The author of this blog, James Robertson, passed away in April 2014. This blog is being maintained by David Buck (david@simberon.com).
In addition to the screencasts I've been doing, the Pharocast guys have been doing a bunch of screencasts, and the Gemstone folks have been on a tear releasing video, too. Great time to start learning Smalltalk!
Technorati Tags: video, screencast
Amazon recently bought a small company that builds innovative touchscreen devices, leading to the thought that they might well have a next generation device on the way that would leapfrog the iPad:
Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object -- not just a finger -- and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications.
Now if they were able to add design sensibility to that tech...
Today's screencast demonstrates how to create a Document object and print it using the native print dialog on Windows (rather than the default printer, which is what will normally happen). ,You can download the code used in this screencast here.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
The future of video is streaming - even ATT has caught up with that fact:
But all that is about to change. AT&T announced Thursday morning that it will now allow the SlingPlayer iPhone app to stream live over its 3G network.
What we really need now is for Apple to release streaming support for iTunes and the iPhone. Then add over the air updates instead of requiring the synch cable. Google has done that for their Android phones, and Apple needs to catch up.
First, after Apple's iPad announcement with no Flash, Adobe's Evangelist pulled out the pr0n card:
My friend Matt Drance, Apple's former iPhone evangelist, summed up what this means on Twitter:"Adobe has resorted to playing the porn card. It's over."
Following a link from there, John Gruber noted:
Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow made his little poster showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they’re missing anything because, well, they’re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.
Finally, I came across this thoughtful piece on the problem, which explains that Adobe is actually stuck in C++ legacy-land, while Apple wants developers to work in Objective-C:
Can Adobe just port what they have into Objective-C or use Carbon. Unfortunately no, the Flash Player is written in C++ and going from C++ to Objective-C is not very practical. Objective-C is just another superset of C. It simply adds some OOP logic and a messaging and some of the syntax is similar to Smalltalk. You can compile any C program into Objective-C but that's not currently possible to do with a C++ program
Based on all of this, I've rethought my theory - I don't think Apple will need to reconsider Flash at all. I think Adobe is going to have to reconsider where they stand. Mind you, I've had it pointed out (via Rob Fahrni) that you can, in fact, compile C++ in an Objective-C environment. Based on his post, it still sounds like Adobe has a rather large mountain in front of it...
Everything I read about Microsoft lately sounds like a replay of IBM back in the 80s: years of coasting on a profitable business (Mainframes then, Office/Windows now) have led to a very inward looking company. The NY Times has an article from Dick Brass that makes an interesting point about Tablets and Office:
When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn't like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.
Rob Fahrni points out that the VP who pushed that POV was Steve Siofsky, who's now even more influential at MS. I think the next few years at Microsoft are going to play out a lot like the 80's did for IBM: a large decline (not death), with the possibility of a second (less influential) act - if they get a management team that can adapt to the new reality fast enough.
I lived in East Fishkill, NY when IBM started to run into trouble, and it really left a mark on that area - most jobs were either directly with IBM, or in businesses that served them or their staff. It took a long time before that area was able to diversify off being such a "company town" - I suspect Redmond is in for a lot of the same.
With this huge storm on the way, thank goodness I'm not traveling this weekend:
Now the forecast is calling for 18-25 inches of snow - should be a wild ride over the next couple of days. The local school system has already decided to let school out 3 hours early...
Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how you can use WriteBarriers to track object changes. You can download the code example here.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Technorati Tags: change tracking, smalltalk, write barriers
I find it interesting that Oracle feels it's necessary to put out a "Java isn't dying" video. What I find disturbing is the color scheme on that page. Seriously, I felt like I was back in the Deep Roads in Dragon Age Origins...
Here it comes - supposedly, 2 feet of the white stuff is on the way:
Technorati Tags: snow, snowmageddon
Next week I'll be redoing some of the Cairo screencasts - they are all outdated, simply due to the fact that you can load cairo much more easily now:
On Windows and OS X, you'll have the shared libraries installed as well (assuming you picked those when you ran the installer. If you didn't, re-run the installer and do so). For Linux or Unix platforms, you'll have to get Cairo installed yourself.
