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November 29, 2002

Joe

Joe: I didn't know that this had happened. Another one of my favorites. I went to see him on the Night and Day II tour. Great! New album on March 11th and a tour - even coming to Germany.

Posted by Matthew at 02:14 PM | Comments (0)

New bloggers

Welcome! New bloggers on the block: Sylvain and Marc. Sylvain mentions me being nominated to join the ranks of the Cocoon committers. :-). Sylvain is using Moveable Type - I would be interested in hearing how long it took him to set up.

Posted by Matthew at 12:24 PM | Comments (3)

November 28, 2002

Morning glory: Strange things are

Morning glory: Strange things are happening. I am honored.


Clueful people: Would you run your companies IT infrastructure on software written by these guys? Ovidiu has added some pictures to the Outerthought Gallery.


Expensive literature: Steve offers to give me his Python book at the OReilly ETech conference. Still working out how to go..

Posted by Matthew at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2002

Ruby vs. Python: While my

Ruby vs. Python: While my quest continues - Amazon Germany can't deliver the Ruby book I ordered - damn. In fact all the English language Ruby books will take weeks. I saw some down in the local bookstore - so I will have to pick one up there. I also think I bought the wrong Python book (O'Reilly "Learning Python"). It doesn't seem to be the right one to pick up and start diving in. I would rather have more code examples that do stuff and then work out the basics from that. The book should also cover wxPython. Suggestions?

Posted by Matthew at 05:27 PM | Comments (1)

GForge: My favorite Mountie has

GForge: My favorite Mountie has information up on GForge - a fork of the software that runs SourceForge.


Michigan: Mum is now blogging from the snowy depths of Michigan and getting ready for Thanksgiving. CosmoBlogging.

Posted by Matthew at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Scary Anagrams: Just found this.

Scary Anagrams: Just found this. Makes you think..

Posted by Matthew at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

Zope vs. Cocoon: This article

Zope vs. Cocoon: This article compares Zope to Cocoon. Still reading..(thanks Frank)

Posted by Matthew at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

Team Spirit?

Team Spirit? Yesterday I popped into a local supermarket to get a couple of things. Now the supermarket has a very distinct look and feel (colors, logos etc.), and the people working there wear the same color-scheme clothes so they are immediately recognizable as "staff". Yesterday I noticed that some of the "staff" had "xyz Team" (where xyz is the name of the supermarket) on the back of their "uniform". Since then I have been wondering - why do they need to explicitely put the additional word "Team" there? Are the other staff members "not in the team"? Is the staff as a whole not a team? Hmm...think about it. 

Posted by Matthew at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2002

Walking: Yesterday I purchased (hopefully, the

Walking: Yesterday I purchased (hopefully, the online gods smiled on me when I clicked on the buy now button) tickets to go and see Tori in Hamburg next January. The new album is really good (I think I've written that often enough now :-)). I have always wanted to go to a concert since "Earthquakes". There is a time for everything.


Here is the setlist from Detroit from the 24th and a review. You missed it Jo! :-). (My sister lives near Detroit).

Posted by Matthew at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

Dead end

Dead End. "Linux kept a low profile at Comdex this year. But maybe that's because Comdex itself is failing, and Microsoft is using what's left as a promotional vehicle". (Doc). I am sure we will see the same thing happen here. The days of large blurb-filled shows is drawing to a close. Small focussed events are where people are going to go to get news and talk to people "in the know". After all, there are no secrets and most of the stuff shown at these shows is old news anyway.

Posted by Matthew at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2002

ApacheCon goes Europe?

ApacheCon goes Europe? Ugo makes a remark towards a European ApacheCon next year. Any more information than that - Ugo?

Posted by Matthew at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2002

PackBlogging: "Packing and blogging more

PackBlogging: "Packing and blogging more or less simultaneously today...........". Mum is packing for her 3 months (is it 3?) in the US and blogging at the same time. PackBlogging.

Posted by Matthew at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

Honored

Honored: Ugo chose our book as his prize at a raffle at ApacheCon. Don't worry that you didn't "buy" it Ugo. We are honored that you chose it at all. On the same subject, Ovidiu won one of the books we raffled off at the Cocoon gettogether.

Posted by Matthew at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2002

More pictures: The official GetTogether

More pictures: The official GetTogether picture gallery is here. Over there you will also find some pictures that show moi :-). I am slowly moving mine over there too.

Posted by Matthew at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon woman: Mum comments on

Cocoon woman: Mum comments on the Cocoon GetTogether :-):



"The Ghent pics are nice....I blew up a few so my elderly eyes could see them better..........didn't spot any Cocoon women tho'...now that's interesting....................!"

