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July 31, 2002
German politics. While in San
German politics. While in San Diego I was talking to a few people about what goes on in German politics - and we were comparing scandals. Well Germany has a new one - bonus miles! That's right. Several German politicians have had to resign from their various positions because of Lufthansa Miles and More. You see they collected the bonus miles on business trips and then used them privately - which is streng verboten! Most of the revelations are coming from Bild newspaper and seem to be aimed in a certain political direction. Did I say there was an election coming up in September? Having a UK passport means I can't vote here - but I can still gaze in awe. As if there weren't enough real problems...
Posted by Matthew at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)
Updates. Updated the names on
Updates. Updated the names on one of the OSCON photos. Thanks Sam! Added Steve and Doc to my blog-watch column.
Posted by Matthew at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2002
Amazon reviewers wanted. Pssst....don't tell
Amazon reviewers wanted. Pssst....don't tell anyone else but New Riders and the authors (meaning Carsten and I) are interested in getting you to write a review of Cocoon: Building XML Applications for Amazon.com. And guess what...New Riders will provide you with a complementary copy for your effort. Interested? Then drop stephanie.wall(at)newriders.com an email. But don't tell her where you read this :-).
Posted by Matthew at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)
Sam pics. You know I
Sam pics. You know I really would have liked to take a better picture at breakfast - but I either left my camera in my room or forgot. Next time.
Posted by Matthew at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)
Ugo complains: I have now
Ugo complains: I have now added some captions to he OSCON photos. I was just too tired yesterday...and there was a pile of work waiting :).
Posted by Matthew at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2002
Steve: Thanks to OSCON I
Steve: Thanks to OSCON I now have a friend in Canada, or more exactly in New Brunswick - correct Steve? Anyway we had a great time hanging out and inventing geekchalking. I hope we can link up one day - maybe even manage a visit? BTW the highest point in New Brunswick is Mount Carleton! How far is New Brunswick from say Detroit (my sister lives there). And there's always next years OSCON or or ..
Posted by Matthew at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)
Congratulations Sam FYI: tomorrow, I
Congratulations Sam FYI: tomorrow, I will have been at IBM for 21 years.Ê I spent nearly a decade working on AD/Cycle Information Model and Repository tasks.Ê One customer I workedÊwith during that period you may have heard of: GAD. Sam told me this when we chatted at OSCON. Strangely enough I worked at Nixdorf on ATMs from 1988-1991 and GAD was one of our major customers. The GAD is the IT center for the German "Volksbanken" in the region of Northern Germany .
It was great meeting Sam at last and I hope that wasn't the last time! He even sat in on my Cocoon presentation - and didn't leave early....I don't think so anyway :-)
Posted by Matthew at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
Phil Windley comments on my
Phil Windley comments on my talk at OSCON I asked a question about why they didn't just use HTTP authentication, instead of roling a separate authentication function inside Cocoon. I didn't get an answer that was satisfying. (via Ugo).
If I remember correctly I answered that we wanted it to be possible to integrate exisiting (application) user-databases, that Cocoon can also run without a Web server and that it would be relatively easy to integrate the HTTP authentication into the user authentication. Most of the portal scenarios we have so far come accross have been to integrate user data stored in say an oracle database or via LDAP. Ugo has some other reasons I didn't come up with fast enough.
Posted by Matthew at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
Kai's Basel II Weblog (German)
Kai's Basel II Weblog (German) is growing slowly with information on this emerging European banking standard.
Posted by Matthew at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
OSCON Pictures up: Still very
OSCON Pictures up: Still very jetlagged I have uploaded some pictures from OSCON here. Enjoy.
Posted by Matthew at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2002
Winding down This has been
Winding down This has been a very interesting week and soon the WiFi network will go down - so that's it from San Diego. Normal blogging will return next week - when I wake up :-).
Posted by Matthew at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2002
Outrageous uses for Jabber: DJ
Outrageous uses for Jabber: DJ Adams. History of Jabber. An XML based messaging and presence protocol. There is a server software that implements the protocol. jabber.org server. Commercial server also available from jabber.com. Most common is the jabber.org server.
