Jeffrey A. Miller: Tech Tips

Single-Threaded Guy

Tue, 20 May 2003 17:57:23 GMT

Cool tagline: "A single-threaded guy in a multithreaded world." I totally understand.

Publisher shake-up

Fri, 09 May 2003 05:36:25 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's site mentions some shifting in publisher ownership. Much to my surprise Wrox Press has gone belly-up. APress and Wiley have moved in to cast lots for the scraps.

APress has purchased the bulk of the Peer Information (including Wrox Press) titles. Wiley purchased the Wrox Press brand name and 36 titles, and now the liquidation of the assets is complete with APress buying all remaining assets.

Rocky's book, Visual Basic.NET Business Objects is sold out on the major online retailers.

3500 copies of the book were printed by Wrox Press before they went bankrupt. From what I am hearing, these are sold out so Amazon and bn.com no longer have them. It is possible that you may find a copy in a physical book store, but otherwise I am afraid we'll have to wait until the first Apress printing of the book.

Mon, 21 Apr 2003 19:45:29 GMT

dirdiff 1.6 [freshmeat.net]

Installer Offerings

Fri, 18 Apr 2003 22:18:05 GMT

Bob at Wise Solutions emailed to remind me that the Wise Installation System has patching built in, and costs less than InstallShield plus vBuild.

He also pointed out that Wise for Windows Installer now has a ton of features for server setups: user account creation, IIS administration, and SQL Server administration... basically they implemented my entire wish list from working on the FogBUGZ 3.0 installer. Good work!
...
Using patching technology saves a lot of bandwidth, even for the first-time installer, because a lot of the bytes you're distributing may be system files and runtimes that users already have.
...
For now, Michael convinced me to stick with the tried-and-true Inno Setup for the next release of CityDesk. The bandwidth savings don't quite justify the effort of switching installers.

[Joel on Software]

C# XML-RPC client

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 18:05:27 GMT

XmlRpcCS 1.8 [freshmeat.net]

An C# XML-RPC client and server for .NET applications.

Christmas in April

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 17:47:52 GMT

Movable Type templates tutorials. It has been a few weeks since I've visited Mark Pilgrim's blog, but it is always like Christmas when I do. Today's gift was actually posted last week entitled Movable Type templates tutorial. As we begin to discuss using... [Heal Your Church Web Site]

To steal Dean's metaphor, I have my Christmas presents delivered to my news aggregator several times a day. I was thrilled at the relevance of this post to my current lines of thought. Then I realized that I had reached a new milestone in blogging. The blogs I read are about as close to a Vulcan mind meld as I will get. I have finally tapped into the right blogs so that they are one or two steps ahead of what I need to know.

That's the beauty of blogging. You can connect with *someone* whose online musings echo what you are thinking.

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 15:26:03 GMT

Two more LibraryLookup-compatible OPACS. I've added two new OPAC systems to the LibraryLookup bookmarklet generator. Thanks to Chris Tovell, at the Beaverton City Library in Beaverton, OR, for the key that unlocks a number of Polaris libraries. And thanks to Jonathan Rentzsch for the key to Sirsi's WebCat systems. ... [Jon's Radio]

InfoPath and OneNote

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 01:24:17 GMT

First look at InfoPath.

The next version of Microsoft Office is, among other things, a family of XML editors. I have discussed the XML modes of Word and Excel (see XML for the rest of us and "Exploring XML in Office 11"), and described the newest member of this family, InfoPath 2003, a tool for gathering XML data (see "Ten things to know about Xdocs"). Now that I've had a chance to work with InfoPath, its role and value are becoming clearer. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio]

Cool!!! I'm getting pretty stoked about the new products in the Office family. I've been drawn back to Office recently as a worthwhile development platform for small personal solutions like web publishing (not FrontPage, either--we're talking Word-to-XML conversion), mail filtering, Outlook add-ons, Excel XML export, and more.

But as for the new stuff, XML is a major part of the strategy. OneNote is a different kind of product and fills in the other gap that I see in the personal productivity suite for the power user. Note taking made natural.

Maybe by summer of 2003, I will find that the combination of products in Office 2003 will make my Notebase idea somewhat unnecessary.

