September 2006 Entries
Converting between characters and numeric codes. Sometimes you need to convert between a character and its ascii equivalent and vice versa. To do this is trivial in Smalltalk and is achieved with the following two lines of Dolphin Smalltalk code. $A asciiValue.
65 asCharacter. Tags: Smalltalk Cookbook
Good manners = idiot. Awhile back I commented on the behavior of one vendor who sent me a gift and a bunch of idiots came out of the woodwork to comment. Hey James, while you're getting out your big can of "you're an idiot" and preparing to spray me liberally with the contents - just remember, you were the one who asserted that everyone in India was vegetarian. :) Thought leadership you say eh? Well maybe, but have you ever considered that those who follow you may only do so out of curiosity? Source: Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership: Vendors who understand the needs of large enterprises...
The AJAX talk last night in Aberdeen went well. I enjoyed delivering it and I think the audience enjoyed it too (which apparently is important for some reason :) ). Anyway, I said I'd put up the slides and stuff from my talk so here they are. There are two zip files, one which includes screencasts of the demos, (MD5: 2D27C2F8A072E344CD3D8A46204B0988, 46Mb) and one without the screencasts (MD5: 4E661043EF286982B7DD1CF612981F22, 1.5Mb). If you have any comments or questions, leave them in the comments section or just email me.
Just a reminder that I am giving a talk on AJAX in Aberdeen tonight; details can be found here. Feel free to pop along if there's nothing on the telly :)
The first beta release of netBake has arrived and is available for download and evaluation. Waaaaayyyyy! Go us!!!! Tags: netBake, Agile, Distributed Software Source: Computa Services & Consultants
I created this sound file purely for my own entertainment, but I thought someone else might like to listen to it too, so I'm posting it here. Enjoy! :)
James McGovern bills himself as an "industry thought leader". Well okay fair enough, if you say so, though I'm always a bit wary of self-appointed titles. What made him a thought leader? Who decided? No one asked me. Anyways, I digress. On his blog today, Jim is bumping his gums about a firm that sent him some chewing gum, unsolicited no less. Cool. Free gum. That can't be a bad start to the day can it? Well it can if you're Jim. Did he say thanks? Erm, nope. He said... In today's society, you would figure that folks would be a little smarter. Ignoring the environmental aspect of their stupidity, the gum wasn't even kosher. Ever heard of a place called the Middle East? You should whenever serving any food product ensure that it meets the standards of today's diverse IT population. Everything you consider should be Kosher at a mininum and vegetarian out of respect for those from India. What?! You're kidding right? No everything does not have to be kosher at a minimum and vegetarian out of respect for those from India (everyone in India's not vegetarian anyway surely). If someone offers you a present, and you don't want it (for whatever reason) you say "no thanks", you don't berate the gift giver for not giving you a more suitable gift. Jeez! Did your mum not teach you any manners? So Jim doesn't want the gift. Fair enough, did he say "no thanks". Erm no. He said... I have refrained from mentioning the vendors name in hopes that they may do something redeeming. The CTO of this company should consider making a sizable donation to my current favorite charity: Nine Million within the next thirty days... Wow, how rude! How egotistical! Way to be a "thought leader" Jim. Source: Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership: Software Vendors: How to ensure you will never win business...
Smalltalk, an influential language with deep roots in software development practice, offers an outstanding opportunity for stretching your mind and exercising your development muscles. The only drawback is that once you try it, you may never go back. This article will help you get started. Source: ONLamp.com -- Smalltalk for Everyone Else
… a YouTube killer, or just another MS inspired DRM nightmare. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
... I kicked its ass! The trouble with children is they behave in a childish way. It's hard to train a child to react in one way to a set of circumstances and to react in another way to a set of circumstances that look like the first set, but are in fact different. And so, this is how I came to have a nasty browser highjack installed on my machine.
From time to time, a pop up would appear advertising a certain anti-virus product (how's that for irony eh?). Neither Ad-aware nor Defender had any luck at removing it. In the end I deleted cookies from my cache until I deleted the one that triggered the highjack's initial behaviour. Then I googled the url in the cookie and managed to track down a removal tool.
Sigh, that's a couple of hours of my life I'm just not going to get back.
I was going to be following patterns in the Perl Cookbook to do this, but I've changed my mind and I'm going to do it following the Python Cookbook instead. That being the case I'm starting again with #1.1 which is processing a string one character at a time. The following code iterates over the characters in a string and writes their uppercase equivalent to the Transcript window. This recipe is written for Dolphin Smalltalk. | aString | aString := 'This is a string'.
aString do: [:char | Transcript show: char asUppercase ]. Tags: Smalltalk Cookbook
Windows Live Local has added the ability to create collections of places. It's pretty cool. You can check out a few of the places that are important to me. Tags: Mapping, Windows Live, Social Networking
...With a rumble that turned into a roar, a sound not heard at Bletchley Park for more than half a century, the machine that was at the heart of Britain's wartime code-breaking triumph began to work again. Source: Telegraph | News | Bletchley hums again to the Turing Bombe Tags: Bletchley, WW2, Code Breaking
I'm going to be speaking in Aberdeen on 27th September, on the subject of AJAX, more details here. All visitors welcome.
Tags: Speaking, AJAX, Aberdeen
Back in the day I was a member of the Army Cadet Force and as Cadet Company Sergeant Major I had the honour of marching on the Batallion banner at my last camp. On Saturday that banner was retired and my daughters (now in the battallion themselves) were on parade for the dedication of the new banner. There’s a movie of the parade below, for those of you interested in seeing what this involves. (Sorry, Microsoft format only).
I've just put the latest episode of Carnoustie Golf Links' vlog of their preparation for The Open 2007 up on the site. In this episode I went with an environmental group as they toured round the Championship Course.
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