Smalltalk with James Robertson

Here's a hot tip: Don't name your boat the Titanic II

Michael has posted some more progress on Xtreams - this time originating from the end user community

Technorati Tags: xtreams, generators

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at setting the initial state of your page with an onload() 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:

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, onload, tutorial

We had our fireworks display on Saturday

I've said for a long time that vendors and marketing departments have been living in denial, and just assuming that advertising works. Well - there's new information out there (from Business Insider) that demonstrates what a bad idea that denial is:

"you are 31.25 times more likely to win a prize in the Mega Millions than you are to click on a banner ad." Not only that, "you are 87.8 times more likely to apply to Harvard and get in...112.50 times more likely to sign up for and complete NAVY SEAL training...279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest...and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad."

This also explains the truly annoying pop-over, roll down (et. al.) ads, which try to trick you into accidentally clicking on them - as if that would actually generate a sale. Vendors have to actually do the hard work of:

• Creating compelling products
• Telling people why those products are useful (in a way that actually engages them - more use case, less flash)
• Stop being lazy with traditional advertising methods

The data is pretty clear; you'll be able to tell the smart vendors from the dumb ones based on how (or if) they react to that data...

Welcome to episode 36 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck.

This week I have another session from Smalltalk Solutions 2011 - Mike Hales talking about how and why his team have implemented a (VisualWorks) version of TeaTime, a protocol used by Croquet.

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, sts11, visualworks, teatime

Welcome to episode 36 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson, Michael Lucas-Smith, and David Buck.

This week I have another session from Smalltalk Solutions 2011 - Mike Hales talking about how and why his team have implemented a (VisualWorks) version of TeaTime, a protocol used by Croquet.

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: sts11, smalltalk, teatime, visualworks

We lit off another batch of fireworks this year - the mortars we had were awesome. My daughter shot some video with my iPhone while I fired them off:

You have to love the copyright trolls at Righthaven:

Wired Magazine reports that Righthaven attorney Shawn Mangano's excuse for being a day late with his explanation as to why the litigation factory made 'dishonest statements to the court' was that his web browser upgraded and he could no longer attach PDF files to his submissions

I bet his teachers heard that kind of excuse. A lot.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

Check out Smallisimo

James Foster documents Gemstone's progress on getting GLASS up to date with Seaside 3.0

Technorati Tags: glass, seaside, gemstone

What you don't want to see your garage door doing:

Better now:

Looks like Instantiations is busy making VA Smalltalk better - Joachim reports:

But not only is the team busy working on good stuff, they are also releasing early previews of their work in progress in order for users to take a look and, even more important, collect feedback. So in the last few weeks, they uploaded incremental updates to both their new logging framework (which they call log4s because it’s a port of log4j) as well as their new VA Code Assist feature that will add code completion to the Smalltalk editors to VASTGoodies.com.

Technorati Tags: va smalltalk, instantiations

Today's Smalltalk 4 You takes a look at Pharo 1.2.1, and how it highlights using MetaCello to load projects. 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:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, pharo, metacello

This afternoon saw an expensive home related problem - our garage door developed a problem that demands an immediate replacement. The good news? We have someone coming first thing tomorrow. The bad news? Insulated garage doors aren't cheap :/

Now Listening to: The Great Gig In The Sky by Pink Floyd from: Dark Side Of The Moon

Today's Javascript 4 You. Today we look at the JQuery hover() 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:

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, jquery, tutorial

If it wasn't obvious before, their cloud offering makes it crystal clear. This is a company that is headed for a huge fall. I doubt they'lll disappear like DEC, but it would not suprise me at all to watch them become a middling player in the space with declining influence.

Here's ZDNet quoting from the offering:

We encourage you to buy the plan family (Plans P or E) you want to move forward with in the future. If, after purchase, you decide you want a plan from a different family, you will have to cancel your subscription and then buy a different plan (e.g., cancel your subscription to Plan P and then buy Plan E). Please be aware that your data may not be preserved, and you will have to provide sign up information again.

The only signups MS will get is from their existing corporate accounts; no new buyer will be able to figure the plans out.

Technorati Tags: microsoft, enterprisey

Pat Maddox and David Brady run a software development oriented podcast over at AddCasts. Subscribed in iTunes!

Technorati Tags: addcasts

Torsten reports on the progress happening in the Pharo Kernel project:

As you may know Pavel is working on Pharo Kernel - a small Smalltalk kernel that is stripped down from Pharo Core image. Meanwhile there is also a 3MB Pharo-Kernel-Gofer image available that has networking support and Gofer (a pharo installer to load packages) installed.

With this it is possible to reload back the various packages from Core image on top of the kernel image. By running the tests afterwards it is possible to check if anything is OK. So far the result is very promising and since all of this is automatically built using the continuous integration server it is possible to control changes and watch progress.

Yet again, interesting work in Smalltalk that isn't really being addressed at the vendor level. All of the really interesting energy is at the open source level....

Technorati Tags: modular, pharo

Boris Popov has posted a bounty being offered by the company he works for:

DeepCove Labs will pay an equivalent of CAD $400 (four hundred Canadian dollars) to whomever delivers an updated version of Windows Goodies with RequestingPrinter that works in VisualWorks 7.8 and, of course, we’ll contribute that version back to VisualWorks for others to make use of.

Follow the link for the full context and details - and see if you can lend a paid hand!

Technorati Tags: visualworks

Today's Smalltalk 4 You continues our exploration of the Trailblazer tools, looking at the Application Editions 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:

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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 continue our overview of the Trailblazer tools, examing the Applications Editions browser. Go to the launcher and open that up:

Like the configuration maps tool with Trailblazer, the lower pane configures itself based on your "trail" through the tool:

To give you an idea as to how it operates, let's scroll down to one of the Applications we created in an earlier screencast - CounterTestsApp:

Next, select the true in the configuration expressions pane. At first, you'll think that most of the panes shifted contents, but in fact, you've scrolled right to the selected tab. If you have a wide enough display setting, you may not even notice:

Notice the menu at the bottom. If you select Trail, you'll see where you are, logically speaking. If you select SubApplications, you'll see nothing (there are none for this application). Select Pre-Requisites, and you'll see a nice selector for those:

If you turn Trailblazer off in the launcher (note the checkbox in the tools menu), you can bring the original Application Editions browser up for comparison purposes. It's quite a bit busier than the Trailblazer version:

Remember that you can now toggle this on and off from the Tools menu - if you end up preferring the base tools, just turn Trailblazer off.

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: smalltalk, va smalltalk, envy, trailblazer

This image pretty much says everything you need to know about the Fallout series of games:

Technorati Tags: humor

This critique seems pretty bitter (and at points inaccurate as well) - but you can't only point to the good stuff, either. See if you think Richard Kulisz has a point.

If Google's Swiffy project picks up steam, you have to wonder why people would bother. Also, since Google is generally ok with Flash on Android, it says a lot about the stability of Flash on mobile devices that Google is doing this:

Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads). Swiffy currently supports a subset of SWF 8 and ActionScript 2.0, and the output works in all Webkit browsers such as Chrome and Mobile Safari. If possible, exporting your Flash animation as a SWF 5 file might give better results.

Technorati Tags: flash, swiffy, google

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at using multiple buttons with JQuery (and thus, forgetting the simplified button use that's possible if you only need one). 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, jquery, tutorial, buttons