The Jabber protocol is XML based. All elements are exchanged between Jabber entities. The elements are parts of a larger document. DJ explains the Jabber protocol. Interesting: The document is not sent completely. It is streamed bit by bit. Stream-closing tags can be sent a lot later - for example. The Jabber server is extensible and you can hook in your own components. DJ is having problems with his presentation which is a pity. I don't think he is going to get to outrageous uses...which is what I was expecting. Basic Jabber stuff up to now. Jabber is able to parse fragements of XML using the parsemore() function. Could Jabber be integrated with Cocoon in order to gain the asynchronous advantages? Payloads can be defined freely inside exisiting Jabber tags. Jabber can be both P2P or not. Servers can be spread around. There does not need to be one server with many clients. Similar to email (because of the store-and-forward nature).
Posted by Matthew at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
Infrastructure - why geeks build
Infrastructure - why geeks build it - why Hollywood doesn't understand it - how business can take advantage of it Doc Searls. Everyone's blooging. Sam is here, Lisa is here etc. Doc is the senior editor of linuxjournal, co-author of the cluetrain manifesto and a weblogger.
Doc's adventures: Exploring the infrastructure - dial up in London - no. Found consume.net in an Internet cafe and wireless access points. Walked around London and found wireless access on someone elses network by sitting in a cafe. Met Ben Hammersly who was running the WiFi network. Doc saw that people were not using the telephone but using the WiFi. Later in the evening he meets Matt Jones (the father of warchalking). Doc put it on the blog and from there it takes over. Nature. Craig Burton: The Net is a world. "Technology starts with technologists" - Marc Andreesen. Civilization doesn't move all at the same speed. Hollywood is trying to regulate the Net. The deeper battle is between metaphers. Hollywood sees the Net as a plumbing system for intellectual property and other "content". Geeks see the Net as a place - a commons - where people can make culture and do business. Infrastructure is what goes under a platform. Hollywood doesn't understand infrastructure. They only understand "content" and distribution. They want to control the uncontrollable. Geeks want infrastructure to support business. Think of the Nets infrastructure as a source of natural building resources. Linux is not growing on the trees - it is the trees. The software industry is maturing into something like the construction industry. Infrastructure supports markets. Ubiquity counts and creates infrastructure. It's not infrastructure until it becomes ubiquitous. Doc shows the Burton Matrix: IBM are moving stuff over from being closed and propriatary to being open and open source. Apple is catching on and becoming masterful. They are using Jabber in iChat. Doing Rendevous, FireWire, USB etc. Now RealNetworks are getting into this game. There is a businees in getting companies to move into the open area (such as CollabNet). How do you create ubiquitous infrastructure and make money at the same time - cause anarchy then take advantage of it! Hollywood thinks commerce governs infrastructure. What kind of trouble can the restless natives make? EFF, OSI, FSF, Creative Commons, GeekPAC, AOTC. Apply the logic of anarchistic marketing. Markets are conversations!
Posted by Matthew at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)
Presentation wrap-up. About 40 people
Presentation wrap-up. About 40 people attended my presentation on the Cocoon XML Portal. 45 minutes are way too short to get into any detail, but hopefully something came across. Quite a few questions at the end on usage scenarios and comparisons to other stuff like Jetspeed. Perhaps a few will now buy the book.
PS:: Someone has just come up to me in the hall and thanked S&N explicitely for supporting the Cocoon community and donating the components. That has made my day.
Posted by Matthew at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
Time for me to get
Time for me to get ready for my presentation. Let's hope someone comes. Cocoon attracts a lot of attention when I tell people what it can do. However Cocoon is not that well known here - perhaps I can change some of that..
Posted by Matthew at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)
Keynote: The Changing Relationship Between
Keynote: The Changing Relationship Between Business and Developers. Paul Pangaro , Elaine Coleman (both Sun Microsystems). How is open source changing the relationship of companies to their programmers? Elaine shows interviews with 3 different programmers who have a completely different view on what "programming" is. Elaine is a cognitive scientist.