Posted by Matthew at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

Cluetrain fans

Cluetrain fans: Read this. An interview with Doc which restates basically what is to be found here.



"This was the problem with all these dot-com acronyms with a 2 in the middle -- B2B, B2C and so on. "To" was the wrong preposition. As Christine Boehlke put it to me once, the correct middle letter should have been W, because in a real marketplace we do business with people not to them. "


"Markets are conversations. People will buy, and will support, the stuff they care about"

Posted by Matthew at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

Testify

Testify: If I were to write a review of the new Phil Collins album - it would go like this. However I have only listened to it once. (That was enough).

Posted by Matthew at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2002

Thought for the day: "I'm

Thought for the day: "I'm fascinated by how powerful a loosely-coupled community can be, given the right tools." - Betrand. He also has a weblog here.

Posted by Matthew at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)

ApacheCon: Those of us unlucky

ApacheCon: Those of us unlucky enough not to attend ApacheCon this year can read up on it here. There is also an irc channel #apachecon that I will tune into later today to see what's happenin'. Next year we need an irc channel at the next Cocoon Gettogether :-).

Posted by Matthew at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

More pics: Steven has started

More pics: Steven has started "the album" over here. I will be moving some of my pictures over there later.

Posted by Matthew at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

Ghent Round-Up

Ghent Round-Up: The drive back to Paderborn took us only 3 1/2 hours - and travelling through Belgium and Holland at the speed limit of 120 is a lot more relaxing than the hell that is Germany's Autobahns. Of course it was a pity we had to leave last night and couldn't stay for the second "social event". I am still waiting to see some reports from that - I reckon they are still at it :-). A really really great event in Ghent and the credit goes to the Outerthought guys for putting this on and to the speakers for making some great presentations. Already there is talk about the next Cocoon GetTogether and no doubt the ideas and suggestions will flow thick and fast in the next few weeks. Hopefully there will be some sort of mailing list where we can get into some discussions on where this thing is heading.

Posted by Matthew at 12:07 PM | Comments (0)

Open Source: The Quiet Revolution.

Open Source: The Quiet Revolution. Article here.

Posted by Matthew at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

Good morning! My pictures from

Good morning! My pictures from the Cocoon GetTogether are up here. Only a small server - so don't kill it please!

Posted by Matthew at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2002

Honesty: Ovidiu wonders: "One bad

Honesty: Ovidiu wonders: "One bad part about knowing people in person, is that you can't tell when people are just being polite or they really mean it when they say your talk was good.". That's true. However his talk was really good and he's a really nice guy as well :). It really is a shame that we are leaving later and not staying for another evening of "socializing". Next time Ovidiu!

Posted by Matthew at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

Break: Break was interesting -

Break: Break was interesting - presenting the debugger, talks on the upcoming new version of the portal, book signing and general geek talk.


Now is the last presentation and Marc from Outerthought is presenting the (upcoming) Outerthought product XReporter. After that the book raffle (Carsten and I have sponsored two copies) and the evening reception where things will wind down. And then we hit the road to speed back to Paderborn.


Hello Dominic :-) At least someone is reading..


 

Posted by Matthew at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)

Back on track: Torsten's presentation

Back on track: Torsten's presentation shows how much stuff is available in Cocoon - but it also shows some of the confusion new users encounter when looking at all this stuff. So a consolidation of technology is in order.

Posted by Matthew at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

Laughter: Ovidiu and Sylvain are

Laughter: Ovidiu and Sylvain are staring at the TiBook screen and laughing - they are working out whether to buy me one or two Segways :). Weblogs in action...

Posted by Matthew at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)

Buy my Xmas present: Anyone

Buy my Xmas present: Anyone wanting to get me an Xmas present - here it is. And cheap!

Posted by Matthew at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

Download the presentations: Here


Download the presentations: Here is a link where you can get the PDF versions of the presentations. As Steven says - perhaps you can make more sense of our weblogs if you read the slides in tandem.


Next up: Next up is Torsten Curdt. "Building web applications with Cocoon.". First Torsten talks about the ways web applications are built. Now he is discussing what is in Cocoon that will help you build applications.

Posted by Matthew at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Ovidiu is in the house:

Ovidiu is in the house: Our favorite HP employee takes the mike to talk about the Cocoon control flow. Geek stuff for sure - but becoming more important as people look to Cocoon as a way of building complete web applications.


I have found a power outlet so no more staring at the battery indicator.


