Scripting with Pharo
Coral is a library that improves Pharo's scripting capabilities - now I just need to wake my rusty French up so I can read the installation instructions...
A Transplant You Don't Want to Talk About
I think the word "craptastic" comes to mind....
Independent Misinterpretations 14: Smalltalk Build Systems
Welcome to episode 14 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk about build systems for Smalltalk applications - something I've been working on in my new job.
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: smalltalk, build systems, runtime
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Independent Misinterpretations 14: Smalltalk Build Systems (AAC)
Welcome to episode 14 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck. This week Michael and I talk about build systems for Smalltalk applications - something I've been working on in my new job.
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: smalltalk, build systems, runtime
Enclosures:
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ST 4U 38: A Look at Morphic Halos
Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes a first look at Morphic Halos - from the user's perspective (where the user is a developer).. 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:
Enclosures:
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Paywalls and Internal Politics
The New York Times' new paywall just doesn't make much sense. Not the overall concept, just the specific implementation. Here's what they supposedly plan to do:
The person familiar with the matter said the Times has considered charging around $20 a month for the digital bundle and less than half that for the Web-only offering
But there's a problem with that approach, as Felix Salmon notes:
This strikes me as peculiar. The idea seems to be that if you want to use the NYT iPad app at all, that’ll cost you a hefty $240 per year, over and above the cost of the iPad itself. But if you want to read the nytimes.com website on your iPad, that’s probably free — and even if you’re in the minority of power users, it’ll still be less than half the price of the app. Essentially, the NYT is doing everything it can to drive its iPad-owning readers away from the app and towards the built-in browser.
Exactly - what would possess me to try their iPad app under this deal? Why not just stick with the website? If they want to attract me to a pay model (where the website is free until I cross a threshold), then they need to make it more attractive, not less.
This looks like the result of an internal political battle that the iPad backers at the Times lost. They get their app, but in a "guaranteed to lose" fashion. The website side will then point and laugh, and not lose any of their budget.
JS 4U 26: Math Functions
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at the built in Math library in Javascript. 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.
You can also watch it on YouTube:
Technorati Tags: javascript, math
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3D Films: Doomed by Evolution?
Via Roger Ebert, Walter Murch says yes:
The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.
...
We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix.
Read the whole thing, which has a lot of detail I left out. Bottom line - it sounds like 3D is an expensive gimmick that most people simply can't adapt to, through no fault of their own...
Technorati Tags: 3d
Limited Unlimited with Verizon
Verizon is going to offer the unlimited $30/month data plan for the iPhone (apparently with the mobile hotspot). That's a ton better than the data plans ATT has now, but: it's a limited time offer. There's a possible reason to switch over now if your contract is in the right place, I guess.
Technorati Tags: iPhone
ST 4U 39: The Squeak Browser
Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes a look at the Squeak Browser. 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:
Enclosures:
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Squeak and SSL: HowTo
Andreas Raab explains how to use SSL with Squeak in a nicely detailed post. Check it out.
Weather Differences
This is what things looked like as I walked into work today in Dallas:
Meanwhile, back home:
Looks like my daughter gets to shovel some snow
JS 4U 27: Regex in Javascript
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Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we take a look at the built in Regex library in Javascript. 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.
You can also watch it on YouTube:
Technorati Tags: javascript, regex, tutorial
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No Power At Home
As I write this in my hotel in Dallas, there's no power back at home:
BGE claims it will be back on by 11 AM; it's apparently getting pretty darn chilly in the house....
Headless Pharo
Pharo is getting better at headless running:
the last two days we worked hard with Marcus to incorporate this new stuff into image, and now we're done. All images past #13021 now have non interactive ui manager (NonInteractiveUIManager). We fixed almost all broken tests caused by introducing it (there are only few minor ones left).
The open source solutions are getting more and more reasonable - the commercial vendors are not going to be able to sit back and relax...
Seaside Adaptor for Apache Updated
The Seaside adaptor for Apache has been updated again:
The AJP server adaptor for Seaside has been updated. The biggest difference is a new backend that should result in better performance when serving byte arrays from the image. Note that this is not an HTTP adaptor, you need an Apache frontend.
Since most people (myself included!) use Apache with their Smalltalk websites, this is welcome news.
Seaside at FOSDEM
Stephan Eggermont and Willem van den Ende will demo Seaside at the FOSDEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium to free and Open Source developers.
You can get more details from the Squeak mailing list and from the FOSDEM site.
Did They See the Acronym?
I watched the State of the Union Speech yesterday - and no, this isn't a political post :) I did notice that the President's catch phrase during the speech was "Win the Future".
So.... when the speechwriters were coming up with that, did no one realize the more common meaning for the three letters: WTF?
Things that make me go hmmmm
ST 4U 40: More on the Squeak Browser
Today's Smalltalk 4 You continues with the Squeak code browser, looking at the various menus. 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:
Enclosures:
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Fallout 3 in Parallels 6
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I wanted to give some of the Fallout 3 After I disabled the Windows Live hookup, the game ran, and it ran well. So next time I decide to sit down with it, I can actually download some of the more interesting looking mods and see how they look. |
runs under Parallels (Ultimately, the biggest improvement in game play came from the upgrade I did to memory on the MBP - from 4 gb to 8gb. After that, I was able to give the Windows VM 4gb instead of 2, and that made a huge difference. The other thing that seems to help is making sure to buy games that have been out long enough for all the really dedicated gamers to have found or created solutions to common problems :)
I'm So Spoiled
I had to sit back and ponder the state of my expectations today. We got up to 10,000 feet, and I turned wifi on - and nothing happened. Since I forgot to put Steam into offline mode before I left, that means no Steam games on the flight.
Just consider that for a second - it's not enough that I have power, now I expect to have network access up here, too :)