Posted by Matthew at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)
Good morning from San Diego:
Good morning from San Diego: Breakfast with Sam, Erik and Rasmus Lerdorf. Rasmus had some interesting things to say abot how the PHP project manages documentation. The PHP documentation is really organized and even each language is a separate project. Rasmus goes around getting support the documentation process and in particular by telling the user group from a country like Korea that the Japanese documentation is better. I think the secret behind the PHP documentation is that documentors have the same standing as programmers do (same email address etc.). Rasmus mentioned that in fact the German PHP users are the most professional and that PHP is used there nearly the most - when one looks at the different countries.
Posted by Matthew at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
Out to dinner in San
Out to dinner in San Diego's old town with Maddog Hall, Steve, Quenton, Greg and Christy from linuxjournal. Lots of interesting dinner conversation around open source in countries like Brazil and China, discussions about Compaq-DEC and HP-Compaq mergers (Maddog knows all the details). After a good Mexican dinner, Maddog was our guide around old town.
Posted by Matthew at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2002
Stupid XSLT Tricks Doug Tidwell.
Stupid XSLT Tricks Doug Tidwell. The room is packed. I'm sitting on the floor. XSLT basics. Hello World example. Small templates help reuse. You don't have to transform to a markup language. Small demonstration shows how to generate XML into different output versions. Asks briefly if anyone uses Cocoon. Demonstration also generates Java source code. SVG example. Creating multiple output files using xslt: Use extensions (supported e.g. by xalan - redirect extension). This works by first defining a namespace and then using the namespace inside the xsl stylesheet. Exslt is working on providing extensions in a community process. Next example uses document() function. Question from the floor: "Is it easy to write extensions?" Answer: "If you read my book it is" :-). Next shows recursion and iteration. Recursion is done using named templates. Using document() and sort() together. Document(' ') with an empty string and you can use it to lookup stuff in a lookup table. This means you can put the data into the stylesheet itself. The lookup table must have a different namespace. Use document() function for grouping.
Toot-o-matic: Automated tutorial generation using XSLT to generate complete tutorial documentation (HTML, PDF etc.) for IBM DeveloperWorks.
Posted by Matthew at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
Lunch: Lunch with Doc Searls
Lunch: Lunch with Doc Searls and we introduced him to geekchalking and of course we geekchalked him. Jeremie Miller dropped by and we played around connecting up the various mac laptops to each other. John "Maddog" Hall dropped by to chat with Doc and introduced himself.
Posted by Matthew at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)
Web Service Discovery techniques. Doug
Web Service Discovery techniques. Doug Tidwell. Al Gore said in 1984 that "applications will be based on compositions of services discovered ... dynamically".
Web Service example: MagicEightBall. Advantage of Web Services is that you can take existing stuff and put it out on the web. Use Apache Axis and deploy class as Web service. In order to use the service, the client needs to know:: the address of the machine, the id of the service, the name of the methods, the parameters to a method, the contents of the SOAPAction field. SOAP toolkits do most of the work for you. But how do you discover what you need? WSDL, WSIL, UDDI.
WSDL: W3C, supported by Axis, WSDL2Java, Java2WSDL, "?WSDL" to generate WSDL from the service. But we still need to discover the WSDL file.
WSIL and UDDI: Web Services Inspection Language and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration protocol. With WSIL - I know the host I want to work with. I go to the host and get a list of services (inspection.wsil). Like index.html. With UDDI I do not know the host and therefore it is more difficult. A UDDI server is a SOAP server in itself. Metadata about services can be stored in the registry. The UDDI spec calls this concept: "technical models" or "tModels". Question from the floor: What about contracts and SLAs? Why do I then need UDDI? Answer: These things are being worked on. But because of this most UDDI is inside a firewall.
Right way to discover a service: Search in a trusted registry for a service, choose the provider based on criteria, invoke the service. But not feasable outside an institution..
Posted by Matthew at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)
Keynote: Evolution in Action. Jim
Keynote: Evolution in Action. Jim Kent. Talks about how evolution can be compared to programming.
Posted by Matthew at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)
Keynote:Hacking the Genome: Open Source
Keynote:Hacking the Genome: Open Source in Bioinformatics. Ewan Birney. Ewan starts with a crash course in bioinformatics.
