Dev Dawn

I’m going to be upgrading to Wordpress 2.0.2 from here on in .. so if the site is down .. apologies. Of course, if it is down, this post won’t appear either heh heh.

So, yeah.

And I’ve got the latest Spherical Phoke Interview done and drafted. Will post shortly.

I’m going back to basics today. Posting bout stuff I’ve read on the net. There’s something cathartic about commenting on what other people have written. And other things. “A center for kids who can’t read good and who want to learn to do other stuff good, too.” Ahhh. Don’t know where that quote came from. Somewhere dark and scary.

Anyway.

First things first.

• Spent a while last night bashing through Joomla, to get my business site up. It’s got NOTHING on it yet, content-wise .. but anyways, here tis : http://www.archertechnologyservices.com.

  The purpose/plan at the moment, is that it will become the base for project downloads, resume stuff, work history, services .. That’s the plan.

• Google Calendar is nigh. This will be interesting, because lately people have been asking me about web functionality, simple stuff, but calendar based. Being able to set events and then have reminder emails to the people assigned to that event.

  Check out these screenshots and comments.

• This might be a little hard to skim-read, at least I found I had to actually stop and do some quality reading. But, anyways.

  Dion Hinchcliffe’s “A Timeless Way Of Building Software” article is really, a great read. Actually, without wanting to don the MonkeyHat +5 Hype, you can learn stuff from any article he writes. Whether or not you agree, reading them brings another perspective. I find that I do agree, and that, like Mr Joel he pushes my thinking further.

• In another Google-related news piece, they have acquired Writely, the online-office-ee word processor. Writely seemed pretty cool, I think I signed up to the beta. Although, because I write desktop software, it’s harder to see why I would utilise it. However, that’s not to say a reason won’t pop up in the future. If Google succeed in melding all this stuff (GMail, Calendar/Events, Writely, ..) then it might well just be the best thing since .. Ajax .. ha ha ha. Buzz-word craziness.
• This is an awesome article, Feature: The Creative Power of Second Life. Second Life is a sandbox play business model. This article blows my mind. There are consequences here that go far. The mashup of Web 2.0 and Gaming. Nice. The whole potential (realised, and future) of Second Life. It’s amazing. In-simulation browsers of the real-world web. That’s just .. cool.
• Zombie MMO Announced, man alive! Killing stuff zomie-style. This is the pinnacle of human achievement. Well .. there’s something about zombies. Not sure if it’s a good thing, ha ha.

So there you have it. My back to old-school blog. Simple news aggregation with a little comment thrown in. I wanted to copy straight from Dion’s Web 2.0 Blog and have a piccie showing my understanding of some development idea i’d had .. but alas, not today.

Cheers,

Okay. So, here goes.

I locked the Windows Genuine Advantage post by Adam.

There are many reasons I could have done it. But they would be all wrong. I’m not about censoring free speech. I’m not advocating a stance where we take the crap any massive monopoly business tries to feed us, and I’m not taking a prissy stance. At least, I don’t think I am.

The real reason is .. I’m scared for my baby.

Typing windows genuine advantage verification into Google nets this.

And that scares me. Why?

Because Dev Dawn is not about hacking and cracking. It’s about Development .. YES, contrary somewhat to the blurb, Information, Conduits Of, Interfaces To. I admit there is some hypocrisy there, possibly. Heh heh.

As the search shows, there are plenty of places to go looking for the answers. That’s fine. I’m not worried about those sites, and that’s the power of the net, you can find just about anything. But Dev Dawn isn’t going to go down that track. Maybe I’ll create another site that’s about the freedom of information in the development world. That’s not a bad idea.

So yeah. Dev Dawn isn’t going to enter into the argument. One way or another. At least, that’s what I’d like to see it. And yes, I’ve only thought through this since noticing the amount of hits that post was getting. Which is bad on my part.

I realise that doing this sets up precendent, which is a dangerous thing. Precendent for future issues. However, I’m willing to cop that at this point in time. Precendent can also maintain other benficial aspects.

So, to all who disagree. Excellent! Comment away. But remember, it’s not about judging the act of hacking .. it’s about protecting Dev Dawn. Which to some might be the same thing. But I don’t see it that way.

Cheers,

Edit:Yes, it’s “Cacking”, as in crazy laughter, or something like that .

It occured to me at lunch, that too often I brain lockout. That is, unless I’m actually working and understanding a concept, or thought, or idea, .. then I turn off and start thinking about something else. Not all the time, but it’s happening lately, with the amount of stuff going through my brain.

What I should be doing is:

• Actually trying to understand what is being talked about. One basic method, tried and true, is to ask questions. This presents some problems, but they mostly exist within the realms of the ego. Of course, too often, I nod and agree without actually understanding, so later on asking questions is a double-whammy because I not only don’t understand, but I tried to say that I did, furthering my buffoonish antics.
• Do think about other areas, but focussed on the topic at hand. If I’m okay at thinking up linking the hard-core coding concepts with real-world business applications (theoretically, cause I’m not) .. then I should probably try and tie these in. Not necessarily in that particular conversation, but keep them brimming around in the brain.

I guess this isn’t so much of a development post as a character post. Gearing up for the Aussie Dev Con has got me thinking about how a bunch of clarion devs will actually interact on a personal basis. Face-to-face. I’m looking forward to it, because I know that I do revel in certain aspects of People-Person work. It will be interesting, and exciting.

Anyway. Strange and wierd post. Cheers if you got this far.

Until next time I post, and you read .. seeya.

Capesoft’s NetTalk is .. awesome.

I bought NetTalk a couple of months ago, in January, and so was a little bummed about missing out on the NetTalk4 cutoff. Not too worried though, I forked out for the upgrade this morning, and dived in. Edit: I had a brain freeze. The cutoff was 2005, so my big bad. It’s that thing where you skim-read to acquire the “gist” of what is being said. Bad habit. Heh heh.

In about 2 hours, I’d come up with a simple Task Management system.

This product blew me away. The ease at which you can get something up and running is second-to-none. Imagine developing in PHP but having the power of an ISAM database behind you. Well, if you know Clarion, then it’s even easier than that.

It’s almost as though Capesoft have created their own Framework, like Ruby on Rails, or any of the others coming out today. Of course, substitute Clarion for Ruby to make it work, but hey .. that’s fine by me .

For me, it was a black box shot to pieces. My brain doesn’t innately understand new stuff. I’ve been dabbling in creating web software for a while, but mostly on other platforms of different generations (PHP, Wordpress, …). The whole serving thing hadn’t really coalesced in my brain.

Thanks to NetTalk, it now comes a step closer. As long as I have some kind of port-forwarding enabled, and some static IPs, I can have any application I want running on the web. Served to anyone who visits.

This is the power I needed. Not the actual implementation, but that it broke open my mind to the possibilities. No longer do I have to think, “I could make this program, but how could I get it onto the net?” ..

Kudos again to Capesoft. They’ve come up with something very special in NetTalk.

Although it’s the Web Server functionality I’ve caught the hype about, there’s so much more.

I bought it to put in some basic email functionality into a logistics app of mine. Worked like a dream.

NetTalk is well worth it’s price. In fact, I would say, it’s worth far outweighs the price. Truly, the world of software development (Desktop & Web) is at the feet of the Clarion Developer. You just have to believe. Or something like that, heh heh.

NetTalk is to an Application’s Web Functionality, what Professor Kirke’s Wardrobe is to Narnia. (Bruce, that took me some time, trying to up my last big-quote-for-capesoft .. ha ha)