afongen

Our marketing people are working with a design firm on a new web site design. The browser used in the mockups is — get this — Internet Explorer 4 for the Mac. Weird.

When I first read what Joel Spolsky had to say about how task switching was harmful (as in, there is no such thing as multitasking), I thought that what he had to say was interesting and probably right on the mark. At the same time, though, I was quite enamored with the idea of instant messaging and chat as a valuable tool for collaboration in the workplace, especially as Jabber was bursting onto the scene.

So I blithely ignored Joel’s advice. I also ignored the steady stream of writing about the tyranny of email. And you know what? I’ve begun to regret it. Email’s great, but I’ve allowed myself to be controlled by it.

Live and learn. I now check my email only a couple times a day and am on IM on only when I’m not coding and can tolerate interruptions. When not reading email, I close the application. I’m not nearly ready to go to the extreme that Sterling Hughes has, but already I’m getting a whole lot more done and feel better about my day.

A look at XCode: Apple’s Answer to Visual Studio. I’m unlikely to use it anytime soon, but it looks pretty cool. This tickled my fancy:

Distributed builds. Using Apple’s Rendezvous networking, a workstation will check for other compilation workstations on the network that can build some of the needed modules. If it finds any, it ships the code over and awaits the return files

Nifty. And even cooler: it comes “free” with the operating system.

But I don’t do development where XCode would be useful, certainly not on my mac. So I’ll most likely fire it up, play with it a bit, and never look at it again. Kinda like I did with Project Builder. Great stuff; I just have no immediate use for it.

I’m on the verge of switching to Eclipse, though, especially as it looks like I’ll soon be using Java at work. About damn time. With EPIC (Perl plugins for Eclipse) and PHPEclipse (I give you one guess what that is), I’m about set.

With a project code-named Royale, Macromedia is targeting server-side Java developers. They’re really pushing the idea of rich Internet applications, especially in the enterprise. With MX, J2EE developers got Flash Remoting, and now this. Is anyone biting?

At least we can expect another highly amusing roung of “Macromedia’s trying to turn the Web into its own proprietary playground!” bitching and moaning.

BufferTabs, a jEdit plugin that lets you switch between buffers using tabs rather than the default dang-blasted pull-down menu. That pull-down menu has been my biggest complaint against jEdit. Being able to switch easily between files is a deal-breaker: it’s so important that I’ll stop using an editor if I can’t do it. Tiny frustrations add up.

Yes, I know I can use the keyboard. But when my hands aren’t on the keyboard, I really like tabs. And when I’ve got more than just a few files open, cycling through all the buffers to find the right one is annoying.

Tim McGuire: “For me, if the chicken is even one step down the basement stairs, I lose interest.”

So true.

I had intended to complain about the CPAN module, how I never quite manage to get it to work properly. Much as I love the CPAN itself, the CPAN module (used to ease the installation of other modules) wasn’t quite working right and it was driving me crazy. I tried CPANPLUS to no avail. In the end, this is no big deal, I don’t mind installing Perl modules by hand. It’s the principle of the thing. CPAN would try to grab a module and just hang there, unable to download the file. Most irksome.

Then I turned off my firewall, and everything worked fine.

Gah. So now I just need to tweak the firewall settings a bit, and problem solved.

How to Talk About Jini, J2EE, and Web Services at a Cocktail Party.

It’s all so predictable. There you are at a dinner party, sipping a second martini, when the conversation turns, inevitably, to distributed programming.

The story of my life.

I’ve been reading Head First Java. It’s refreshing, fun, and engaging in a way that I don’t experience in any other programming books. And that’s the point: to trick your brain into paying attention and learning something. This interview with the authors gives a good overview of their philosophy, and the cocktail party article above hints at the irreverent fun the book offers. You really need to read through a sample chapter to understand, though. I’m looking forward to their EJB book.

I’m updating Perl on my iBook today, with the hope of rebulding mod_perl and installing Metadot. Compiling Perl on Jaguar is such a breeze, far easier than I remember it being with earlier versions of OS X. Hopefully mod_perl will go so smoothly.

The Open Source Portfolio Initiative releases 1.0 .

Earlier this year, the university of Minnesota realised that its well regarded and mature e-portfolio system would have a much better chance of reaching its full potential by open sourcing it, and getting others involved. The first fruits of that decision are now available for demo and download. Next stop: OKI and IMS “compliance”…

Well, well, well. I’m gong to have to look at this. Minnesota offers a free electronic portfolio to all its residents and students, something that Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (my employer, the other public higher education system in the state) is heavily involved with. However, I’m disappointed by how difficult it can be to use, and must confess to being uneasy with relying on a single vendor and their closed system. So I’m intrigued by the University of Minnesota’s portfolio and especially the Open Source Portfolio Initiative‘s work. Very exciting stuff.

Quick side note. The U has been getting involved in open source in more than one area. In the mid- to late nineties, they introduced a portal that they’d developed in-house (in Java). Now I see they’re using Metadot, an open source mod_perl portal server. I wonder what prompted the move.

Tangential note to self: play with OpenCms.