Smalltalk with James Robertson

All of the available video for ESUG 2011 is now available:

• Youtube
• Download from the ESUG Archives

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

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

We did a Facebook episode a bit ago - the group has exploded with great comments, topics, and discussions, so we're going to do it again. We can't possibly go chronologically (there's too much!) - so here's our idea: start a new set of discussions about what we should cover on the show, and we'll do shoutouts to everyone we can. While you're at it, tell us which member of the cast should do the shoutout for you.

Thanks again - we couldn't do this without all of you!

Technorati Tags: skyrim, thuumcast

Welcome to episode 16 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 The Bethesda/Interplay lawsuit came to a close recently, so we talked a bit about that (seeing as how we are all Fallout fans as well). We then moved on to the College of Winterhold. While we talked about that quest line a bit in the early podcasts, we never really went into depth - so today we give it the full treatment. 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:

• MP3 Edition
• AAC Edition
• Ogg Vorbis Edition

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

Technorati Tags: skyrim, elder scrolls, thuumcast

Welcome to episode 16 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 The Bethesda/Interplay lawsuit came to a close recently, so we talked a bit about that (seeing as how we are all Fallout fans as well). We then moved on to the College of Winterhold. While we talked about that quest line a bit in the early podcasts, we never really went into depth - so today we give it the full treatment. 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:

• MP3 Edition
• AAC Edition
• Ogg Vorbis Edition

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

Technorati Tags: skyrim, elder scrolls, thuumcast

Today's Smalltalk 4 You continues looking at the basic Smalltalk class libraries in VA Smalltalk - today it's the Stream libraries, focusing on reading. 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:

---

Today we'll look at the Stream class hierarchy, focusing on read streams. To get started, we want to browse the Stream hierarchy, in order to get a full picture of the local and inherited APIs:/p>

We are going to focus on the API methods (as per the ANSI specification, and experiment with a few simple examples in a workspace. The workspace code we'll use follows:

"read stream on a collection"
array := #(1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10).
stream := array readStream.

"get next item"
oneItem := stream next. 1

"get next 3"
nextThree := stream next: 3. (2 3 4)

"up to end"
rest := stream upToEnd. (5 6 7 8 9 10)

"set back to start"
stream reset.

"now peek - get next item, don't move position"
pos := stream position. 0
peeked := stream peek. 0
pos2 := stream position.  0

"skip first 3, get 4th"
stream skip: 3.
fourth := stream next. 4

You may be wondering about the text printed after each line; that's the result of doing a Display on each set of code. Try it yourself, and see if it all works the same way

Most of the examples work with streams that are positionable - i.e., there's a cursor into the stream, and we can freely move the cursor back and forth. That's true of internal streams and of file streams - but not of things like streams over a socket. Take a look at class PositionableStream and the APIs defined in it:

Here's a screen capture of the workspace after we've tried each line:

The most important reading methods to understand are:

• #next - get the next element from the stream
• #next: - get the next N elements from the stream
• #upToEnd - get the rest of the elements on the stream
• #reset - reset the position back to the start
• #peek - peek ahead one element without moving the cursor

It's worth trying a few experiments of your own - and notice that streams are not just about text. You can stream over any collection in Smalltalk, as our example above shows.

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, streams

Best Buy is the latest entrant in the "when sales metrics run the show, everyone loses" sweepstakes:

As a sometime business school professor, I could just imagine the conversation with the TV department manager the day before. “Corporate says we have to work on what’s called up-selling and cross-selling,” the clerk was informed in lieu of actual training on either the products or effective sales. “Whenever you aren’t with a customer, you need to be roaming the floor pushing our deal with CinemaNow. At the end of the day, I want to know how many people you’ve approached.”

This is the sort of thing sales people think is effective. Why, I'm not sure, since nearly everyone I've ever met finds it irritating beyond belief. It sure is a widespread business meme though....

Welcome to episode 60 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week I have a recording from ESUG 2011 - Johan Fabry talking about PHANtom - an aspect language for Pharo.

