October 31, 2005
Rainbows
An awesome double rainbow took shape over Norwich this evening, making the afternoon of rain entirely worthwhile.
That travel meme, updated
Progress on last year. I've done another 2% of the world.
create your own visited country map
October 30, 2005
Front Row
Front Row is really, really good.
Thanks to Marcus I got it running on my machine today. It's a little slow in places: it struggles to play full-screen H.264, it's sluggish to scroll through a full list of iTunes artists. The video quality of podcasts when you see them full-screen on a laptop is rough (probably ok on a TV though). And it doesn't work with the DVD player. But it does go whoosh! and zoom! and click! and ding! so I'm happy.
Now I'm just trying to work out how to afford a quad G5 server farm and terabyte array, so I can encode my DVD collection.
I really hope Apple make it generally available soon.
tiki
Now I understand why the video iPod was invented. Tiki Bar TV. Thanks for the pointer, Paul.Of mice and men
Ok, here we go...
Last monday I went on a date with a wonderful Irish girl as a result of a conversation via an online dating site.
(Pause a beat for people to conjure up their social stigmas and preconceptions. You there yet? Ok, just waiting for the family to stop cheering. Right, good, let's carry on.)
Here's the funny thing: everyone I've talked to since then has told me how either they know someone that met / is in a relationship / got married through an online dating site, or that they are signed up to one, or that "it's cool with them", not to mention a friend of a friend who got positively addicted to the whole thing. So I'm kinda wondering where the social stigmas are from. Maybe it's my own fears and inhibitions projected onto others? Anyway, whatever.
So I have to say, the whole electronic relationship leads to real life encounter thing was quite a curious experience this time around. I spend almost my entire life in electronic worlds these days. No, I'm not talking about Warcraft; I'm talking about email, instant messaging, IRC; Skype, mailing lists, web sites, and so on. The tools of my trade. And, well, maybe a little bit of Warcraft ;-)
Anyway, given how many times I've met people in real life that I've been working with beforehand for weeks or months or even years, you'd think I'd be a master at switching from virtual conversation to actual real life conversation by now. Nope, definitely not. Not even slightly. Still figuring out the rules of this one. It's not like I'm Mr Dating as it is. If you add up every date, chance meeting, conversation, and average them out over, oh, let's be generous and call it fifteen years ... well, we're talking less than one a year here. Quite a lot less. Cough.
On Friday night I had the chance to talk with my relationship advisor, lifestyle guru, and overall best female friend ever. From what little I remember of the conversation (there was vodka involved), I need to worry less and relax more. And, probably, learn to shut my mouth and think (i.e. maybe not write here about this stuff I guess, or send emails to the other party before a decent time has passed), and also to open my mouth and talk more (i.e. be more forthcoming and less closed-off with new people).
Or maybe I should just relax and be myself, because when all's said and done, I'm looking for someone that's comfortable with me, right?
And to answer the obvious question: no, I don't know. And if I did, you can rest assured I've learnt to keep my mouth shut now. Obviously.
October 29, 2005
Material
So yesterday evening I met up with Marcus, Bern, Chris, Thom, Tracey, Pier, and a whole host of other folks for beers, food, beers, vodka, and clubbing. Thoughts:
- Front Row is every bit the mouthwatering eye candy I'd hoped for. Must ask Marcus for a copy.
- Bodean's is still a firm favourite of mine for eating in London. I am addicted to their pulled pork.
- It turns out I can drink vodka, but only the really good stuff. I think it's bad that I now know this.
- I wish the new licensing laws were in effect, it was patently ridiculous to be kicked onto the streets at 11pm.
- Fabric seemed much smaller than I remembered. I guess I wasn't all wide-eyed wonderment this time.
- I really really don't get drum n bass. Does this mean I'm old? (Rhetorical question, shut it!)
- London, early on a Saturday morning, is not as lively as I might have expected. Or maybe I just don't know the early morning chillout places.
October 28, 2005
Tagging
Matthew's revolutionary new site, TagTagger, is well worth a look. I'm sure it will be nothing but successful ;-)
Meanwhile ... I was thinking a couple of days ago about the implications of tagging, and the logical conclusion to this (and semantic web ideals in general). Forgive me if someone's already come up with this, but here's the idea...