Once you have it loaded, try this as a simple "Is Cairo Working" test:
| win component | win := ApplicationWindow new. win component: (VisualBlock block: [:gc :box | gc newCairoContextWhile: [:cr | cr source: ColorValue red; rectangle: (box insetBy: 20); fillPreserve; source: ColorValue blue; strokeWidth: 20; stroke]]). win open.
If it worked, you should get this (make the window bigger to see it:
James Foster has put up a convenient set of links to the video series he's put out - including a link to a downloadable archive.
I'll have to think up some new scare terms for snow :)
It's really coming down now - this shot was taken 20 minutes after the one above:
Technorati Tags: snow
Fortunately, we still have power - probably because the lines are underground here. Here's a shot I just took of my grill:
And here's my patio furniture:
This is probably too deep for the smallish snow blower a bunch of us in the neighborhood went in on. Tomorrow is going to be a heck of a day, especially since it's supposed to just keep snowing...
When I headed up to bed at 1:30 AM last night, I measured 15 inches of snow on my back step. About 30 minutes ago, I measured 25 - and the snow hasn't slacked off. Here's a short video and a few photos, showing how huge an event this is:
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The snowstorm finally ended - I think we got about 30 inches. I have a few more photos - I'm now exhausted, after helping clear four driveways. The blower was only able to help once we cut the snow down, and then it ran into a problem after the third driveway. Tiring!
Update: The official measurement for my area just came in - 33.8 inches. No wonder I'm so tired :)
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Oh boy, the weatherman just told us that the Tues/Wed storm will be "several more inches"
I seriously have no idea where we'll put it :)
Technorati Tags: snow
I chipped some more snow off my driveway - I could actually get my car out now if I had to. Of course, I'd have to climb in the passenger side, angle it around, and then shovel the mess up - but that's progress :)
| My Car | My Driveway |
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| Mailbox | Buried Footpath |
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| Unplowed Street | Unplowed Street |
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| My Walkway | Ramp Off MD 32 |
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Most of the sidestreets in the neighborhood haven't been plowed at all, not even once - which means that no one living down there is getting out at all...
If you live on a side street, you're still waiting. My friend Mike posted this picture, with the caption - "Our driveway leads nowhere! Howard County, where are the plows? "
This week's podcast is the audio for a presentation I gave to the Toronto Smalltalk User's Group last month, on January 26th - it's an overview of the products we released in 2009:
You can grab the slides here.
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.
To listen immediately, use the player below:
If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!
If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!
Technorati Tags: audio, visualworks, objectstudio, webvelocity, product release
More video from the Pharocast folks - they're on a roll. The real fun starts a year or so in, when you start noticing that the older screencasts need to be updated :)
Technorati Tags: pharo, screencast
Well, it was a lot of work - but the car is finally free. Here's where things stood after we got the bottom of the driveway clear - my neighbor's blower was back online after some small repairs:
There's just no way I could get that "attachment" cleared, so I climbed in via the passenger door, and moved the car down the newly cleared driveway. Oh, and this picture shows the huge mound that I had to chip down some before we could even use the snowblower :) Anyway - the car:
Then I got the rest of the snow off, shoveled up the mess where the car had been, and pulled it back:
Good thing I lost weight a few years ago - there's very little space to squeeze into there :) At least I can get out in either car if I need to, and the streets are clear up to the exit from the neighborhood - unlike the poor folks who live on side streets here - their streets look like my patio:
Here's a proposed regulation of nearly boundless stupidity - start treating portable batteries (for phones, laptops, etc) as hazardous materials for the purposes of air travel:
For instance, the battery inside an already-padded box for a new notebook PC might need to be packaged in an additional fiberboard box along with extra shipping documents, he said. I
t could also mean untold numbers of workers overseas and in the U.S. will have to get "fully-regulated hazmat" training to simply handle a box with an iPod or HP laptop inside, Kerchner said.
That would be just about the stupidest outcome I can imagine. Just how stupid are the people who dream this stuff up, anyway?