Ovidiu starts. "Control flow is MVC+ for Cocoon". "Script languages are just as powerful as 'normal' programming languages. So why make the difference?" In a flow script which is written in JavaScript you can use sendPage() to call a pipeline for view generation. While the user is reading the page you send back, the flow script is waiting - but not using a thread. All information is saved into a continuation object and the form's URIs are mapped to the stored continuation object. So you write the controller using a JavaScript script. The View layer is then an XSP page in your pipeline. The model is the data object you pass from the controller to the view pipeline (currently a JavaBean or JavaScript object). In the View layer (XSP) you can use JXPath to retrieve data from or about the continuation object.


At the moment the view is only XSP - but a Cocoon transformer is being worked on as is Velocity support. JSTL is another option currently being investigated. Steven has a picture up from the talk here. Ovidiu is fielding the questions after the first part of his great talk. "I want to make sure everybody understands this far. It's pretty braindamaging stuff."


Now into the advanced topics. Ovidiu explains variable scoping and how you can use the special cocoon object inside the script. Now he is onto the problems of using the "browser back button". How do you expire continuations? invalidate() function on the continuation object or time based (TBD). What's left? New ways of generating the view, Automatic expiration of continuations and documentation!!

Posted by Matthew at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

Lunch break. Lots of nice

Lunch break. Lots of nice Belgian sandwiches to eat and the discussions are flying. The next version of the Cocoon portal, when will then next Cocoon version be out, changes to interfaces, Transactions in Cocoon...and and and.


Already there is talk of a repeat event next year. Attendee update: Steven tells me that 90 are here. Most of those who did not turn up are actually from Belgium..

Posted by Matthew at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

Interesting: "Four of Microsoft's seven

Interesting: "Four of Microsoft's seven business divisions lost money in the most recent quarter, according to financial statements the company filed last week." [via Dave]

Posted by Matthew at 12:34 PM | Comments (0)

Hot Spots a comming: At

Hot Spots a comming: At last - T-Mobile starts with WLAN hotspots in Germany.


Carsten has now moved on to the "more interesting" stuff - the portal. Unfortunately my battery is fast runnning down so I will need to do a blogging break and recharge over lunch.

Posted by Matthew at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)

Cocoon Portal: Carsten is next

Cocoon Portal: Carsten is next after a break. Lots of interesting talks and the Cocoon Debugger is popular. Carsten started (Applause even before he starts :-)). First Carsten hits off with the history of the portal and authentication frameworks. The authentication framework is next.

Posted by Matthew at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

From a quick count it

From a quick count it would seem as though there are at least 100 people here.

Posted by Matthew at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

Sylvain has finished his "techie"

Sylvain has finished his "techie" presentation on running Cocoon on small devices and is now answering questions. Next up is a break (I think). Ovidiu is sitting behind me and looks as though he is writing his blog. He has a TIBook with him. <Envy>.


Update: I really do wish I had bought my iBook with me - more battery life and easier WiFi setup!

Posted by Matthew at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

It works

It works! I now have the wireless up and am sitting in Sylvains presentation on micro-cocoon. Steven is next to me and blogging too. Steven kicked off the day with a short introduction and then I then presented "Introducing Cocoon".

Posted by Matthew at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

Spare Ribs

Arrived in Ghent early afternoon to find the hotel was full. So we had to move to a different hotel which meant driving round the city again. And Ghent is not meant for cars! Lots of one-way streets. At the hotel we met Sylvain Wallez at check-in and spent the afternoon looking at the city and chatting about Cocoon projects and training. The next person to meet was Ovidiu and then around 20 Cocooners for an evening of spare ribs and lots of Cocoon talk. Great stuff.

Posted by Matthew at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

Good morning

Good Morning Europe: Good morning from the heart of Belgium. Here in Ghent the Cocoon Getttogether is getting underway. I have my PC hooked up via cable - because I am too stupid to get it to connect to the wireless. It's a lot easier on my iBook!

Posted by Matthew at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2002

And we're off.....

And we're off.....

Posted by Matthew at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

People places

Who is where: Of the people I have met..lets see if I can get this organized: Sam and Ugo are in Vegas, so are Aaron and Doc (although they are going to Comdex). Carsten and I are in Ghent, so is Ovidiu and obviously Steven. Giacomo (can't find a weblog or page ;() and Stefano are also going to be in Vegas.

Posted by Matthew at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

Good morning Europe

Good morning Europe!


Points of interest: Looks as though there are 2 "places to be" the next couple of days. Vegas, Nevada (Comdex, ApacheCon) or Ghent, Belgium (Cocoon GetTogether). We will be leaving for Ghent in a couple of hours and are looking forward to the event.