I want to tag everything. When I add an event to my calendar, I want to add arbitrary tags to it (for example business, personal, networking, social, public, private, friends, family). I want to be able to flexibly publish my calendar based on arbitrary sets of tags. Think flickr for calendars (ooh, Russ is gonna hate that! It's like Flickr, but with ...). So I might publish one calendar for business, that displays all my public business events, and also displays that I am unavailable at the times of private business events but doesn't show why (I think some groupware does this already).
I want to tag my addressbook, and publish that in the same way. People I work with should be able to synchronise with my 'public' 'business' contacts. I should be able to send a text to everyone I've tagged as 'social' and 'friend' to invite them to the pub.
I'm sure there's more that could benefit from tagging (maybe email?). And to borrow a bit from Matthew, why not have a centralised database of my tags, that each app can auto-suggest from?
October 26, 2005
Music is great. Silence is greater.
It's funny ... pretty much ever since I got my iPod, I've listened to it whenever I'm travelling, mostly to and from the office. Podcasts, for the most part, but when the mood takes me (or the podcasts run out), music too.
This week as my brain hit overload I noticed two things - firstly, really loud music seems to be an effective way of making me focus on one task, to the exclusion of all else. Maybe it's because it drowns out the "new mail" sound or the "new instant message" sound ... or maybe it just gets the adrenaline pumping. Who knows. Yesterday I worked from home to get some writing done, and I gave the hifi speakers their first proper workout in a long time.
The second thing - I haven't been able to listen to anything to and from the office at all this week. It's just too much. It's really nice to walk home in silence, and just let my brain quietly process the day's events, queue up the next day's tasks, and then gently unwind.
Of course, I've been more or less humming to myself every night by the time I get home, so I think maybe my brain is missing the noise a little bit ;-)
OSS Watch
Three bits of news from OSS Watch:
- their new website is live. Nice.
- their new OSS Watch wiki is live.
- the JISC policy on Open Source Software is now out.
October 25, 2005
Things I thought in the last seven days
- The phone (more specifically voice communication) is still the most effective communications medium after face-to-face.
- A bug tracker with poor signal to noise is worthless. Hello, Scarab.
- Pushing open source economics is damned hard.
- Doing the right thing feels good, never mind the economic or sociological consequences. More people should do this. Why doesn't society encourage it?
- I can be me.
- Babies wait for no man (or woman). Don't try and plan around them.
- I can't wait to run around London next weekend, possibly the last weekend I'll really push the "clubbing" thing. Ever. But Fabric is gonna be a great last dance. Hybrid? Y4K? Yes please.
- I'm still hung up about religion.
- It's difficult to place an economic value on certification. I'm still bugged by the ISO approach to charging.
- Music is great. Silence is greater.
- To be honest, there will never be enough days in the week. Get over it.
- Life is strangely fascinating.
- The politics of Open Source projects (or nearly Open Source projects) makes government look quite simple.
- I'm growing to like the taste of whisky.
- I can replace my entire central heating system for less than half what British Gas quoted me for a new fire and boiler.
- <censored/> Let's see if it works out first. To whit: "Andrew, you fall in love at the drop of a hat". Well yes I do. It's either my greatest strength or my greatest weakness. I'm either incredibly perceptive or totally thick. Oh man, this is a blog post trying to get out for some days now. This is going to hurt, isn't it?
- It's still about the accent and the eyes.
- I shouldn't blog after an alcoholic beverage.
- Cheese on toast is the food of the gods. Although an 1,850kg kebab is probably quite close.
Goodnight, inkernet.
October 23, 2005
Pandora
This is just so amazingly good. For Katie Melua:
We're playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm piano, acoustic rhythm guitars and a smooth female lead vocal
And for Hybrid:
We're playing this track because it features a male vocal, a tight kick sound, synth heavy arrangements, trippy soundscapes and many other similarities identified in the music genome project
It's only $36 a year. That's crazy mad cheap. onesweetnothing has a more informative review: I found the best reason for the web to exist.
Game of Life
Gridgame is just awesome. My top score so far: 843.
(Posting this with Flock.)
October 22, 2005
He's here!
Baby boy, born 6 pounds after 36h labour... We are all ok... Let people know please. Thank you for all your messages.
