Wednesday, September 29, 2010

GTD with AniAniWeb as personal homepage wiki

The AniAni is a personal WikiWiki from the Squeak Smalltalk Swiki designer.

For a personal webpage as wiki-homepage I have a GTD tip: when using the asterix to create submenu or topic such as *aule* - when you click the CREATE button that then appears beside that word on your page, do not opt for "Include Parent Menu Items".

By not including the parent menu items, the distraction options drop dramatically. GTD trumps AAD.

If you have not tried a Smalltalk wiki before, all you need is to get setup before a mere pair of asterix suffice to create topic links or web links (when placed around http://someaddress.)

I have a post over at aule-browser.blogspot.com on what you need to know to run an AniAniWeb on a mere netbook or the like (not itself serving the web.)

One last suggestion: choose 8888 as your port when in the setup as it is the least nuisance if you opt to run another personal web server (the port choices are restricted to very few by the setup app.)

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

NetFlix Canada Indigo Howl Howitzer

The careers link at NetFlix.ca reminds me of the poetry section at the Chapters store in the Regent Mall here in Fred'town.  Maybe Melville, NY is near Yorktown, NY ;-)

The single section of poetry in the retail outlet of what is now Canada's book chain had a striking resemblance to that in an American chain - the multiple copies of the collected Allen Ginsberg, the multiple volumes of Charles Bukowski ... the one diference, the one row of ( English ) Canadian poetry on the top shelf ( in a town with two universities) - and that was chiefly Leonard Cohen.  I should have checked if Margaret Atwood was shelved below in speak-American having been pained to find her opening the slim "Best of 2009" high up on that top shelf.

But the day's outing ended with a more amusing moment: I saw that there are two cannons in front of the Legion just as there are two cannons in front of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery ( I kid you not ... one of the latter is a 1944 USA howitzer.)  And Ginsberg?

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Google Chrome Frame versus IE9

I wonder what is more productive: getting employees  configured with Google's Chrome Frame in IE 8 or inviting users to install the Curl.com runtime engine (the Curl RTE) - which path gets a more useful, maintainable, long-term result for a corporate IT requirement to provide a user with some feature?

If Curl 8.0 removes even a click or two from the RTE install procedure ... ;-)

At one time I could have compared creating and maintaining a Google Gears app and a Curl app, but that is not now even moot ...

That leaves JavaFX or AIR or ? Oh yes, Silverlight.  Without DLL's, right?  Without that "DLL Smell" - right?

And why is this Chrome Frame/IE8 vs IE9 Canvas (HTML5) even a question?  Well, why would a business running fine on Windows XP want to move to Windows 7?  Just to get IE 9 ?  Aside from the agenda of corporate IT, what did Vista provide?

One sure thing that IE9 on Windows Vista or 7 guarantees is HD video with hardware-acceleration for employees viewing YouTube on company time.  And that comes just as Intel announces their intent to move the GPU into the CPU.  Oh vey ... why did your employees in Payroll and A/R or A/P need those nvidia 9800 graphics cards?

Or is this for Account Executives video conferencing with prospects?  Not likely.

If the Help Desk gets a better result with remoting to the client under Windows 7 - fine*; but that PC should not be the same one that they use on your company intranet. Nix that idea.  Their old single core CPU box running XP should serve them fine on your network.  Or did you move them up to 64-bit XP ?  And for that matter, why is their box on the company network box not inexpensive hardware running linux without Microsoft Outlook? Or were you in the cloud on that one?

;-)

* But aren't most of the client employees contacting your Help Desk also still running XP ?

Friday, September 17, 2010

Aules evolve

Over at my Aule blog I have a post on evolving an Aule as a "home page" - but one that it is with me and not at Yahoo or Google or AOL.

For some time it has been my habit to set the browser home page to a file on my PC or netbook by using an address bar entry of
file:///c:/webpages/home.html
or
file:///home/grs/websites/home.html
but those should soon go to being
aule.html
or
aule.curl
or
aule.dcurl
as Aules evolve towards being user-defined entry points with access to
remote-astronomy_aule.html
and such.  I had hoped to use a variant of Seaside for Smalltalk to generate these "pages" and another   Squeak Smalltalk framework to make them both portable and persistent.  I am now leading more towards using Robert Parlett's new variation on the Icon language and its libraries as ObjectIcon.  And in time there may be Laurie Tratt's Converge.