Posted by Matthew at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)
Good morning from San Diego:
Good morning from San Diego: Breakfast with Sam and Erik. Talked with Sam about his views on REST vs. SOAP. Erik's book sounds very interesting as does Ant which can do a whole lot more than what we have been using it for up to now.
Posted by Matthew at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)
Cocoon XML Portal article is
Cocoon XML Portal article is up on on XML.com. It is also linked here
Posted by Matthew at 02:49 AM | Comments (0)
Web Services Architectures: Paul Prescod.
Web Services Architectures: Paul Prescod. And I'm sitting next to Dr. Roy Fielding.
SOAP 1.0/1.1. RPC style. Static endpoints. Dynamic things do not have URIs (like purchase orders). Shows example in C# and example submit request for a purchase order.
SOAP 1.2: is extremely flexible. Choose your own message exchange pattern, choose your own protocol, choose your own methods.
SOAP is becoming too complicated and too "open for everyone" (meaning exisiting protocols from other vendors). Solution: Standardize SOAP subset - use URIs for addressing; use SOAP over HTTP. Nouns cannot be standardized because dependent on industry etc. But verbs can be standardized (insert, update, delete). Moves over to introducing REST.
REST goals: scalability of component interactions, generality of interfaces, independent deployment of components.
REST says:
Interactions are stateless (no dependency on previous messages, better scalability, persistant data via URIs). Resources are identified through URIs (any information that can be named is a resource, all logical constructs in a system should be given URIs). Manipulation through representations (resources are not transmitted over the Web - only representations, many representations have URIs to other representations and are therefore "hypermedia resources"). Self descriptive messages (messages should be explicit and clear, no message history, semantics are predefined and globally known). Hypermedia as the Engine of Application state (servers are stateless and messages can be interpreted without examining history, there is no such thing as a service, there are just resources, clients migrate through a series of steps towards a goal follwing hypertext links).
Posted by Matthew at 02:26 AM | Comments (0)
Why SOAP sucks, why SOAP
Why SOAP sucks, why SOAP rocks: Matt Sergeant.
Why does SOAP suck:
Hard to implement fully. Most implementations only implement a subset.Too many technologies (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL). Any SOAP implementors here? Yes. Sam Ruby is here :-). No built in Logging. No security model (yet). SOAP bypasses firewall security measures. No session definition. Garbage collection required on the server to maintain consistancy in objects. SOAP does not scale well. POST vs. GET discussion. SOAP uses POST over HTTP. POST bypasses HTTP caching. HTTP offers other verbs that we should be using - we are GETting a stock quote and not POSTing it. (Now Matt is moving towards REST). SOAP is not human readable. (SOAP)Methods are not enough. Developers need APIs. Google created the WebSevice and then developed APIs (as well). If you are going to implement everything then why SOAP.REST description. Defines the Web as we know it. Writing applications using HTTP. Use the verbs available. Stock quote example using REST. Google example (they already had REST interface - but now only paying customers can use that). Only SOAP interface is free. Benefits: Works with HTTPD (including logging), standard authorisation works - even on a method basis (using different resources). Cache works (such as squid). Persistant sessions are supported.
Why SOAP rocks:
SOAP::Lite is simplest module for SOAP in any language (Perl). Matt shows SOAP server in 2 lines of PERL. Wow. SOAP client is 5 lines. Other implementations available in different languages. WSDL file makes it a lot easier if you use strongly typed languages. No need to understand HTTP to build SOAP services. Interoperability works unless you have complex needs. SOAP is a W3C standard and easily accessible. Future development is certain.REST disadvantages:
No standard. Every application is different. REST works well for borwsers but is harder to adapt for computers. No REST tools beyond HTTPD and server languages.Conclusions:
The application will dictate the method. Or customers - or pointy haired bosses. Basically SOAP sucks - but SOAP implementations rock. REST is better if you can use it.Posted by Matthew at 01:33 AM | Comments (0)
RMS and Miguel: Straight Talking:
RMS and Miguel: Straight Talking: Caught the last part of this discussion. RMS is basically making his points clear as to where the difference is between Free software and open source. Seems to me to be slightly over the top - but perhaps I need to read his book first. But I'm in the same room as Eric Raymond, Richard Stallmann and Miguel de Icaza - which is pretty cool.