Nothing but admiration and respect for David and Elise and their new baby boy. God bless them all.
October 21, 2005
October 20, 2005
It's coming!
Elise's waters broke this morning. More news as and when I hear it from David...October 19, 2005
Attrition
Oh dear. Almost a year after one radiator went wrong, it looks like the radiator in the kitchen has sprung a minor leak - of the drip-drip-drip sort rather than the WHOOSH! sort last year, thankfully, and onto ceramic tiles, so no harm done. It makes me think that maybe my house has hit the age where it needs extensive maintenance just to keep going.
Meanwhile the Met Office are warning of a bitter winter ahead, so I think maybe it's time I did something dramatic and finally got the central heating overhaul I've been planning for ages. The last quote I got was for £6,000. I'm hoping I can significantly reduce that by sourcing the parts elsewhere and doing much of the work myself.
Neighbours
No, not the 20th anniversary of the long-running soap, but the ones in the house next door. I learnt three interesting facts about them today:
- They like Jon Bon Jovi, particularly his acoustic stuff.
- They are learning the guitar.
- They can't sing. And they really need more guitar lessons.
Oh well ...
October 18, 2005
Top 100 novels
Time has a list of the all-time 100 novels. I thought I'd check it out and see how many I've read ...
- Animal Farm
- Catch-22
- A Clockwork Orange (never finished it)
- The Grapes of Wrath
- The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
- Lord of the Flies (never finished it)
- The Lord of the Rings
- Neuromancer
- 1984
- Snow Crash
- To Kill a Mockingbird
Hmm, 11 of 100. Some of the others I've not even heard of. Some of them I've heard of but haven't got round to reading yet, others I have no real desire to read. I really must finish A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies.
I'm surprised to see Neuromancer and Snow Crash on the list ... I somehow never expect to see modern works of science fiction show up in lists of classic books, even if I list Neuromancer as one of my personal all-time favourites.
October 17, 2005
This week's addiction
Kicking my way through the leaves on the ground as I walk through the crisp autumnal evenings.
October 16, 2005
Apple's dirty little secret
Steve Jobs:
There is one more thing that we're announcing today, that you can buy off the iTunes music store... and that is TV shows.
[...]
Let me go show this to you now. So, you can go back to the home page of the music store, and I'll go to TV shows over here, and there they are.
And indeed if I set my country to USA, there they are. If you're in the UK (or in fact any country other than USA) however, the "TV Shows" link is not available. I'm surprised this hasn't been picked up by the press. You can buy the new iPod (150 hours of video in your pocket), but good luck filling it with anything interesting.
Compare the UK's product description:
... with the product description for the USA:
October 13, 2005
October 12, 2005
Xara Xcellent!
The best vector graphics package I've ever used, Xara X, is going open source! And being ported to linux and the Mac!
This is about the only program I really missed when I moved to linux and then the Mac, so this is great news.
October 11, 2005
Increments
stega and I hit our annual increments.
After all the beers and dancing last week, I'm feeling it.
Switching default JDK on Tiger
Via Simon. After installing JDK1.5 available via Developer Connection:
cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/
sudo rm CurrentJDK
sudo ln -s 1.5 CurrentJDK
And then ...
java -version
java version "1.5.0_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_05-61)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_05-40, mixed mode)
Bingo!
October 9, 2005
October 8, 2005
tick, tick, tick
John: greetings
Andrew: hi
how you feeling? any less tired?
feeling rather dislocated. it's so quiet.
you know the tick, tick, tick sound a car makes when it's cooling? my body feels like that sound
yeah
good analogy
you should write that down
alright then
Ruby on Rails on Cocoon
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler", said Albert Einstein. Perfect words to describe the work we need to do on Apache Cocoon in order to make it more user-friendly, and to make it easier to get up and running building Cocoon-based applications.
Simplicity was definitely the emergent theme in the run-up to and during the Cocoon GetTogether. Helping our users understand the framework - and the compelling reasons for using it. Helping them see how to build applications, and helping them get up and running as quickly as possible. For example, we need to provide more demo applications, like Bertrand's Bricks CMS. These applications should illustrate the type of thing you can do with Cocoon, clearly identifying the best practice.
