Year: 2002

Sam Gentile covers the changes to C++ in Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Everett) for O’Reilly’s ONDotnet.  It’s great to see more standards compliance, Managed C++ GUI goodies, and increased performance.  Great article, Sam!

I was going to write a blog entry about structured procrastination, but… [via Adam Wendt]

I’m going to throw something if a Segway shows up in my Amazon gold box.

Fedex Freight likes Linux.  They’ve recently replaced NT/IIS with Red Hat 7.2/7.3 for their web frontend.  From the NWFusion article:

Porting the Java-based applications used by the Web servers to make database calls to back-end systems was painless when the Linux swap was done, Boreni says. FedEx Freight loaded the Linux servers with a version of the Tomcat Java application server, which runs on top of Red Hat Linux. By installing the Tomcat application server, FedEx Freight was able to support the Java-based applications it had been running on the Windows Web servers – now replaced with Linux servers – without having to rewrite its applications. [via NewsForge]

I have managed to set up a web service that generates the same output as the SOAP::Lite implementation I hacked together last week using Axis.  It was a little less trivial to implement, but most of that was squashing the nitpicky Java stuff without an IDE, which was extremely educational but a little time consuming.  I’ve managed to call it from another Linux machine with a SOAP::Lite-based client.  I may still have to work out a few kinks in order to get a .NET-based client to work properly.  Right now it is timing out, which I’m sure is my fault on either the server or the client side.

I also got an email this afternoon from Jake Savin about my problems with the AggregatorAPI.  I’m still pretty sure that these are my problems (I still get bogged down on a lot of gotchas), and not with the XML-RPC interface, but I will put an email together this evening and shoot it off to radio-dev.

Mac Central reports what I found out by checking Washington Apple Pi’s calendar a few weeks ago:

Washington Apple Pi’s “Winter Edition” of its Computer Show & Sale (also known as the Garage Sale) is coming next month. The event takes place at the Northern Virginia Community College Gymnasium in Annandale, Virginia on Saturday, December 14, from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm.

The Washington, DC-area Macintosh user group bills its Garage Sale as “the largest Mac computer show and sale on the East Coast.” The event is expected to have deals for folks looking for Mac hardware and software.

I went to my first garage sale last winter, though I missed the spring/summer one.  It is held at a gymnasium of a community college.  To give you an idea of size, it is comparable to a packed marketpro computer show & sale, but it’s all Mac, baby!

I’ve found that the best high-end deals happen in the first 15-20 minutes, while the best ‘junk’ deals can be had starting at about 1:30, when people realize that if they don’t sell it, they’ve got to lug it back outside.  Last year I scored about a half-dozen pre-powermacs (for a total of about $30), a sweet ergonomic keyboard, and all of those odds and ends that you always need but never want to pay $20 on ebay for.

So if you’re in the need of Mac junk and stuff and live within an hour or so drive of Northern Virginia, you should probably check it out.  I’ll be tailgating with my friend Roger, but if any bloggers out there will be there, let me know.  Here’s the Winter Sale page, poster [pdf], and coupon [pdf], but don’t bother with that.

CNet reports that Fossil wants to put PalmOS on your wrist.  Cool idea, neat watches, but it’s not going to work.  $199-$299 for a low-end PDA on a stylin’ band is a little too much to pay IMHO.

John Udell hypes the ability of Microsoft’s Office 11 to let grandma read and write XML.  I’m a little scared to think what a Word-authored XML document would look like.  Does anyone remember the kind of HTML that it produces?

That’s right, they’re finally here. They’re priced at $299 after rebate for a 400MHz X-Scale, 64MB RAM, 48MB Rom, or $199 after rebate for 300MHz X-Scale, 32MB RAM, 32MB ROM.  Both units run Pocket PC 2002 Premium. [via Slashdot]

Kenneth Hunt set up a virtual linux account with JohnCompanies last night.  Congrats.  Have fun.  🙂

Axis is installed on the server, all associated jars are in their appropriate directories and mentioned in CLASSPATHs, the AdminClient works, deploying by way of .jws works, and everything that I need to finally start using Axis for development works.