Listening: I have always been a big Tori Amos fan, and have all her CDs. However, the last few have not made the same impression on me as "Little Earthquakes" or "Under The Pink". "Scarlet's Walk" puts Tori back on my list of favorites. A really great CD that has all the elements I like about her first albums. Hope to go and see her in concert one day.


Reading: Weekend reading was Cluetrain (again) and I am now currently reading Small Pieces Loosley Joined. Next on the list is The Future of Ideas or The Innovator's Dilemma.

Posted by Matthew at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2002

2nd printing

2nd Printing: We have just heard that New Riders are planning a second printing of the book. This print will include the corrections from here.

Posted by Matthew at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

Free software, big business?

Free Software, big business?: If you can read German then go here for an interesting new report on Open Source written by Deutsche Bank Research (the think-tank of Deutsche Bank). Here some of the most interesting remarks - quickly translated (and compressed) by moi:



What a satisfying way to end the week and get prepared for Ghent. See you there!

Posted by Matthew at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

Clouding over

Clouding over: Yes, this is something I need badly. Please Dave!



Eventually this will allow people to synchronize work between office and home, a common feature request.

Posted by Matthew at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2002

Python arrives

Python arrives: Yesterday the Python book I orderd arrived. Today I also noticed this and this. The plot thickens.

Posted by Matthew at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)

Be prepared

Be prepared: The moral of the story is to be prepared for any and every outcome when implementing web services — especially for the eventuality that it really will live up to all its promises. [Phil Wainewright Via Sam]

Posted by Matthew at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

Landmark event

Ghent is full: Next week will see the largest gathering of Cocoon fans on the planet. Thanks to the hard work of Steven and the "rest of the gang" over 100 hundred Cocooners will decend on Ghent in Belgium. Today is the last day you can register. So move. 'Landmark event'

Posted by Matthew at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2002

Politics? No way.

Too true: The Jack Stone Incident. [via Russell]. My kids do the same with Playmobil. So I regularly put on my UN cap and dive in to save whole populations of "little people" from being forcefully resettled.

Posted by Matthew at 03:17 PM | Comments (1)

Browsing

Browsing: The new version of Opera is available including the new feature: small screen rendering [shift f11]. My first impression is that this could be useful if Opera is incorporated into mobile phones or pdas. Obviously I don't need it on a PC.


I've also downloaded Phoenix (thanks Frank). Wow the rendering is fast!

Posted by Matthew at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

Phil Sucks

Mistake prevention - update: Well I did go and buy the new Phil Collins album "Testify" (no link to protect the innocent) in the end. And guess what - it will not play (at all) on my iBook. I am really ..... angry about that (although after listening to the album on the regular player...perhaps not). Anyway - the interesting thing I noticed (and something I didn't know) is that the reason the CD says it will play on most PC drives is that the player for PCs is actually included on the CD (complete with an autostart file for all you Windows lovers). The music is also included as compressed audio files so that the player will then be able to crank them out.


Why do we have to suffer because the record industry was asleep while the boat was leaving?

Posted by Matthew at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2002

I wanna go

I wanna go: Details of O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference 2003 are up. Can someone invite me..and pay....travel expenses.....please.... :-).

Posted by Matthew at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

Copy protection

Mistake prevention: Frank prevents me from making a mistake later on today. I was going to do the same. Bing.

Posted by Matthew at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

Open Source - hidden

Open Source - hidden: I had an interesting chat with a consultant from a large IT company while at W-Jax last week. He was telling me about companies here in Germany that use open source solutions - but don't tell anyone. One example is a large German corporation that is using OpenLDAP to maintain the user data of 35 000 employees. Another example he quoted was of a corporation where you were not allowed to say "open source" when explaining to management what sort of software you recommend. So instead, the consultants would use terms like: "you have to accept the licence" - instead of - "you have to pay 50.000$ for a licence.".

Posted by Matthew at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

The boat is leaving

What to learn: Lots of replies to my question from yesterday on whether to learn Ruby or Python. Thanks Ovidiu, Dominic and James. However - with the answers ranging from "learn them both" to "learn Jython or JRuby" - I am still not sure. Guido suggested Python, because its more widespread. Is that so? Coming from a traditional programming history: PASCAL, BASIC, COBOL, C, C++, JAVA (in historic order) - with some PERL and 6502 Assembler (Vic20 style) mixed in - I have a fair amount of "background". However now that I have been away from programming for a while (and some might say - "and don't come back") - these new scripting languages seem very interesting.


As we move into an era that will see a shift from traditional programming models to "glueing things together" I think we (still in the traditional world) need to make sure we don't miss the boat. It may already be leaving the harbor.


Anyway - I have ordered both a book on Python and on Ruby....

