map with a simple example. 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:

map layers

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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Mass Effect Futures

November 12, 2012 12:29:25.581

Polygon Reports:

"The other thing I can tell you is that, while it will be very respectful of the heritage built over the course of the first three games, with the original trilogy now concluded and the switch over to a new engine, we are exploring new directions, both on the gameplay and story fronts," Roy wrote. "You can still expect the pillars the franchise is known for to be fully intact though, including diverse alien races, a huge galaxy to explore, and of course rich, cinematic storytelling."

I'm not sure that BioWare really understands what the ME audience wants. We don't need a better 3rd person shooter; if that's what we wanted, we'd just keep playing Gears of War. What we want is the classic BioWare story, along with the classic branching dialog choices. The choices you make as a player have to mean something, rather than be boiled down to 3 possible endings (or, as in DA2, one possible ending). We aren't watching a movie - to a very large extent, time spent on cinematics is time wasted.

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ST 4U 308: Pharo Software Update

November 12, 2012 12:21:19.466

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at the online update feature of Pharo. 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:

Auto Update

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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Burn the Diskpacks

November 12, 2012 8:04:55.000

Alan Kay was right all those years ago:

Nathan Adams from Mojangs says that this will be no small task as it requires the studio to change Minecraft's basic infrastructure. He says in order to build an official mod API the studio has to rewrite the client side of the game from scratch this means it might be a few months before an early version of the API can be seen.

It's one thing to build something that works; it's something else again to deal with changing requirements once you have the thing that works :)

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IM 102: Diagnosing Performance Issues (AAC)

November 11, 2012 21:10:07.115

Welcome to episode 102 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week David and James talk about a sometimes tricky subject - diagnosing application performance issues. It's often not as simple as just firing up the profiling tools provided by your toolset..

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 102: Diagnosing Performance Issues

November 11, 2012 21:09:29.485

Welcome to episode 102 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week David and James talk about a sometimes tricky subject - diagnosing application performance issues. It's often not as simple as just firing up the profiling tools provided by your toolset..

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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copyright

Satire Imitates Life

November 11, 2012 15:38:04.657

Next time you have a few friends over to watch a movie, unhook the Kinect from your XBox - the copyright fascists are about to start doing headcounts. The sad part about this is, back in 2006 there was a satire written about that:

In November 2006, a site named BBSpot wrote a story about how the MPAA lobbied for home theater regulations, arguing that a home theater in your living room allows your friends to not buy their own DVD:
“Just because you buy a DVD to watch at home doesn’t give you the right to invite friends over to watch it too. That’s a violation of copyright and denies us the revenue that would be generated from DVD sales to your friends,” said [MPAA spokesman] Glickman.

It seems that you just can't make stuff up when it comes to copyright law. Microsoft just patented that idea:

Microsoft has filed a patent for a technology that would let Kinect detect how many people are consuming content at a given time [...] would monitor how many people are in the room when a game or piece of entertainment is being displayed and “take remedial action” if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, according to the patent application.

It's at the point where you're not sure whether we should laugh,or cry.

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Redline Smalltalk News

November 9, 2012 23:21:50.479

Saw this on Twitter today from James Ladd:

Redline Smalltalk adds automatic java class adaptor today! Treat any java class just like a Smalltalk class.

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Latest Cincom Smalltalk Release is Out

November 9, 2012 12:05:56.641

Looks like the latest Cincom Smalltalk release is out, and they are letting customers download it now. This is from Arden Thomas in one of the Cincom Smalltalk mailing lists:

We are pleased to announce that the maintenance releases of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks are now available!

As before, you can request media, or an ftp transfer of the product. For other options, please speak with your account manager.

To request a new release, just go to this link on our website and fill out the form:

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ST 4U 307: Pinpoint Benchmarking

November 9, 2012 10:23:34.381

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at more pinpointed benchmarking in Smalltalk - measuring the execution time of a specific block of code. 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:

Benchmarking.

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 more fine grained benchmarking in Smalltalk - measuring the execution time of a specific block of code. Quite often, the profiling tools tell you where to look, but you then need to dig deeper to figure things out (for instance, the profiler could point you to a specific method, but that method might be long). It's pretty simple - wrap the code in a block, and then use Time>>millisecondsToRun:


results := Time millisecondsToRun: [blockOfCodeToTestHere].

Now, you'll want to run that block a number of times and average the results to get a decent snapshot of what's happening, but 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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Pharo Call for Participation FOSDEM 2013

November 9, 2012 9:55:28.430

Spotted in Planet Squeak

" A devroom for the Pharo, Squeak, Amber, GST, Etoilé, Seaside, Moose Smalltalk projects & Newspeak as derived language. Smalltalk environments offer a very high development productivity, unmatched by their successors. Come do some pair programming with us and experience yourself the advantages of a real OO environment"

The meetup will take place Sunday, February 3, 2013, from 9AM until 5PM, building AW. This room has 72 seats, a VGA video projector and wireless internet. More information will be available later.

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Skyrim DLC Finally Hitting PS3?

November 8, 2012 13:24:24.000

Polygon Reports:

Skyrim content that has been available for the Xbox 360 but delayed for the PlayStation 3 for months might soon be on its way, according to a tweet Skyrim developer Bethesda sent out today. The company tweeted: "To update, we're also close on new Skyrim content for PS3 and PC" and "Thanks to all our fans. We think you'll love the new stuff. We know it takes us time and thanks for all your support and patience!"

I wonder how much Sony regrets the very different architecture they picked for the PS3 at this point - I suspect it's at the heart of a lot of these problems. Not because it's technically inferior, but simply because it's so different from the PC and XBox setup that a proper port has to do more than cross compile...

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js4u

JS 4U 220: Editable Rectangular Overlays

November 8, 2012 7:31:51.540

Javascript 4 U

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at adding an editable overlay to a map. 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:

overlay

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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ST 4U 306: More VA Benchmark Tool Overview

November 7, 2012 4:31:59.084

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at the standard development process using VA Smalltalk and ENVY. 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:

Benchmarking.

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:


There's one more aspect of the VA Smalltalk benchmark tool to look at. If you want to start at the beginning of this tutorial section, get started here - and then have a look at the second and third installments.

Following on from last time, take a look at the pulldown menu button at the top left of the tool - it turns out that a second set of pre-built benchmarks are available there:.

view

You can run these the same way as we have in the earlier screencasts, and adding new tests to this menu option works as it did for the initial selection

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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