Posted by Matthew at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)
MySQL: From lunchtime-talks it seems
MySQL: From lunchtime-talks it seems as though the database MySQL is being used a lot - especially when it comes to serving data out to the Web from a data-storage system.
Posted by Matthew at 12:10 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2002
Introducing the Perl 6 language:
Introducing the Perl 6 language: Larry Wall and Damian Conway introduce Perl 6 - which seems to have beed radically changed from Perl 5. Lots of new things like Exception handling - something Java geeks take for granted. Apart from that there seems to be lots of changes Perl programmers will have to get used to. It seems as though Perl has a very strong following here as the presentation was packed..
I think I would be pretty bummed if someone changed the language I had been using so radically this way. But when it comes to Perl - that seems to be different. I am sure it would not be possible to change Java this way - without a revolution.
Posted by Matthew at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)
1st. Book sold!: Daneil Proudfoot
1st. Book sold!: Daneil Proudfoot - someone I met during one of the lunch breaks has just bought the first book. And I signed it for him. I also met Stephanie Wall and Elise Walters our editors from New Riders.
Posted by Matthew at 07:51 PM | Comments (0)
Keynote: RMS - The Free
Keynote: RMS - The Free Software Movement: Where All This Started From. Richard will have nothing to do with "open source". He says he is an activist in the free software movement.
Posted by Matthew at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
Keynote: Lawrence Lessig - Freeing
Keynote: Lawrence Lessig - Freeing culture. Never have so few controlled so much. Anything you do on the computer is a proces of "copying" and therefore regulated. There is no "fair use" when it comes to the Internet and coputers. How is increasing copyright killing off culture. A lot of this is specific to America and their laws etc. But what is the situation on Europe? Aaron is blogging this in detail..
Posted by Matthew at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)
Good morning from San Diego.
Good morning from San Diego. Ran into Sam Ruby in the hallway this morning and had breakfast with him. On my way out to the tent I popped into the room where New Riders have their booth - and guess what....I have seen the book! So it exists! Go buy it :-).
Posted by Matthew at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)
Dinner with Andy Oran. He
Dinner with Andy Oran. He is an editor with O'Reilly. Talked a bit about the conference and writing books. And he said he would come to my presentation (maybe). Then we had a few beers and are now sitting in Larry Wall's State of the Onion Address
Posted by Matthew at 04:41 AM | Comments (0)
Geekchalking. It's hard to tell
Geekchalking. It's hard to tell the geek just by the name tag - so this is where Geekchalking comes into play. Instead of everyone wearing different T-Shirts such as "Perl rocks" "Perl rockx" etc. - we define standard symbols you have to wear on your shirt. To symbolize your level of geekdom. And if you're not wearing the correct T-Shirt then we will chalk the correct symbol onto it. And here is a link to the Geekchalking site we created here.
Posted by Matthew at 02:33 AM | Comments (0)
Steve and I are lounging
Steve and I are lounging in the hall and "geek watching". Read there for more. I came up with "Geekchalking". We're working on it.
Posted by Matthew at 02:30 AM | Comments (0)
Cocoon Book available: According to
Cocoon Book available: According to the New Riders Web site, the book is now in stock there - so it should be on Amazon soon. Also - you will find a sample chapter from the book here.
I'm currently not subscribed to the Cocoon mailing-lists - so can someone post the information there - thanks!
Posted by Matthew at 01:08 AM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2002
Now in Exchanging objects with
Now in Exchanging objects with SOAP. And guess what the first thing Ian Kallen did was - hold up his book (which has nothing to do with SOAP)! Bahh. Now thinking about it...
Posted by Matthew at 10:58 PM | Comments (0)
Here's a photo of the
Here's a photo of the connectivity room. Full of Macs! I hope they give them out after the conference :-).
Posted by Matthew at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)
SVG vs SWF: Question from
SVG vs SWF: Question from the floor: If the Adobe SVG viewer is the only viewer available - then isn't that as propriatary as using Flash?. Answer: Other viewers are coming.
Posted by Matthew at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)
Aaron: Packing. Haircut. Business cards.