We should work harder to make it easier to configure Cocoon. Pro-netics' new java-based build tool is an excellent step in this direction, but I believe we must go further. Not every user will be operating at the level of blocks - they shouldn't need to know what bsf or poi or web3 or slop are in order to customise the version of Cocoon they are running. Let's get some high-level task definitions together and group blocks under them, in the same way Linux distributions reduced installation complexity to a question of "what do you want to do with your computer?".
Churchill said "Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge." By working to make Cocoon easier to use for our users, we will certainly find that Cocoon becomes a more powerful framework than ever. By adopting conventions we will find that many tasks done by Cocoon become incredibly easy, requiring the minimum amount of code and effort. Berin's timely post to the developer mailing list, Cocoon on Rails Application Component Kernel, gives us a well thought-out starting point. Coupled with Sylvain's work with JDBI and the many ideas that were flowing over the last three days, I think we can have the bulk of this done very quickly. The GetTogether may be over, but the work is only just beginning.
To clarify a point that Ugo raises in his CocoonGT wrapup, I think this is less about jumping on a bandwagon and more about learning from what others are clearly quite successfully doing to help their users. We all have huge investments in the platform, and if we want to move into the future with it, we have to make sure we can bring the users (and future developers) along with us.
I've just updated my GetTogether slides for the Simplifying Cocoon talk to include the notes, which are rough but may help give more background. The slides are available here and the accompanying videos are also now online. Step 1: generating a template application. Step 2: generating the 'controller'. Step 3: datasource configuration. Step 4: dynamic cforms from database metadata. I'm sure they'll also be on the GT slides and recordings page soon, too. I'm just cleaning out the Raccoon application itself to get rid of some of the mess, and then I'll make it available for all to see the horrors that are my XSLT/SQL Transformer twistedness ;-)
Why?
Ugo has a particularly entertaining picture from the GetTogether. Why?One more night ...
.jpg "Amsterdam harbour early evening")
End of the GT. Torsten, Marcus, Daniel, Vadim and I headed to "Warehouse" with Arjé and his partner. Marcus, Vadim and I stayed until the end, before strolling back through the streets of Amsterdam. Got back in around 4am BST. Another great night.
October 7, 2005
Cocoon GetTogether day 3
The main event. I'm sure details will be reported in many places, so I'll just discuss the bits I thought were best.
I'm particularly impressed with the Bricks CMS example application Bertrand has put together. Highlights are Hivemind and Derby. Paul has been talking about how he uses Hivemind in a number of prototype applications for his employer, but I've never had the time to work out what's going on. Having a Cocoon example application that does this will be invaluable. I'd also love to try out the Derby integration - we've used HSQLDB in the past, which I have an irrational dislike of, and Derby somehow feels more solid to me.
Daniel's talk on Cocoon Blocks was mostly too deep on implementation for me, but I was quite surprised by the OSGI command line: I didn't know it did that! Once again, something I keep hearing about but never got the chance to investigate. In the bar at the end of the day, Daniel showed me the OSGI GUI for inspecting components - seriously cool stuff.
Sylvain's and Max's talk on Ajax were always going to be wow factor, and they didn't disappoint. What made it for me was the "What is Ajax?" sequence of slides at the beginning. Sylvain's understated humour always makes me chuckle.
Torsten's talk on javaflow went over my head when he hit the heavily technical bits, but I loved the demo early on of the generator, and debugging javaflow in eclipse. It was also fun to see the Keynote transitions on the big screen - I admit I forgot about effects between pages for my slides. I think Torsten's presentation certainly came over as one of the slickest. I must remember to tell Massimo that Apples are great for presentations as well as being a lifestyle choice ;-) The other neat thing I learnt from Torsten is Apple-Alt-= to zoom in to the screen, and Apple-Alt-minus to zoom out again. It was particularly effective when he zoomed in to view code.
October 6, 2005
Cocoon GetTogether day 1.5
Marcus, Steven and I successfully explored the limits of Amsterdam nightlife, and I think we can confirm it's not a 24/7 party city at least.