Technorati Tags: security
Well, this should be interesting:
A WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON. * PRECIPITATION TYPE... SNOW. * ACCUMULATIONS... POTENTIAL FOR 5 OR MORE INCHES OF SNOW. * TIMING... MID TO LATE TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.
Just what we need :)
Update: Oh boy, the latest forecast is telling me that this has the potential to be a serious storm, and all they're saying right now is "several inches". Hope that blower holds together :)
Technorati Tags: snow
NBC seems to wish that the last 7 months with Conan doing the Tonight Show was all just a bad dream - and they'd be really happy if you drew the same conclusion :)
Today's screencast looks at some extensions to the FileBrowser tool:
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Technorati Tags: filebrowser, tools
There are lots of side streets that still aren't plowed - but there's progress near me - that's a sidewalk that was partly cleared yesterday:
... with a gap for sledding:
Finally, one of the streets that was unplowed yesterday has finally seen a plow. No salt or other treatment yet, but at least the people living there can get out now:
Meanwhile, my wife was trying to get ahead of the next storm with a grocery order - but Peapod called this morning, cancelling. Their trucks can't get here :/
Technorati Tags: snow
Oh boy - We got 23 inches in December, over 30 this last weekend - and now round three is coming on Tuesday/Wednesday:
ACCUMULATIONS...10 TO 20 INCHES
And the forecast shows cold temps all week, with more snow Saturday. Exciting!
Technorati Tags: snow
Well, we can get out, but parking is an adventure. At all the store plazas, there are still (pretty large) remnants of the December storm, never mind the mountains we added over the weekend. Here are a few examples - first, I had to hit the gas station, because one of my wiper blades snapped off when I turned it on:
This is an example of the sort of mounds there are in the parking lots - this is from the local grocery store lot:
And another view - see these towering over the cars:
Finally, the swell stuff storms leave behind with the helpful traffic calming devices:
Technorati Tags: snow, digging out
I took a short trip to get a couple thing I forgot at the store, and snapped a few more photos while I was out. Here's an on ramp into the shopping plaza being cleared:
The next three shots show the sheer brilliance behind "random shapes in the road traffic calming" in an area that gets snow:
I rather suspect that if my county executive lived on this street (see above), those idiotic shapes would be gone soon. Yes, I'm talking about you, Ken Ulman. I dare you to come stand at this corner and justify this nonsense.
Technorati Tags: snow, digging out
Here's another video from ESUG 2009 - Tim Mackinnon talking about project planning.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, brest, france, esug09, project planning
I think the dominance of the iPhone in terms of developer mindshare - as opposed to actual deployment statistics - tells me that having a well known and well understood deployment environment drives things quite a bit. Dare Obasanjo links to these smartphone sales stats:
- Nokia: 39%
- RIM: 20% (Blackberry)
- Apple 15%
- HTC: 5%
- Other: 21% (Samsung is expected to make a major jump this year)
The more interesting piece of information is this:
According to these stats, the iPhone OS is actually the major source of traffic for the mobile web in most continents except for Africa and Asia.
Which tells you why there's so much focus on the iPhone - for good or ill, that's where the eyeballs are...
Technorati Tags: iPhone, mobile web
There's a new research oriented Smalltalk mailing list (also linked over to Nabble) - http://groups.google.com/group/smalltalk-research. Check it out.
Today's screencast takes a look at how you can detect stack overflows in your Smalltalk code.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Technorati Tags: stack overflow
While I really like the Xbox, I just got an object lesson in why the Zune is going nowhere fast. I submitted "Industry Misinterpretations" to the Zune marketplace to be listed with their podcasts sometime last summer. I just received this in email:
Did you know that your podcast is now featured on Zune.net, available to hundreds of thousands of visitors? We are pleased to include your content in our catalog.
Every time I've submitted a feed to Apple, it's taken 2 days or so to get an approval. For all the complaints about Apple's approval process, for a podcast publisher, it seems to be way, way better than Microsoft's....
You can grab the podcast for the Zune directly on Microsoft's Zune marketplace now.
It's coming down pretty hard now - our street is covered over. Tomorrow morning should be interesting:
Technorati Tags: snow, son of snowmageddon
As if the snow hasn't been enough fun, we're getting ice now - and probably more snow on top. Awesome. The first photo is of the snowbanks around my front walk; the second is of the road out front.