I'll try to post some links to product info pages later.

Changed computers with Radio, and it worked! (Sort of...)

Mon, 31 Mar 2003 01:11:41 GMT

OK, I did it. I changed computers with Radio Userland. I knew it was going to be a chore, but I got through it. This article pointed me to some useful scripts, including one called myFixFilePathsAndAddresses that helped with adjust the internal file paths stored in Radio.root because the installation path on my new computer was on a different drive letter (C: --> D:).

Here's the dirt on myFixFilePathsAndAddresses:

This script is an improvement to the one UserLand provides in the workspace.userlandSamples table. If you move your Radio UserLand folder to another location on your hard disk or to another computer then your copy of Radio UserLand will not work. That is because there are many internal references to absolute file paths within the Radio.root. To correct these references download this script and open it from the Radio File > Open menu. Then run the script. It will ask for your prior file path, the default choice should be correct. When the script finishes everything should work again.

I copied my entire www folder from the old installation, the Data Files folder, and Radio.root. That seemed to do the trick for most things, but I had to tweak the preferences a little to restore my old settings. At some point, everything popped back into place, but I'm not exactly sure what order I did things in, so I can't give an explicit tutorial here. The articles mentioned above should help though.

I'm finding though, that since I moved my Radio installation from an always-on static IP address to a frequently-moving laptop computer, that there are certain disadvantages to not being able to remotely post from anywhere. Having a server handle upstreaming in the background while I go about my daily life can be a plus sometimes. Hmmm... We'll see how it goes.

Drupal

Fri, 21 Feb 2003 23:45:49 GMT

URLs are what matter.

You know, I've realized that the only thing that's really important to me is meticulous control over my url-space. That's the only thing that really matters. As long as your URLs stay constant, you can rip out your backend as many times as you want and it doesn't matter. So, I might just say screw it all, move over to Drupal, and set up a simple gateway that'll translate named URLs into Drupal nodes. Hmmmm...

[Keith's Weblog]

Drupal seems to be built PHP, XML, and perhaps other technologies. Need to read more here.

A Bold Declaration

Wed, 12 Feb 2003 03:39:55 GMT

GvR: Strong vs. Weak Typing.

Guido van Rossum: Strong versus Weak Typing:

Strong typing is one reason that languages like C++ and Java require more finger typing. You have to declare all your variables and you have to do a lot of work just to make the compiler happy.

[Keith's Weblog]

I'm sorry, but I can't sympathise with someone who is too lazy to declare variables. Period.

The disgust with excess typing I can understand. I feel your pain. I don't want to worry about the type of a variable on every statement but omitting variable declarations is without excuse.

Useful software it seems

Wed, 12 Feb 2003 03:19:46 GMT

HTTrack website copier.

The HTTrack website copier looks like a useful piece of software.

[Keith's Weblog]

I need to read this later.

What's the deal?

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:37:33 GMT

So why is Microsoft so opposed to nesting like-named elements? For instance a folder element containing more folder elements? Their operating system has been based on that concept for over 20 years. Sure, internally, the FAT doesn't necessarily break it down hierarchically other than to point to other folders by using some kind of reference that determines the relationship, but what's the difference?

This is frustrating. Microsoft Visual Studio displays the message, "Although the XML document is well formed, it contains structure that Data View cannot display. The same table (navpoint) cannot be the child in two nested relations. See, they conceeded that my XML data is well-formed. What their basically saying is, "Since we insist on fitting hiearchical data into a relational metaphor, you are not allowed to use GUI editing on your XML data." Sounds like a limitation in their perspective and thinking. They chose to force the relational model. They chose not to provide a means to edit data in a grid format despite its "irregularity."

Windows Longhorn FAQ

Thu, 06 Feb 2003 01:32:45 GMT

Paul Thurott details many aspects of the upcoming Windows release, including a database-based file system??? That sounds a little far out for my taste. Just because you can...

It just seems like too much of a paradigm shift without enough justification. If what we've been doing all this time was so wrong, then why did they wait until now to do something about it.

Serendipity at Work?