Aaron: Packing. Haircut. Business cards. Is packing three cameras and two laptops going overboard?
Posted by Matthew at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)
Today they seem to be
Today they seem to be checking who actually goes into the tutorials - yesterday it was access for anyone.
Posted by Matthew at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)
Now sitting in the SVG
Now sitting in the SVG tutorial. Hopefully I will learn something. Yesterday was a slow day. There were not really any tutorials that really seemed interesting. The first PERL tutorial was too "in-depth" and the second was too much XML introduction. But today should be better.
Posted by Matthew at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)
Morning notes: I have never
Morning notes: I have never seen so many laptops in one place. And many, many of them are Macs. This morning I had continental breakfast in the "tent" - with 11MB WLAN access. That's fun! Lots of Mac-Talk.
Posted by Matthew at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)
Steve was looking for the
Steve was looking for the NASA/Cocoon link. Here it is.
Posted by Matthew at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)
Meeting people: Met Steve Mallet
Meeting people: Met Steve Mallet by chance in the bar this evening. Interesting, seeing as how I had just read his weblog earlier today. Steve runs the Open Source Directory on the O'Reilly Network. Also: The beer seems to be stronger here :-).
Someone else I will hopefully meet - or at least say hi to is Sam Ruby. He has signed up for the regular conference. How about a REST+SOAP BOF?
Posted by Matthew at 05:47 AM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2002
The speaker is Kip Hampton
The speaker is Kip Hampton
Posted by Matthew at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
Now in Perl and XML.
Now in Perl and XML. Perl geeks are in the majority. XML geeks (I suppose that includes me: 3). That's out of about 60.
Posted by Matthew at 10:52 PM | Comments (2)
Spotted Paul Prescod at breakfast..
Spotted Paul Prescod at breakfast..
Posted by Matthew at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
Monday: Currently sitting in Mastering
Monday: Currently sitting in Mastering Data Structures and References in PERL. Complex stuff for me of little (rather: old) PERL knowledge.
Posted by Matthew at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)
Connectivity Room: Just went down
Connectivity Room: Just went down to the geek room...I mean the connectivity room - and it's full of Macs ... and they're all running Jaguar. Cool.
Posted by Matthew at 03:36 AM | Comments (0)
Time passes I have noticed
Time passes I have noticed that my iBook is still on German time so I am posting this at 6pm in the evening on Sunday here in San Diego. But according to my weblog it's Monday - which of course it is in Germany. And .. wirless is working!
Posted by Matthew at 03:16 AM | Comments (0)
Conference registration:Stood in line to
Conference registration:Stood in line to register. Lots of "speaker professionals", lots of "Hey I remember you from your Guru-C++ talk in Peking" - or similar at least.
Travel notes:
Sunday: awake at 7am. Overcast. Where is the sun? All American breakfast. Wrong dress code: I am not wearing a t-shirt that says "Linux rocks" or similar. Plenty of conference types at breakfast. Then a walk into Downtown (45 minutes) - strange look on the concierge's face "You want to walk there..?". Spent most of the day at the Horton Plaza. Then rode the tram out to Mission Valley Center. Lots of shopping (mostly for the kids).
Saturday (still): Arrived in San Diego on time after an 11 hr flight from Gatwick. BA 777 with in-seat flight entertainment. I could have watched "panic room" at least 3 times. Shuttle to the hotel in sunny warm weather. There were conference geeks in the row in front of me. Sonmeone else using an iBook ("8 hrs - I have 2 batteries"). So I am not the only person going. Stayed awake as long as I could (7pm), had a blackened chicken burger with fries - and went to bed. BTW: It is expensive here! And still no wireless. I also forgot to bring the phone cable (which wouldn't have fit anyway).
Posted by Matthew at 03:09 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2002
Travel notes: Got up at
Travel notes: Got up at 3:30 and drove to Hannover. No wireless at the airport (where I was anyway). Flight to Gatwick (where I am at the moment). No wireless here - so this will all be posted when I am next able to get online.
Thought for the morning: "In the event of an emergency landing on water..." - just how is that supposed to work in an ATR72? I've been up for 6 1/2 hours and I'm tired already. And still 13 hrs to go.