Technorati Tags: snow, son+of+snowmageddon
This storm is adding high winds to the piles of snow, for extra awesome - along with that layer of ice from last night. My car is buried again:
And here are a couple of "road? What road?" shots:
Technorati Tags: snow, son of snowmageddon, blizzard
Most of the local areas aren't even plowing right now - it's cold, the snow is coming down hard, and the low pressure system off the coast is bringing winds at near hurricane intensity to the area. How much snow are we getting? Well:
I live in that 15 inches + band :) bear in mind, the county hadn't cleared al of the roads from last weekend's storm yet. The back way out of the neighborhood was only notionally clear, and up by the local hospital there were still piles in the center of the road, over the double yellow. This part of Maryland simply isn't equipped for this level of snow (and based on averages, why would it be?).
Lots more to come before this is over - who knows when we'll be dug out...
Technorati Tags: son of snowmageddon, snow, blizzard
Here's a short video I just shot out my back door - the wind is angling such that the front door is out, unless I want snow drifts in my foyer.
Here's a video I took a little after noon:
Technorati Tags: son of snowmageddon, blizzard, snow
Conditions are not improving - heck, since I got back to the house, the wind has picked up - there are points where we can barely see the houses across the street. I shot some video a little over an hour ago, about a mile from my house at the intersection with Maryland 32 - which is a major state artery:
While I was walking up to that intersection, I took a bunch of photos as well:
| Down my street | Heading out of the neighborhood |
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| Looking back into the neighborhood | Uncleared road |
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| Intersection leaving the neighborhood | Looking past the light |
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| Off ramp from MD 32 | MD 32 |
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Technorati Tags: blizzard, son+of+snowmageddon, snow
I just got back in from (hopefully) my last snow clearing of the day - it should be someone else's turn at the snow blower next. It's been a heck of a day, between snowfall and wind - I took four more photos before I came in:
| Car, Reburied | Walkway at dusk |
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| Our road at dusk | Our road at dusk |
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Technorati Tags: snow, blizzard, son of snowmageddon
This is why I was never all that worried about Microsoft as a "dangerous monoploy":
Getting back to Dick Brass's criticism of Microsoft, I find it fascinating that top Microsoft executives were aware almost immediately of the threat the iTunes Music Store posed to the whole Windows Media ecosystem, but Microsoft was still unable to stop it. This matches what I've seen time and time again in my last 10 years following the company.
The problem is simple: companies as big and diverse as Microsoft tend to generate self destructive internal politics - and that eventually brings them to a near standstill. It happened to IBM back in the 80's, and now MS has hit the same wall. I expect that MS will be healthier and nimbler in a few years - but it'll be painful for them to get from here to there.
Jason Calacanis believes that Google Buzz is the next big thing, and has cut the value of Facebook in half. Umm, right - just like Wave. Here's his theory:
Google Buzz is way faster than the sluggish Facebook -- this is a HUGE advantage.
Google Buzz puts relies and updates into your GMAIL as threads -- this is BRILLIANT and a HUGE advantage.
Right, because what most of us want is more stuff in our inbox. Sure Jason. You and the other three people who actually want more email can jump on the Buzz bandwagon - the rest of us will give it all the attention we gave Wave.
As to the whole "people don't trust Facebook because of privacy concerns" thing - the sad reality is that this is one of the few things that Scott McNealy got right - no one cares
His next theory is even crazier:
This really is game over for Facebook because you know Microsoft and Aol are going to copy Google Buzz as quick as they can. In fact, Aol would have a HUGE renaissance if they simply knocked off Google Buzz's exact feature set. You would than have a reason to keep your @aol email address.
Umm, yeah - because Microsoft has shown such an awesome ability to execute, and AOL has been the nimblest business around. And Google has shown such amazing staying power with any of their new things - Wave, anyone (crickets)?