Sun, 02 Feb 2003 21:31:13 GMT

<RANT>

OK, I've written several times about Sam Ruby's description of Manufactured Serendipity. The depressing part about all of this is that most of my traffic on this site is truly serendipity (the unmanufactured kind). It comes from people using Google to look for a "PlanPlus crack." The only reason this happened is because I arbitrarily chose to split the word "crackpot" into two words: "crack" and "pot." Gee, maybe this post will attract people looking for illegal drugs! ;-)

I'm sure this entry will draw even more attention from search engines and those folks out there who insist on not paying for software. Well, excuse me, but go jump in a lake! Pay for your own stinking software or start using open source software for its most touted benefit -- it's free.

Hey, I shell out a lot of money trying to stay largely legit, even personally. I think it's part of working in an occupation that is based on intellectual property rights. I hope to someday right a somewhat successful shareware application that is registered by a throng of willing folks and thereby supplement both my lifestyle and my retirement. But until that time, I can only do the ethical thing and behave in a reciprocal manner by PAYING FOR LICENSES!

</RANT>

Meta Keyword Tags are Dead and Syndirella is Alive and Well

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 23:41:17 GMT

Thanks to Dean for including this tidbit from one of my favorite sources: Search Engine Watch.

Apparently, nearly all significant search engines ignore the <META NAME="keywords"> tag. It's a "spam magnet" and has been largely dismissed since the 1997-1998 time frame with regard to its importance in search engine relevance. I was once badgered by so-called expert when building a site (in mid 2001) because I didn't include the META keywords tag. The site won't be promoted properly, blah, blah, blah. Well, I think the most important factors are keyword usage in page titles and content, search engine submission, and external links leading to your site. Except for Inktomi, the major search engines don't use the META keywords tag. So it's virtually dead, unless you have some other purpose for your own Million Dollar Markup.

If you're interested, here's a few other things you can do with a META tag. The article taught me something new today. Some META tags (the ones that use the HTTP-EQUIV attribute) correspond to headers found in HTTP messages (see IETF RFC 1945, section 4.2). Some web servers translate the values stored in the META tags (the HTTP-EQUIV kind) into the HTTP headers when they deliver content to the browser.

Dean also noted the arrival of an open source, Windows-based desktop news aggregator called Syndirella by Dmitry Jemerov. Excellent! I like the idea of the ability (more research required here) to scrape regular web pages for news. This means that I might be able to digest the Search Day newsletter from Search Engine Watch without visiting the page directly. Maybe.

I was using email subscriptions to get most of my news in the past, and I possess many dedicated mail folders for particular sources that fill up with unread messages. Pretty useless.

So, as I move along in my blogging adventure, RSS collected by a news aggregator seems to be a much be better solution. If I miss six months worth of news, I don't have six months worth of news staring me in the face during my next session--only recent, relevant stuff.

Now, Syndirella goes one step better. Instead of having an extremely long web page to read, Syndirella carves up the news into each feed and allows in-client reading without bouncing all over to other windows. It still feels a little clumsy and basic, but my hat is off to Dmitry for creating such a useful tool and releasing it as a free, open source product.

Not only that, but it's written in C# running on the .NET framework. I was wondering what the most effective way to distribute a .NET desktop application over the web would be. The Framework is a 20MB+ download for those that don't already have it. That's a long wait for a lot of users. But Dmitry is doing it. He warns the user about the size of the download and gives instructions about where to acquire it. This seems to be the best way I've seen so far, short of mailing out a CD. No, I don't want to do that.

Awesome!

Wed, 15 Jan 2003 14:50:19 GMT

CNN.com - Military robots well trained for war - Jan. 13, 2003 [Daypop Top 40]

Credible Source - Search Engine Watch

Mon, 13 Jan 2003 04:39:05 GMT

Awesome! It was Search Engine Watch that initially educated me about blogs. They said (paraphrasing), "If you want to get an early heads up on neat stuff, blogs are a great way to do it."

Well, guess what? Search Engine Watch reported on Jon Udell's library lookup bookmarklet (with credit to others as well, I'm sure). It lets you query your local library's online system for a book. Cool. My library uses IPac.

Even though, I don't have any immediate plans to find my kind of books (extremely technical) at the local library, I am going to check out their DVD collection.

Now, How Hard Was That?