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, pharo, phantom

Welcome to episode 60 of Independent Misinterpretations - a Smalltalk and dynamic language oriented podcast with James Robertson and David Buck.

This week I have a recording from ESUG 2011 - Johan Fabry talking about PHANtom - an aspect language for Pharo.

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, phantom, pharo

I'm waiting on one bit of audio, and today is a travel day for me (back to Dallas for the new year). So - the podcast probably won't be posted until later this evening.

Interesting commentary on how Smalltalk "feels" after a long absence, from Noel Rappin. It would be useful if the vendors (and OSS implementations) listened to some of the negatives and thought about them - these are exactly the kinds of roadblocks I recall bringing up more than once when I was at Cincom...

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at basic file handling in Pharo - how to open files for reading and writing. 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, files

If the movie industry thinks that putting a bigger wait in front of Netflix and Redbox will bring back DVD sales, they are deeply, deeply confused:

A new deal between Time Warner’s movie studio and Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster will double the “window” for new releases. That means the services will now have to wait 56 days after the discs first go on sale to offer them to their customers, instead of 28 days.

For the most part, movies aren't like music - most of us won't watch most movies more than once. Which means that Netflix or Redbox are the optimum choice. A bought DVD is expensive, takes up space, and is only watched once anyway.

The entire industry desperately needs a clue...

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

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, tutorial, jquery

I think Baseline just started shouting "You Kids! Get Off My Lawn!"

Technorati Tags: stupidity

This makes our day:

Technorati Tags: skyrim, thuumcast, elder scrolls

Welcome to episode 15 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 talk about the Thieves Guild Quest - top to bottom, with all the details you'll want to know to make your way through all of the nooks and crannies of the quest line. We also talk about what we liked, and what we didn't like about it. 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:

• MP3 Edition
• AAC Edition
• Ogg Vorbis Edition

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

Technorati Tags: skyrim, elder scrolls, thuumcast

Welcome to episode 15 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 talk about the Thieves Guild Quest - top to bottom, with all the details you'll want to know to make your way through all of the nooks and crannies of the quest line. We also talk about what we liked, and what we didn't like about it. 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:

• MP3 Edition
• AAC Edition
• Ogg Vorbis Edition

Got feedback? Tweet us!. Enjoy the podcast, and we'll see you in Skyrim!

Technorati Tags: thuumcast, skyrim, elder scrolls

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at opening and closing files 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:

.

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 opening external files from VA Smalltalk, and how to read/write them once you've done that. To start with, have a look at the application CfsStreams:

This is where the classes and APIS for reading/writing files are defined in VA Smalltalk. We'll start using CfsReadWriteFileStream to open and write a small file:

"open a file for read/write - if it does not exist, create it"
file := CfsReadWriteFileStream open: 'myNewFile.txt'.
file nextPutAll: 'This is my test text'.
file cr.
file close.

The first line opens the file - after which you can use standard stream methods to read and write text. Here we are simply writing some text, a CR, and then closing the file. The two methods of interest to us here are #open: and #close. The first you send to the class to open the file; the second you always send to close it. Once the file is out there, we can read it, and inspect the results to see what's there:

"open for reading" file := CfsReadFileStream open: 'myNewFile.txt'. data := file upToEnd. file close. ^data.

Again, note the use of #open: and #close. Finally, what about error handling? Say a file you want to read doesn't exist? Here's the standard way to check for errors on file handling in VA:

"with error handling"
(file := CfsReadFileStream open: 'someFileNotThere.txt') isCfsError
		ifTrue: [^self error: file message].

All we're doing here is raising an exception on the error; you can, of course, do whatever handling makes sense in that block. Next time we'll get into the Stream APIs that were brushed over here.

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, files

ESUG has announced the timing and venue:

The ESUG board is glad to announce that the 2012 ESUG conference will be held at Gent in Belgium 27-31 August; Camp Smalltalk 25-26 August

Technorati Tags: esug

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

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