Articles tagged 'tech'
So true it makes me cry Apr 4 2006
This is a funny post, however it’s so true it actually smarts a little. I’ve been the developer on the end of it, the recipient of the nonsensical buzz words, lingo, quizzical looks and random remarks. It is obviously some kind of global experiment into the limits of a developer’s mind, the level’s at which he or she cracks and loses it. I’m sure this is just the beginning - I bet middle management types could write entire book’s of this kind of material :-)
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, insanity, buzzwords, nonsense, “middle management”
Read the signals Apr 4 2006
Here’s an informative review of 37 Signal’s online-only book, Getting Real. It’s something I wanted to get round to reading, so I think I’ll have to lay down the meagre $19 and pick myself up a copy. Of course, I mean, download myself a copy. Interestingly, Jason at 37S provides a 30 day update on the book, and DHH comments on how well the self-publishing route has gone for them. I think I’m now convinced it’s worth my time to read it (I’ve got a Rails book, a Ruby book, an ASP.NET book, and I’m part way through an Avalon book right now), even if I do have to sit at my PC to read it (may have to investigate - is there a decent PDF reader for the Sony PSP yet?). In the mean time, I wonder what 37 Signals next hit will be, how will they keep it real, but still provide me with another interesting, functional, useful product?
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, 37signals, “getting real”, ruby, rails
Link blogging Apr 4 2006
Ok, in order to cut-down on the amount of link blogging I’ve been doing, here’s a post with the rest of the links I’ve been wanting to get off my desk last few days:
- MSBuild Community Tasks Project - a collection of community written, useful MSBuild tasks
- Scott Hanselman’s experiences of toying with an experimental Monad Subversion provider, as part of the AnkhSVN project
- More Monad/MSH related tomfoolery - a tool for working with and scripting with MSH, MSH Analyzer
- Some kind of uber-guide / set of articles on home studio recording, and how to get a decent setup together (sound engineering and home recording has always interested me - I’m going to organize my thoughts, so expect more on this soon)
- iFolder goes open-source!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, msbuild, svn, monad, msh, “msh analyzer”, tweakz, “sound engineering”, ifolder, oss Comments
Ex-Framework Apr 3 2006
As some people may or may not have noticed, I have given up on the xFramework project. The various related project url’s now point to this very blog, and I guess the reason I gave it up is because I figured it just wasn’t that useful. There were no other contributors, so there are no licensing issues - obviously any one who took a snapshot of the licensed code is free to continue to work with that code based on the terms under which it was licensed, however going forward the repository has been retired, and I will no longer work on or continue to update xFramework. Going forward, for those that are interested, I will take the most useful parts of xFramework (namely the reflection helper code, the unit-testing framework, and the web/Xml stuff) and use it to form my own “internal” framework, upon which I will base a few applications I’ve been dreaming up. I’m hoping this will be a more streamlined approach for me, and might work out with better results than if these applications were based on a separate open-source framework I had to maintain aswell.
More news to follow on the result of this change, and the applications I’m working on, shortly I hope.
And for those wondering what happened to my series of articles on Ruby on Rails, I’m working on a BIG next installment, that’ll be a complete walkthrough of my experiences creating a simple database web application, from start-to-finish. The idea is that all the basics, resulting in a fully functioning app, will be completed by the end of this next part, and the following tutorial will then fill in some fancy details, like some advanced style techniques, AJAX, alsorts of extras.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, xframework, mono, coding, ruby, rails
Cross-platform madness Apr 2 2006
Ah this is excellent - the first step towards all of my Banshee/F-Spot/Diva on Windows dreams coming true! Having a unified cross-platform multimedia base for applications would be truly excellent, lets see how it pans out.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, gstreamer, gst, banshee, fspot, diva, mono
Free software at it's finest? Apr 1 2006
This is why I’m starting to switch over where possible to free software, and in particular, why I wanted to get a fully functional Linux desktop up and running (which I’ve now done with my old shuttlebox, an AMD64 3200+ with a gig of RAM, and Fedora Core 5 on it).
Diva is fully functional, commercial grade video editing software, that’s open source and free. Although this is the initial 0.0.1 release, it’s already looking professional, and feature packed. A product of the Google Summer of Code, kudos to the main man behind it, and a real testament to the power of Mono/Gnome, and some keen coding. Awesome.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, diva, “diva project”, “video editing”, “open source”, mono, gnome, mdk, “fedora core”
Gotta love April Fools Apr 1 2006
So another April Fools day, another Google joke. I still think the best April Fools prank that Google could pull would be to actually pick one of these bogus ideas they come up with every year, and try to make it stick. The Lunar base, the MentalPlex, or Google Romance - come April 2nd, I want to see it still proudly displayed as part of the Google portfolio. I mean after all, it’s Google we’re talking about, of course it’d work.