Posted by Matthew at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2002

Picture from W-Jax: Here is

Picture from W-Jax: Here is a shot of me at W-Jax. Notice how I seem to be hard at work (actually I was finishing off one of my presentations).

Posted by Matthew at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

Micro Cocoon

Cocoon in France: Sylvain will be showing their port of Cocoon to more embedded scenarios at the "Forum XML" exhibition in Paris.

Posted by Matthew at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

Decisions

Decisions: Should I learn Ruby or Python? I am looking for a scripting language that will allow me to hack-up a few small applications for day-2-day tasks or prototypes. I also want to see if these type of languages can be used in some areas we work in - instead of always writing Java or C++ apps. And the evenings are getting darker...

Posted by Matthew at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

Monday musings

Good morning Europe!


Frank is back: Looks like he had an interesting time in Chicago....


Euro-OSCON: The time may be right for a European OSCON.


No comment: Maybe I was just born a cynic [Mum]


Music: Last week at W-Jax - before the opening speech - they played "School" from Supertramp over the PA. Now you have to imagine a really large hotel and in the middle - a "ballroom" the size of your local concert hall. The acoustics were great and hearing that "blast from the past" really made a great lead in to the day. As soon as I got up to my room after the sessions I cranked up my iPod and did an encore. Super to have so much music available at the touch of a button.

Posted by Matthew at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2002

Happy birthday Aaron!!

Happy birthday Aaron!!

Posted by Matthew at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)

Me - Marketing? Never.

Seeding. If I was in Marketing, then I would write that this will "revolutionize the way Cocoon applications are developed." But I'm not. However, Carsten and Martin have been busy lately...

Posted by Matthew at 11:12 AM | Comments (0)

Halloween

Halloween VII: Old news - but still worth a link and a comment. Where is this heading. Here is what I think will happen:



Take I: Microsoft will release IE for Linux. The press release will read something like this: Microsoft recognizes the strength of Linux and is proud to support the open source community by porting the world's best browser to this exciting new [sic] platform.


Take II: Eventually, Microsoft will release that Office Version for Linux that has been in hiding for the past 2 years. It will quickly be bundled with SuSE and other distributions.  At the same time Microsoft Office for Mac OS X will be withdrawn. The press release will read like this: Microsoft recognizes the strong position of Linux in the commercial environment and is proud to support the open source business community by porting the world's best office product to this exciting new [sic] platform. 


Take III: At the same time MS will announce its official support for Linux accross nearly the complete product range. Note that the products themselves will not be open source or free.


Take IV: Microsoft will release their own Linux distribution and what will it be called? "Halloween" !! Complete with bundled Microsoft applications. How will they be able to do this you ask? After all they do not have any Linux knowhow in Redmond. Well, of course they do have open source know how...but not enough. So what will they do? As always - BUY. How much would a company like SuSE cost to buy - in MS terms? Pennies. 


Take V: Once the world has switched to using the Halloween distribution of Linux - who will have won? Go figure.

Posted by Matthew at 08:21 AM | Comments (0)

W-Jax transcripts: Dominic is looking

W-Jax transcripts: Dominic is looking for transcripts on the W-Jax sessions held in Munich this week. Unfortunately I think he is out of luck. The sessions were in German and due to the lack of Internet access - no weblogs. In fact blogging a conference is still something that is unknown here. I can put my (German) slides up if they would be of interest.

Posted by Matthew at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

Good morning Europe

Good Morning Europe!


World Tour: Stefano Mazzocchi kicks off his world tour in London. Of course he really started in Paderborn last week.


XML-RPC2Aggregator: Dave Winer puts up the spec for the XML-RPC interface to the integrated RSS Aggregator in Radio. This allows you to use the functionality in Radio but to write your own gui - instead of using the browser frontend that is in Radio.


Where is Sam? What have I missed? No updates this week.


Overture: Overture is the name of the Belgian Forum for the promotion of Free and Open Source Software in business.

Posted by Matthew at 07:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2002

Back

Back. Returned from W-Jax last night. There was no Internet connection at the conference - can you believe this? Hopefully this will be different at the next one. Anyway - around 200 people attended and the presentations were of a high standard (the ones I went to).

Posted by Matthew at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2002

Cocoon moving

Bag packing: The weekend draws to an end and its time to pack the bag and get ready for Munich. 3 presentations and we also have our own booth.


Cocoon moving:Lots of activity again in the Cocoon world. The blocks concept is now being pushed forward to make it easier to build and deploy applications. What with that and the move to make Cocoon a top-level Apache project - should make for an interesting 2003 Cocoon-wise. User interest is already picking up at a high rate - that will help the visibility of the project for sure.

Posted by Matthew at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)