Posted by Matthew at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2002
T'was the night before..: Well
T'was the night before..: Well theoretically the book hits the New Riders warehouse tomorrow and from there it gets distributed out...so time to start watching out for it.
Posted by Matthew at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
German politics: A lot going
German politics: A lot going on at the moment (I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that there is an election on September..no..of course not. Ok - a quick recap of the story so far: Government gets involved with the Telekom. Telekom CEO steps down before being thrown out. German defense minister goes on a spending spree with money he should not have (or should he). Defense minister is thrown out - before he can step down (not that he wanted to). And it's only Thursday.
Posted by Matthew at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)
Others (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog):
Others (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog): "BTW, did you know that recipies have no copyright protection?". Actually recipes were the first "open source" in the sense that they are passed around and improved if anyone finds a bug. What you put 2 tsps in there? I think it tastes better with 3! My mum is great at that! Also it is really easy to write a new cookery book - just copy recipes from other books and no-one can stop you. What is there to learn from that...?
Posted by Matthew at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2002
Amazon Web Services: Just downloaded
Amazon Web Services: Just downloaded the Developers kit. Now to glue a coplet into the Cocoon portal that searches Amazon - just use the URI. Cocoon can do that without programming. Something else to show next Friday.
Posted by Matthew at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
New Toy: After watching his
New Toy: After watching his Stevieness give us the message this afternoon (my time) - I now know that I want one of those iPods. When they first came out I said: I'll get one when I can take my contacts with me on it....then I said: I'll get one when I can sync a calendar with it....ok ... ok....
On the subject of Steve J - .. and this has got to be easy to answer .... where does he get the black "rollkragenpulli" (that's pullover if you prefer) he wears for each key-note?
Posted by Matthew at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
Weblogging Portal: Currently working on
Weblogging Portal: Currently working on getting my demo for next week finished. I will be showing the Cocoon portal and using it as a weblog aggregator. At the moment I have a drop-down list of weblogs to choose from. Currently Sam, Dave, Aaron,Carsten and my own. Want yours added? Send me a message. I may have the time to hack in an edit field by next Friday. So if you're there then let me know the URI of your weblog.
Posted by Matthew at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2002
Scripting News: "Brother can you
Scripting News: "Brother can you spare a Euro? ".
The Euro has now risen to be on a roughly 1:1 with the dollar. That will make my trip somewhat cheaper. Speaking of which - I have discovered (it pays to look at the ticket) that my flight leaves Hannover earlier than I thought. So I need to get up at 4:30 am on Saturday and will get to San Diego at 14:30 pm (all times local). You do the math. So I am now looking for good tips on fighting jetlag.
Posted by Matthew at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
ATM Globalization I found out
ATM Globalization
I found out today that I will be able to use my eurocheque card to withdraw money while in the USA next week. Seems as though this has been possible for a couple of years now. I used to work on ATMs back in 1988-2001 - so it's interesting to see how widespread they've become and how interconnected they now are.
Posted by Matthew at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2002
Radio on Mac OS X.
Radio on Mac OS X. I miss the editing comfort of the PC - being able to add links and formatting easily to my postings. Should I be using a different tool to post to my Weblog - or are there any macros etc.??
Posted by Matthew at 09:32 PM | Comments (2)
Cocoon 2.0.3 released. Carsten and
Cocoon 2.0.3 released. Carsten and the rest of the gang roll out yet another version of Cocoon.
Posted by Matthew at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
Move Radio from PC to
Move Radio from PC to iBook
Easy. Install Radio on the iBook. Connect up to userland using id and password. Copy www folder from PC to iBook. Copy *.root from the Data Files directory on the PC to iBook. Start Radio on iBook. Make sure upstreaming is on. The iBook will upstream all the files (because of the file date). Then update radio.root. Voila.
Posted by Matthew at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)
Ready to go Moved my
Ready to go
Moved my Radio installation over to the iBook. First test posting. Fiddle. More Fiddle
Posted by Matthew at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2002
Cocoon article on xml.com "State-of-the-art:
Cocoon article on xml.com
"State-of-the-art: Cocoon 2 is leading-edge. Technology-wise your project will be very well suited for moving forward in the 21st century, instead of rooted in older paradigms"
"After all, Cocoon is certainly better used and tested than the custom software related to any one particular application project."