Technorati Tags: google buzz, facebook
I just got done reading Kent Beck's "The Balkanization of Smalltalk" piece. While he makes some good points, I simply don't see an organized effort getting us to the place he wants things to go:
The thing about a Nash Equilibrium is that what is rational from within the game can be absurd from an outside perspective. I'm calling bullshit on the state of Smalltalk. Vendors, you're acting crazy. Have the tiniest possible core defined in terms of test cases. Build a shared library on top of that, implemented in terms of the core. Include numbers, collections, meta-objects, code structure, and code loading. None of this parcel/bundle/package/pundle/category nonsense. Compete on VMs, graphics libraries, and enterprise-y tools.
Let me draw a small analogy here - this argument reminds me of various wishes I read from people who dislike the suburbs. "If only people would all live in small towns and cities, then we could have working mass transit..." etc, etc, etc. The trouble isn't with the vision - it's with the reality of the built environment we have. Getting from here to the desired nirvana of such people is a less than trivial task, regardless of what you think of the desire.
And so it is with Smalltalk. Had ParcPlace set itself up like Sun back in the late 80s, instead of letting anyone run wild with Smalltalk anyway they wanted to, things might be different. But they aren't - we not only have commercial distros, we have lots of free ones as well (listen to our recent "State of Smalltalk" podcast for an idea of how big the field is)
But let's say you limited your scope to just a few players, on the assumption (possibly flawed) that the rest would follow. Cincom is heavily committed to Store (as are her customers) - Instantiations is even more heavily committed to Envy (as are her customers). How do you get from here to the core loader Kent speaks of? What's the incentive to build that? What paying customer would rather have that than, say, compliance with (insert your favorite spec here)?
If any such standardization is to come about, I suspect it'll happen via a mechanism Kent touched on. He spoke about Grease, a portability layer that Seaside uses. Every Smalltalk implementation that supports Seaside also supports Grease. There's your starting point. As Pharo gains traction (especially commercial traction), I suspect that the commercial vendors will start to feel pressure to comply with "the emrging standard". That's the way this will play out, if it plays out at all. I just don't see a new standards effort getting a whole lot of formal traction.
Technorati Tags: standards
Today's screencast takes a look at the obsolete packages in VisualWorks, and what you can do if your application(s) depend on one or more of them.
You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?
Technorati Tags: screencast, obsolete, visualworks
How the Pharocasts get made on Linux
Technorati Tags: pharo, screencast
It's the day after our second big storm within a week - dig out time. I took a short walk this morning and shot a few photos; I'll have another short video up later:
| My Street | Front End Loader |
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| Back Exit from neighborhood | Uncleared Driveway |
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| Joys of Snow and Traffic Calming | Joys of Snow and Traffic calming |
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| Unplowed side street | Unplowed side street |
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Technorati Tags: snow, son+of+snowmageddon
This morning I went for a short walk through the neighborhood with my video camera, and shot a few segments as I ran across things of interest. So - here's what things looked like a bit after 9 AM this morning:
Technorati Tags: son of snowmageddon, blizzard, snow
I'm getting to be more and more glad that I've just been avoiding Google Buzz. I love this "feature" Forrester found:
Some of the people using Buzz in the last 24 hours have discovered that, in an attempt to be helpful, it exposes the list of people with whom you regularly exchange e-mail. As the Silicon Valley Insider said, "Imagine a boss discovers a subordinate emails with executives at a competitor."
There's nothing in the Buzz UI that tells you, loudly and clearly, about the visibility of the followers list that it auto-generates from your frequent active e-mail correspondents. To make a bad situation worse, even if you learn about this problem, it's hard to fix it.
Replace "executive" with "recruiter". Or plug in your own set of embarrassing revelations on a personal level. I wonder whether Calacanis has figured this out, since he's proclaimed this to be a real Facebook killer?
Technorati Tags: privacy, google buzz
Michael and I will be live in about 10-15 minutes - you can listen on the justin.tv stream. We'll be discussing the "Balkanizaton" of Smalltalk (something Kent Beck wrote about this morning). For more context, I have thoughts on that here.
Microsoft has finally relented, and will ship Outlook as part of the Mac Office site in 2011. What does this mean? It means that many of the petty incompatibilities Entourage had go away, and Outlook junkies can freely move to the mac and bring their tools along for the ride.
