Christopher T. Nitchie: Geek Stuff

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 00:18:32 GMT

Hey kids! I've moved! Be sure to update your bookmarks and newsfeeds.

Mon, 01 Jul 2002 03:37:26 GMT

Here's an excellent article in the New York Times about what needs to happen for the Music industry to adjust to the internet.

Sun, 30 Jun 2002 22:10:03 GMT

I got an e-mail from an unknown e-mail address with some interesting links relating to yesterday's post. First, a story called The Right to Read by Richard Stallman. Second, a site drawing parallels between Microsoft's Palladium project and that story.

Here's some more information.

Here's a story on an AMD motherboard design that could make Palladium work. AMD and Intel have agreed to work with Microsoft on Palladium.
Here's the original Newsweek story on Palladium via MSNBC. Note: the MS in MSNBC stands for Microsoft. Under Palladium, you probably wouldn't be able to read this article unless you had a subscription to Newsweek or MSNBC. If you could read it, you couldn't download it or save it on your computer for future reference.
Dave's words.
Good article on The Register (dubbing Palladium "Windows 1984").
Lots more stuff on Google.

Sat, 29 Jun 2002 19:40:56 GMT

Bob Cringely has the story on how Microsoft is going to take over the web. This will obliterate the web-as-commons paradigm and set the web up as nothing more than another Cable TV system, where large companies get to use it to distribute their content. It leaves their competition, most notably Linux, out in the cold. The article is a little technical, but I think it'll be pretty readable to everybody. This is important.

Tue, 23 Apr 2002 03:53:32 GMT

I got an e-mail from Lawrence Lee at UserLand, trying to help with the FTP upstreaming problem I was having about a month ago. This help was totally unsolicited. When was the last time you had tech support come to you, for free? Those guys are amazing.

Fri, 15 Mar 2002 00:09:08 GMT

Dan Gillmor has an article on Microsoft's coziness with the Department of Justice. Every once in a while I think I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to XP; they're going to make me one day anyway. Then I read stuff like this, and I'm perfectly happy with Windows 2000. Hey, maybe I'll invest in a Mac.

Thu, 14 Mar 2002 05:45:52 GMT

My upstreaming issues are not, in fact, solved. Can anybody help me out? I'm wondering if it's breaking when it has to create directories, which would be bad. The homepage got posted, but that's the only file that's up there.

Event	What happened	Time	Secs
Upstream	Can't upstream because "Can't find a sub-table named "C:Program FilesRadiowww20020222.txt"."	12:43:52 AM	665.766
Upstream	25 files: 12.html, 13.html, , 15.html, 16.html, 20.html, 21.html, 26.html, 27.html, 28.html, 29.html, , 31.html, 01.html, 02.html, 03.html, 04.html, 05.html, 06.html, 07.html, 10.html, 11.html, , 16.html, 17.html. The server reported an error: One or more files failed to upstream because Can't bind listen stream because TCP/IP error code 10048 - Address already in use.	12:32:41 AM	74.283

Thu, 14 Mar 2002 05:40:17 GMT

I love technology. The solution to all problems: shut down, reboot.

First, there was the connectivity problem I've been having since the power outage this past weekend. I even went out and bought a new network card in the hopes of fixing the problem; didn't work. I had to call Comcast support, and the solution was to unplug the cable modem for about a minute, plug it back in, and hope it fixed the problem. It did.

Also, nitchie.com is now operational. You can see a mirror of this weblog at http://www.nitchie.com/users/chris/weblog. Initially, I had some problems upstreaming to the FTP server. I kept getting "timeout" errors. The solution was, you guessed it, shut down Radio and restart. All was right with the world. I'm still having minor issues; the images don't appear to be publishing yet, but I'll figure it out.

Note that the above URL is not final; I set wheels in motion this evening to have the weblog running at http://chris.nitchie.com/weblog/. Sorry for the inconvenience for your favorites and RSS feeds, but I promise this is the last time. Don't update yet, wait for the final move.