Two largely ignored programming options still hold my interest: the Logtalk framework for Prolog (swi-prolog is both constraint and RDF-friendly) and Oz (rules, constraints, dataflows ... )

As Smalltalkers know, it is not just the language, it is the environment, the established patterns - and the ease of testing and debugging.  I will still keep an eye on Seaside for Pharo Smalltalk and watch for Dolphin+Lesser's NG Smalltalk.  But an Aule layout keeps coming back to being a structured String specification to be parsed, persisted and built.  Rebol3 looks to be mired-down (the latest distraction for Carl Sassenrath is running his alpha on an Amiga before that alpha has stumbled into a first beta.  Oh vey ... ) and don't hold your breath for an environment.

Parsing in Icon is almost as fine as in Rebol - and there remains in my back pocket the Qtk for Oz.

No option will be as elegant as a declarative Curl UI in a web page - so they will continue - but as an option.  My next iterations are for Tcl and Ruby links over at logiquewerks.com because the Tcl aule (entry point, home page, portal, mashup) must itself evolve as Tcl 8.6 and TclOO become old-hat.  And Ruby may yet get cleaned up.  And then Java 7 and a VisualWorks 8.  And oh yes - a Rebol 3.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Lively Kernel

I was going to check out a GreaseMonkey extension for Epiphany when it occurred to me I had not stopped by lively-kernel.org for some time.  Imagine my surprise when my latest XP Safari blew out!  But good news: everything seemed fine running in the latest Opera.

JavaScript HTML CSS

I was listening to a podcast as two HP-types explained that the Palm webOS is just linux with opensource components displayed using JavaScript+HTML+CSS.  So when will I see Curl (from http://www.curl.com/ ) on a mobile platform?  Android?

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Google Chrome browser and Google's BlogSpot blogger.com

This blogging service keeps reminding me how much better off I would be using Chrome (removed from this PC and no longer permitted to update on my Ubuntu netbook. Ahem.)

I get this little tickle at the back of my neck when I read their suggestion: how long before some essential blogger function here will be an exclusive Chrome feature (HTML 5 being what it is ?)

So why remain with blogger.com instead of uisng WordPress wherever else? Well, I do - some - but I prefer blogger when it comes down to it.  But I could not say why. The templates are annoying. At least one important feature is completely daft.  Write it off as habit and a lean towards the familiar.

But today I may have unwittingly nibbled at the bait - I clicked into the invite to try http://draft.blogger.com/home - but only in my default browser.  A browse of the source code for that page reveals nothing sinister ... the doctype and dtd are HTML4 ...

The Chrome blog itself is here.

CommonTag Zemanta Balloons

The Common Tag blog has be silent for a year now - the last post was a comment about Zemanta Balloons.

Is Common Tag alive even at Yahoo! ?

Here is a quote from Zemanta:
The underlying code for Balloons is open source and built on the Common Tag architecture, the open tagging format developed by Zemanta, Yahoo, AdaptiveBlue, Freebase, and others. It aims to make content more connected, discoverable, and engaging. As with Common Tag, every aspect of Balloons - from its open source code base to its use of Freebase's openly licensed content - has been designed to ensure the easy, free, and open spread of information across the web.
Today AdaptiveBlue is the GetGlue social network for entertainment (where Apple plans to play with iTunes PING in iTunes 10.) Their code.google developer site has no page on Common Tag and I don't see it at their API page.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

A default O-O package for Tcl 8.6: TclOO

 
While the link for O-O Tcl looks to be dated, the page for Tcl 8.6 releases is current.

I have a bias for XOTcl, but I will try to be open-minded when 8.6 gets out of beta.

TclOO is intended to offer classes and objects as a Tcl package rather than as an ad hoc extension to Tcl and Tk.  Some "patterns" folks will like the hiding of new in class in favour of create as the class declaration idiom - but instances are created via a command block substitution with the new word as in
set obj [MyClass new]
A google of TclOO and Tcl failed to get me past beta1 links to Tcl8.6b2 links.

But the link to the PDF on the new engine looked interesting.

This link at tcl.tk may be the final URL for core TclOO.

Over at activestate.com Tcl remains at 8.5.8 with a release number of 8.5.8.2 as of today.

Tcl 8.5.9 added the ttk::spinbox command.

A google on "Tcl 8.6" gives some useful links such as that to Mark Roseman's 8.6 page (he is the author of the tutorial for Ttk or Tile/Themed Tk.)