Busy making things: @mc, notes, tinycast, github, links, photos.
Rafe:
I think I forgot to mention that version 1.01 of the XML::RSS module for Perl was released. My code that generates RSS 2.0 was included, but the other people on the project did most of the real work.
Sweet. It’s nice to see RSS tools deal with 2.0, some of the open source projects that I looked at a few months ago lacked support for RSS 2.0. Great work!
Will Cox on self checkout aisles:
So I kicked the piece of shit aisle. And cussed in front of my daughter for the first time. And now they know how I treat the machines at work.
I tend to do okay at the self checkout aisle at the Weis Market around the corner, but I don’t have child processes throwing exceptions. Every once in awhile I’ll find myself in a situation where the aisle freaks out, but it doesn’t happen too often.
I’ve also found that self checkout is really only worth it if I’m getting a handful of things. Once I’m beyond a few things in a basket, I’m better off letting the pros handle it.
I’ve been using Eclipse 2.1 M5 quite a bit for the last few days after spending a lot of time in Python and .NET. I must say that I’m falling in love with Eclipse all over again. I tried out Eclipse on a slow machine many moons ago and also tried the Motif version under Linux and was dissapointed, but saw promise.
I’ve chosen to use Eclipse as my IDE for a Java web programming course that I’m taking. Its CVS integration is really slick. I really like that if I start a javadoc tag (/**) above a method, it automaticly picks up any arguments or return values. It will add @param and @returns as neccesary.
File that under wicked cool.
After waffling, I finally looked at the list of basic Ant tasks and figured out that I could, in fact, put the whole thing in a build script and be done with it.
Ant rules. Read the rest of Rafe’s entry for the juicy details.
Sean & Scott (via Christian Weyer):
New Web Services book by Kieth Ballinger is due out Feb 14th.
Keith is crazysmart, and his upcoming book has the potential to rock.
It’s funny, I’m much more likely to pay attention to a book (especially in the web services area) with an author that I’ve heard of (on the web), actively read (their weblog), or have met.
Terrorist Attack Preparation List:
On a serious note:
The officials said they believe the al Qaeda terrorist network is particularly targeting New York and Washington.
I’ll blog it live if I’m still alive and with power/internet 🙂
David at Chris Sells’ site pointed to an MSDN article entitled TaskVision Solution Overview: Design and Implementation.
It looks like it has lots of good nuggets about .NET, Windows Forms, and Web Services. It also contains the answer to a question that I had a few months ago:
The ASP.NET file extensions (.aspx and .asmx) must be registered with Internet Information Services (IIS). (In the case that IIS was installed after the .NET Framework was installed, you must run the following application “C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv1.0.3705aspnet_regiis.exe –i”.)
I ended up deploying my test stuff to a remote server, but finding the answer to a question without actively looking for it is always a good thing.
Update:
C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv1.0.3705>aspnet_regiis.exe -i
Start installing ASP.NET (1.0.3705.288)
Finished installing ASP.NET (1.0.3705.288)C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv1.0.3705>
It’ll be interesting to see when Microsoft claims to have invented this. We were creating APIs for a network software platform in the late 80s. We eventually worked with Microsoft on this stuff with the understanding that they had not filed any patents in this area. As I write this I’m sitting in a building filled with lawyers.
Hmmm. Microsoft’s patent application for .Net sounds exactly like Radio.
Disturbing, not for the faint of heart, possibly evil on at least 3 levels…but potentially useful…
How to share sessions between ASP and ASP.NET
Mark Pilgrim introduces his 100 stories of unfamous people:
They are not syndicated. They are not categorized. They are not archived in reverse chronological order.
Mark is an amazing storyteller and I look forward to those little squares filling up.
The .NET Framework offers basic support for cryptographic operations inside of the
System.Security.Cryptographynamespace in themscorlibassembly. Out of the box, you are provided with implementations of many common symmetric key and public key-based algorithms. In addition, the cryptography framework was designed to be extensible, so that your implementation of any algorithm can be plugged in quite easily.
TechnoWarehouse has released “Windjammer,” a $4000 PCI card that contains dual-PowerPC G4 processors. The “self-contained super computer ” card can run Linux, and can be installed in a “standard desktop computer” or can be “scaled-up” for industrial applications. It uses 25 to 50 Watts, contains one serial connector, two Ethernet ports, an IDE controller, two RAM sockets, and other connectivity and upgrade options.
Pretty cool in that too expensive for me kind of way.
CNet:
Moore’s Law will continue for at least another 10 years, according to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, but it’s going to take a lot of work.
PostgreSQL 7.3.2, a bugfix and vulnerability release, is out:
This release addresses several overrun and memory leak issues that were found in recent weeks, so it is highly recommended that those running the 7.3.1 branch upgrade at their earliest convenience. This release is backwards compatible with the previous v7.3.x releases, and does not require a dump/restore to upgrade.
It sure it odd to use +=, -=, &= and Return with VB.NET
CNet:
In its Xserve server line, Apple added faster 1.33GHz processors. A single-processor server with 256MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, a 60GB ATA drive and Gigabit Ethernet networking sells for $2,799. A dual 1.33GHz processor model sells for $3,799 and includes 512MB of DDR memory and a 60GB hard drive.
[…]
The Xserve RAID systems introduced Monday feature up to 2.5 terabytes of storage in a 5.25-inch-high rack-mounted system. With standard prices ranging from $6,000 to $11,000, depending on the configuration, Apple says it is offering storage as low as $4 per gigabyte.
As with a lot of Apple’s high end stuff, it’s nice, but too expensive for me. *Sigh*
Brian Graf found a new apartment:
We won’t have any more deadlock conditions waiting for the shared bathroom resource.
What a geek! Congrats, though.
It is nearly a year since NewsWireless Net warned of the disasters looming if American wireless manufacturers went ahead with 802.11g – the go-faster WiFi standard. Now, we hear of incompatibility problems between rival 11g products – discovered in “secret” testing sessions. Are we really supposed to be surprised?
Apple has Airport Extreme, Linksys has Wireless-G (and the worlds most confusing packaging) and that’s just the beginning. It’s like building software around alpha APIs. They’re gonna change. Compatability should be possible once the standard is ratified. You can upgrade their firmware.
Exploring Plone has been fun. After much anticipation, version 1.0 of the Zope overlay was released on Friday. Plone provides a great set of tools for tapping into Zope quickly.
Python is a great language for web programming. Zope and Plone are built with this solid OO scripting language. I am interested to see how others with be utilizing this new release.
I only ever played with zope for a little bit a year or two ago, before I had any “real” Python experience/knowledge. It seemed incredibly cool, but I didn’t really see how I could apply it to things that I deal wtih. I haven’t had a chance to take a look at it since.