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 23:06:26 GMT

The nitchie.com domain is now being hoted by Excelsior Technologies in Atlanta. As of this afternoon the DNS changes just needed to propagate. Look for the big move sometime in the next week.

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 06:46:13 GMT

Pablo Picasso. "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." [Quotes of the Day]

Fri, 08 Mar 2002 23:08:11 GMT

Today, I bought my first domain name: nitchie.com. In the near future look for this weblog to move to http://chris.nitchie.com. I still have to get the hosting set up (luckily I have friends in the business), but once that's settled it's blogs and e-mail addresses for the whole family!

Mon, 11 Feb 2002 03:31:18 GMT

Radio won't return an address or an object's type from an XML-RPC call, even though both are basically nothing more than strings. For some reason, they have special types within Radio. It would be very useful if the app would automatically convert objects that can't be handled as XML-RPC values could be encoded as Strings by default. I think it would save a lot of headaches, and I can't see a good reason not to.

Mon, 11 Feb 2002 01:11:29 GMT

Well, I'm making slow but steady progress on my Java-Radio bridge toolkit. I've also done a lot of reading and hanging out with my fiancee this weekend, which is good... I was starting to get kind of blogged out.

Anyway, here's what I hope to accomplish with this bridge. From Java, you'll be able to do the following:

Radio radio = new Radio("127.0.0.1",5335);
radio.eval("dialog.notify(\"This is a call from Java!")");

This code is running fine; I just need to figure out the extent to which I want to wrap the object database in a set of convenience objects and methods

From Radio things get a little more complicated. Since I don't know how to launch a JVM from within Radio, you're going to have to start one up yourself. You'll run a main method that sets up a lightweight XML-RPC server. It will also create a commandline from which you can type UserTalk commands and get the results, like so:

> sizeOf(JavaGlueThread)
>> 3
> _

Then, from Radio, you could use the following UserTalk code:

local (args = {"arg1","arg2"});
local (instanceHandle = java.construct("com.mycompany.MyClass",args));
local (methodArgs = {"argA","argB"});
java.execute(instanceHandle,"aMethodName",methodArgs);
java.cleanup(instanceHandle);

The code would execute in the JVM you started (so you'll have to make sure your classpath is set appropriately). Some of the Java glue for this part has been written, but none of the UserTalk yet.

Note that this has an important limitation, namely that the only argument types you can pass are those allowed by XML-RPC (strings, ints, et cetera). Also, leaving Radio open to eval calls like that introduces some pretty serious security concerns that I haven't yet begun to think though. Any ideas?

I'll try to get this done by the end of next weekend, but I needed a bit of a Radio break this weekend. If there's serious demand, let me know. I'm not that far away from having it completed.

Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:47:44 GMT

"Andy Sylvester is maintaining a directory of Radio tools... and, if you click up: macros, scripts, themes, tutorials... there's a whole lot of stuff in there." [Garth Kidd: Deadly Bloody Serious about Radio UserLand]

Fri, 08 Feb 2002 02:54:46 GMT

I just called Java from Radio over XML-RPC. Look for a Java-Radio Bridge Tool (for Radio) and JAR (for Java) in the near future.

Fri, 08 Feb 2002 01:04:51 GMT

As a way of saying thanks to Radio 8 early adopters, we've increased the per-user allocation on the community server from 10MB to 20MB. That should give everyone some breathing room. And thanks from everyone at UserLand to the incredible Radio 8 community. What an inspiration! [Scripting News] Thanks! And you're welcome!

Thu, 07 Feb 2002 04:48:53 GMT

I just called Radio from Java over XML-RPC. Oh dear. Now I'm in trouble. I don't think I can stop...

Thu, 07 Feb 2002 04:48:07 GMT

Hello Dave!