After the splendid meal at Carel's III and the beers in a pub afterward, us stalwart three made our way to Paradiso (I think Paradiso), arriving about ten minutes after Robbie Williams. That guy has no sense of timing. We danced til 4am, to an eclectic range of music (think 60s rock and late 90s dance). Better music than Barcelona, but only just. Picture the three of us dancing in time to "Fly me to the moon" as the evening closed. On the stage. At the front. To a packed audience. I don't think Amsterdam was ready for that ...
We wandered around for a while talking to an eclectic bunch of people, trying to find out if things do indeed end at 4am or if we were just being duped. We were eventually convinced that the party was indeed over, so we called it a night after making plans for an early breakfast sometime around 1pm.
Tomorrow will be an interesting day indeed.
October 5, 2005
Cocoon GetTogether day 1: hackathon
.jpg "hackathon")
An excellent turnout for the first day of the hackathon - about thirty people so far, by my guess. Lots of familiar faces, and some new ones too. Carsten's giving a guided tour through the Cocoon internals. (I'm sat at the back trying to get Raccoon working again.)
The hackathon location in the Shaffyroom in the Felix Meritis building is great, too. And excellent preparation by Arjé - lots of power points and caffeinated products available!
Cocoon GetTogether day -1
.jpg "Beer tower")
And so it begins. Met up with Marcus and Torsten last night, went out, had an excellent steak dinner, went on to meet up with Steven, Marc, Bruno, John, Daniel, etc.
Got horribly drunk. Think we returned to the hotel around 3am, but not entirely sure. Off to discover breakfast now, and hopefully some higher brain functions with it.
(Will add urls in a later edit. Too tired to think.)
October 4, 2005
Ooops
From KLM:
Avoid waiting in line! Use Internet check-in with your e-ticket number. You can check in on the Internet from 30 hours up to 1 hour before departure of your flight.
Excellent. After doing the checkin:
Thank you for using the KLM Internet check-in! Need help? Make sure to print your boarding pass(es) and airport instructions.
Oh heck, the printer is at the office, and I'm not. So I grab the PDF, ready to throw at David, with a "please pretty please print this for me" message, and decide to check it before emailing ...
Unfortunately boarding passes cannot be printed for these flights via Internet check-in.
Ah, technology, is there NOTHING it can't do? :-)
Either way, a ten minute trip to the airport and 40 minutes of checkin and a quick hop across the puddle and I'll be in Amsterdam for the GetTogether. Can't wait! See you all from the other side ...
October 3, 2005
Welcome to Raccoon
In the 'Is Cocoon Obsolete' thread over on the Cocoon developers' mailing list, Jorg Heymans comes up with a dynamite suggestion:
<marketing type="idea">
Lets do a video like Rails, a picture says more than a thousand words, a video more than a thousand pictures! WDOT? Can something like this put us to shame or work in our advantage?
</marketing>
This is exactly what I've been doing as I develop Raccoon (all the fun of Rails, on Cocoon). Whilst there's still about a million miles to go before it's a usable solution, I can at least offer a sneak peek at what's to come with this video of the first 38 seconds of a Raccoon application.
October 2, 2005
Whither Cocoon?
In an email to the cocoon-dev mailing list, Stefano asks is Cocoon obsolete? This promises to be a very interesting thread, and will hopefully have some serious implications for future Cocoon development.
We need to pay more attention to the users, the people trying to develop applications with Cocoon. New frameworks such as Ruby on Rails are attracting users with their simplicity and rapid results. New paradigms such as AJAX and the rise of the rich client, as Firefox gains ground, mean Cocoon's 'traditional' use cases are being eroded. If we're not careful, we will make Cocoon obsolete.
October 1, 2005
New things
While I wait for Cocoon to compile again ... I've added Plazes (Where is Andrew?) and Flickr (3 most recent additions to my photostream) to the left-hand menus.PSA
mashuptown. That is all.
(Well, not quite. VertigoTripper. Somebody Rock Me. Sergeant Pepper's Paradise. Bootystition. A Shout out for the Magic Rocket Man. Turn out the Light in the Car. Behind these Immigrant Eyes. Thundertrain, oh yes. And quite disturbingly, Drive By with Vanilla Ice. Damnit, I need another glass of wine and about three more weeks before presenting what amounts to an insane RT to 120+ people that are way smarter than me. Meanwhile, crank up the volume.)