Chris Sells notes that Visual Studio .NET 2003 (a.k.a. Everett) Final Beta is available to MSDN subscribers.

This one stumped me for awhile.  I had been able to install and run Apache Axis 1.0 (under Tomcat 4.1.12) on my Red Hat 7.3 testbed.  The server and examples ran just fine, but I was not able to use Axis to build a client.  No big deal, as this was before I had done a lot of reading on Axis and web services in general, and before the Web Services DevCon.

After upgrading all of my Red Hat boxen to 8.0 (one desktop for fun and one stripped down server for test), happyaxis gave me a 500 internal service error.  I tried installing on both boxes, thinking that I had done something incorrectly.  Neither installation worked.  This evening I decided to reinstall Red Hat 7.3 on my testbed, and now happyaxis no longer throws a 500 internal service error, and is quite happy.  I am currently installing some optional components, but everything seems to be running just fine on the server side.

This was quite aggrivating.  It worked just fine under 7.3.  I upgraded to 8.0 and pulled my hair out trying to make the damn thing work.  Turns out it wasn’t me, it was my distro.  Has anyone else been able to run Axis 1.0 on Red Hat 8.0?  If so, let me know.

O’Reilly’s ONDotnet:

One of the benefits of using a windowing system is the ability to drag and drop objects from one window to another. Such is the functionality that we have taken for granted when using Microsoft Windows. Though it seems such a trivial task, not much has been written about how to implement drag and drop in your Windows application. In this article I will discuss how you can use Windows forms using the .NET Framework to develop applications that support drag and drop operations.

[via Phillip Pearson, who got it from Rick the techno-weenie]

Gregor Rothfuss has put his masters thesis online at Advogato:

I recently completed my masters thesis A Framework for Open Source Projects (1.5MB PDF). By announcing it here, I hope it can be useful for someone. Feedback welcome.

I consider the thesis to be a 1.0 document, and plan to update / extend it as I learn more. The goal of my thesis was to establish a framework to support open source project participants and leaders. Im aware that each project is different, but I still believe that there are some common themes that reappear in most projects. Im trying to work these out, and to offer help for the most common problems encountered. So, if you think I’m full of it, or have corrections / addendums, send them my way.

I’m definately going to check this out as soon as I get a chance.

This is a very cool applet that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago.  I was trapped in my room, my radio does not get local American) football coverage, and I wanted to check on the local team.  I headed over to NFL.COM, and popped up something that said ‘Gameday Live!’  Lo and behold, it gives my near-realtime updates, play by play, stats, field position, other scores, and all kinds of good stuff.  I had stumbled upon a similar system last season while trying to check out a baseball game, but it looks like MLB.COM has made that service for-pay.

My hats go off to the team that put this Applet and the supporting infrastructure together.  I also thank whomever is reponsible for keeping this app ad-supported.  The Washington Redskins are currently on top of the Giants 17-10.  Now back to your regularly schedule techblog…

Anil Dash:

It’s time for the microcontent client.

Also Phil Wolff’s summary is good.  Also check out his ideas on a converged client.

XMLHack: SOAP Web Services: built on a contradiction?

Rael has implemented an idea by Steven Johnson.

Give it a whirl (you’ll need a Google Web API developer’s key) or download the source for your mutating and spindling pleasure.

From a later post:

Steven Johnson has a 0.34% googleshare of “Emergence”
Slime Mold has a 0.04% googleshare of “Emergence”

I think this fits in the category of “proof of concept” web services application, but it’s cool nonetheless.

NewsForge reports:

Story at ZDNet: Cash-strapped, and looking for new options, IT managers are warming to open-source content management products. Customizable and free, open-source is becoming serious competition to the “big iron” CMS vendors like Interwoven and Vignette.