But my favourite April Fools joke I’ve seen today is GameSpots excellent and totally serious feature on the best Final Fantasy games. The top ten Final Fantasy games of all time to be exact. Including some games that have nothing to do with Final Fantasy, as well as counting Final Fantasy VIII twice because it’s so awesome, it’s definitely a definitive article for the FF fan. My vote for the best FF game of all time? RF Online. It’s more Final Fantasy than FFXI ever could be :-)
I want one Apr 1 2006
Here’s a piece of tech I’d like on my wrist - a SleepTracker. While reading Signal vs Noise, an interesting post caught my eye singing the praises of two pieces of kit - the StressEraser, and the SleepTracker. The StressEraser doesn’t appeal so much - luckily (at the minute at least) I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping stress under control, however the SleepTracker seems like a fairly cool toy, seeing as I always seem to suffer from grogginess and “over-tiredness” when I wake. To be able to be woken up during a certain window, at a time that the device thinks would suit me best (at an almost-awake moment) might leave me feeling a bit more with it and fresh in the mornings.
At £85 it’s not cheap, but isn’t overly expensive either. Might have to give it a go.
TV Akimbo Mar 17 2006
Sweet, check this out. Now if only they’d bring it to the UK, and perhaps add a few more big name shows - the idea is rock solid though, especially with their own hardware.
More on this, and a few other interesting things I’ve come across but not had time to blog about, later (when I’ve got time to blog about them).
GWritely Mar 9 2006
Ooh, a favourite of mine, Writely, acquired by Google. Can’t say I’m surprised, it was such a quality service that it was only a matter of time before one of the big boys decided “hey, that’d be a nice feather in our cap”. Add to that Google’s apparent desire to crush Microsoft, and you’ve got the recipe for one nice acquisition. No figures banded about from what I can see yet though, it’d be interesting to see how it stacks up to a few other interesting sales over the last few months. Glad to see current service is unaffected, as it’s something I use regularly (dare I say, almost rely on?). Also, smart move locking down registrations for the time being, should ensure that there’s no degradation in the service due to the obvious interest spike this will create. Exciting times, and congratulations to the guys and gals over at Writely.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, writely, google, microsoft, “web 2.0”
Scrawl updates Mar 4 2006
Big updates last few days to the software I use for this very blog. Firstly, an almost complete rewrite of the software itself (Scrawl), turning it into a fully blown content management system, allowing far greater customization. I can now use Scrawl to host multiple sites, mapped to different domains, and each site allows static content to be added, new blogs to be created, posts to be added, aswell as comments and blog categories too. I still have feeds available for each blog, and an XML-RPC interface so that I can write this very post, and all my others, from within Performancing. On top of that, the way Scrawl has been restructured makes it nice and easy for me to write new plugins, to host other types of content, such as reviews, polls, charts, stats, anything I can think of!
The style can be fully customized - expect the style of this blog to change over the coming days as I play with it, and each site hosted on the Scrawl software can have its own design. I plan to host more sites, for different projects and ventures, using the software.
It uses a nice model view controller architecture now, using my recent additions to xFramework to great advantage, and then it uses Xml and Xsl transforms to display the data. All in all, much better, faster, and more reliable!
So that’s it really, the only downside was the url change required, however the old url now redirects to this page (the RSS feed url redirects to the blog HTML page too however). But with the new system, I can change my blogs design as many times as I want, aswell as add features and updates, without affecting any of the core stuff, like the post data, or the url structure. Scrawl is here to stay, and soon I want to allow people to use it for their blogs, sites, project pages, anything. If you have an idea of what you might want to use Scrawl for, do get in touch.
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, scrawl, blogging, coding, dotnet, mono, performancing
Ride the 'Vine Mar 4 2006
So I see that Newsvine has launched. Sweet. I’ve been involved in the beta test going on for the last eight weeks or so, and now the site, its features, and its content, is available to all. Such a great idea, and with a really nice implementation, it’s feature set has already grown since when I first started using it, and with more improvements planned, it’s got a bright future. Come on in and ride the ‘vine!
Technorati Tags: el, eldiablo, newsvine, blogging, web-2.0
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