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 23:54:08 GMT

Micah points me to MovieLens, a research project on content filtering based on community preferences. It's pretty cool, but I don's see much that Amazon hasn't been doing for a few years now. Maybe I'm missing something.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 23:50:55 GMT

Doug Baron found a great set of Tools documentation by DrMatt. Sadly, it doesn't help much with writing rpcHandlers. [Garth Kidd: DBS - On Radio]

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 23:31:10 GMT

Once again, I'm reminded that I shouldn't blog after midnight. The link to Radio Docs and Where to Find Them was pointing to my local website, and not to radio.weblogs.com. I've fixed it now.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 06:21:39 GMT

You know, I realised in the shower that my post on Radio documentation was much more confrontational than I meant it to be, so I edited it up and made it a story: Radio Docs and Where to Find Them. I was going to change the post to point to the story, but Garth had already commented on it, so I felt obligated to leave the old version as-is. I stand by my criticism, but the post is more caustic than I had intended.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 04:14:13 GMT

One final note before I sign off.

The Web Services the BigCo's talk about will one day soon allow me to check the weather and stock quotes and bank balances and countless other pieces of information. That's nice.

The Web Services that run on your desktop (like Radio) allow create an infinite web of interacting applications owned and operated by other human beings all over the world. That's awesome.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 04:05:43 GMT

A few days ago, Dave Winer pointed to Charles Miller who complained about the documentation problem with Radio 8. That got me thinking, and this post is the result.

Radio has two audiences: writers and developers.

UserLand treats its writer customers very, very well. The application built in to the Radio platform makes writing for the web easy and powerful. Five minutes, and someone who knows very little about technology can be writing to the web. That's incredible power, and UserLand deserves every single accolade its gotten on that, and more.

UserLand treats its developers pretty poorly. I can sum up their developer problem in one word: documentation. The lack of easily-found, easily-navigated documentation is a huge barrier to entry. In order to write your first meaningful Radio extension, you have to do a ton of digging. Here's a pretty comprehensive list of what you need to know, and documents that will get you started.

You have to understand the UserTalk syntax (there's a pretty good document on that here)
The concept of the Object Database (I just found this).
The verbs available (excellent documentation here, but I don't know if it's complete for Radio)
The built-in Radio macros (some of which are here, but I have yet to find a comprehensive list)
The intricacies of the Page Table. This will get you started, but you have to do a prohibitive ammount of trial-and-error for each web form you write. Good luck finding that document on your own; I've read it a number of times, and it took me a while to find it again. I have yet to find a good, definitive document.
Random built-in functions. The document pointed to in the last item mentions, almost as an afterthought, the edit() function (macro? verb?). I never would have known about it if it wasn't in that document, and it's the only thing that makes coding form handlers possible. There are probably other things like this out there, but I don't know what they are.

Most, if not all, of the necessary documentation is out there. Dave knows this is a problem. I have faith that this problem will be fixed. None of this is said out of anger, but frustration. I love Radio, and I love UserLand, and I use the word "love" sparingly, especially when it comes to applications and vendors (I love DreamWeaver, CVS, and NetBeans and that's the list).

Earlier this evening, I paid UserLand for Radio. I paid for the platform as much as the writing environment, if not more, and I have this feature request. In the meantime, I hope this post helps. Maybe I should turn this into a story.

I'll keep digging, because that's the way I am (to the great chagrin of my fiancee). I'll let you know what I come up with.

Wed, 06 Feb 2002 02:39:32 GMT

Giants forging Web services consortium. "Microsoft, IBM, Intel and BEA Systems plan to educate businesses on how to build Web services and how to ensure they do it in a compatible way, according to sources." [CNET News.com]

Call me a skeptic, but any time BigCos get together to "educate" they wind up stepping on each others' toes, getting in each others' way, arguing, bickering, and trying to control the conversation. Do you really expect Microsoft to get along with Bea, an upstart Java shop? Or with IBM, who's now selling Linux-powered servers?

You don't ensure compatability in anyting by swinging your weight around. You ensure compatibility by standing back, doing your thing, and watching it shake out. Or, to paraphrase Gordon Sumner, "If you love something, set it free."