Posted by Matthew at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2002
O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention
O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2002 -- Evening Events: "Wireless will be available too, of course". Notice the "of course". Now step back year and imagine reading that.
Posted by Matthew at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
Struts and Cocoon Struts and
Struts and Cocoon
Struts and Cocoon are often compared to each other. This article gives some views on Struts adoption issues: "Struts IS NOT a portal framework or a multi-channel distribution server.". Well Cocoon is, as I will be showing.
Posted by Matthew at 03:48 PM | Comments (1)
July 08, 2002
REST article next I have
REST article next
I have been looking into and reading up on REST lately (originally coined here) and will be writing an article for a German magazine on the subject. Keeps me busy :-).
Posted by Matthew at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
Oracle 9i Release 2 -
Oracle 9i Release 2 - the Cocoon killer?
Just (which is a contradiction in terms - after the long wait) installed Oracle 9i Release 2 and dived through the XML specific documentation. According to what I have seen up to now there is a lot of Cocoon 1 type architecture in there. Apart from supporting XSLT and SVG they also provide FOP for PDF generation. I have no idea yet whether it works as advertised - but could this be the first real commercial competition for Cocoon? Given how widespread Oracle is.
Posted by Matthew at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2002
vitanuova.loyalty.org: July 3, 2002: "The
vitanuova.loyalty.org: July 3, 2002: "The coprocessor by its very nature can successfully decrypt whatever it has previously encrypted, but only if the encryption was performed on the same machine while the same kernel k was running! ". Seth gives details on Palladium.
Posted by Matthew at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
Wardriving in Paderborn At last
Wardriving in Paderborn
At last I managed to go wardriving in the city where I live. I even did some warchalking :-). I packed the iBook (using MacStumbler) and some chalk into the car and off I went. Even though Paderborn is not that large (120 000) I found lots of interesting stuff - and sitting in the car parked outside some office and surfing the Net - is way cool.
Posted by Matthew at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)
July 04, 2002
Added links to external articles
Added links to external articles I have (co)-written
Posted by Matthew at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)
BBC To Revive Doctor Who
BBC To Revive Doctor Who Next Year [Slashdot]. Not. At least the BBC have denied they are planning this. (Another one from "those were the days.."). I must be getting old.
Posted by Matthew at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2002
Now I know why we need
Now I know why we need so many of these bricks. I wonder when the kids will start building these. [via Gerhard]
Posted by Matthew at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
Want to buy an ice-hockey
Want to buy an ice-hockey team?
Posted by Matthew at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)
Those were the days I
Those were the days
I played scramble on my iBook using MacMAME last night. Brought back memories of rushing home from school and then going into the small place where the owner had set up some arcade machines. We would spend hours there. The game came out in 1981.
Posted by Matthew at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
Cartoon. Warchalking and home-buying [via
Cartoon. Warchalking and home-buying [via 802.11b]
Posted by Matthew at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2002
Recursive Blogging Aaron gives me
Recursive Blogging
Aaron gives me a mention. In particular I told him about the Cocoon XML portal presentation at OSCON and how I will show how to build a blogging portal using RSS feeds. I am still looking for someone to come to the presentation and help me out though! I will then use their live blog as part of the presentation. So you have to write something nice :-).
Posted by Matthew at 06:05 PM | Comments (0)
Guido Casper's Radio Weblog: "[via
Guido Casper's Radio Weblog: "[via rebelutionary] The 5th fastest growing company in Central Florida? An open source consulting company."
Posted by Matthew at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)
More updates on the Cocoon
More updates on the Cocoon book
Well, only a few days left. We have word that the book is currently at the printers and scheduled to land in the New Riders warehouse on the 19th of July. From there it will be shipped to Amazon and co. So look out for it in your favorite bookstore sometime after the 19th. The current publishing date listed on Amazon is therefore not correct. The book is now scheduled to weigh in at 504 pages. Wow :-)!
Posted by Matthew at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)