Fri, 10 Jan 2003 04:30:08 GMT

Actually, this has been some learning curve. Slowly, but surely. The Discreet Radio Theme (Green) had one critical flaw. The desktop posting page was ill-formatted. I changed the #desktopWebsiteTemplate.txt in C:Program FilesRadio UserLandwww. I would list the contents here, but I'm still learning how to overcome the pitfalls of the WYSIWYG editor. It doesn't seem to like my <PRE></PRE> blocks.

      <div class="blogbody">
        <table border='0'>
          <tr>
            <td colspan='2'>
              <%radio.macros.editorsOnlyMenu ()%>
            </td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
            <td valign='top'>
              <%radio.macros.weblogEditBox ()%>
              <%radio.macros.weblogRecentPosts ()%>
            </td>
            <td valign='top'>
              <div class="calendar">
                <p align="center"><%radio.weblog.drawcalendar ()%></p><br>
                <%radio.macros.cloudLinks ()%>
                <%radio.macros.statusCenter ()%>
                <%radio.macros.supportCenter ()%>
                </div>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </table>
        <p class="footer">
          This Page was last update: <%radio.macros.getLastUpdate ()%><br>
          Copyright <%year%> <%authorName%><br>
          Theme Design by <a href="http://www.bryanbell.com">Bryan Bell</a><br>
          <br>
          <%radioBadge%> <%radio.macros.xmlCoffeeMug ()%> <%rssLink%> <%radio.macros.mailTo ()%><br clear="right">
           </p>
        </div>
      </div>

There's nothing like a good table when nothing else will do. Ha! Take that!

PyPerl - Python and Perl

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 17:18:24 GMT

I sometimes wonder what the ultimate culmination of all of these seemingly disparate open source technologies. While that remains to be seen, here is yet another instance of two (actually three) popular open source technologies coming together.

'pyperl' is an extension module that bridges the gap between Perl and Python. It allows Python code to invoke Perl code and operate directly on Perl data and permits Perl code to do the same to Python code and data. This provides for almost seamless integration between the languages and thereby greatly expands the library of modules available to each of the languages.

ActiveState and Digital initially developed the pyperl extension Creations as the foundation for supporting Perl in the Zope application server.

[O'Reilly]

I certainly haven't researched these (PyPerl, Zoperl) very much, but they have at least made my open source mental watchlist.

Radio UserLand developer tips

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 11:38:58 GMT

Here's a page with quite a few promising tutorials on Radio UserLand, including a bit on how to use the staticSites tool to build a static website.

Bookmarklets - Cool!

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 11:31:48 GMT

Evidently there is a technique in which a small piece of Javascript is embedded in a hyperlink on a webpage. The hyperlink can be dragged onto the toolbar of the browser and executed later.

The cool thing is that the bookmarklet has access to the HTML DOM of the document currently in the browser and can modify or read the contents of the document. The hyperlink Javascript does not have to be huge. It can append the current document's DOM with a reference to a script stored on a server that can be much longer and more sophisticated.

I've wanted a way to blog pages I find without always needing to type up all of the stuff that goes around it. This way I could grab the page title, address, and maybe some metadata as well. Or how about harvesting the hyperlinks on someone's blog to analyze the intersection with others'? You could almost begin to draw some conclusions about interests and community based on who links to who. (Not that I'm smart enough to pull code like that off. I've never studied AI algorithms, so I'd be reinventing the square wheel, I'm sure.)

Jon Udell gives a great example of a bookmarklet that allows him to request books that he finds on Amazon from his local library. Now that's integration! The concept of an agent connecting two diverse entities is called an intermediary.

Retro-blogging

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 14:01:29 GMT

I have this idea: dig up old journal-style entries from other personal sources in your pre-blog past and post the "worthwhile" (open to interpretation, of course) material. I have been keeping a record of events for several years now, especially since I got on the Franklin Planner kick. (Theirs is called the "Daily Record of Events.") So, needless to say, I have at least a few thoughts scribbled on paper or logged in electronic form. I may post some of those thoughts once I get them more organized.

But for now, I am declaring this technique to be "retro-blogging!"

Routing Yahoo! Spam - Bulk Mail tip

Fri, 03 Jan 2003 13:56:44 GMT

If you use an email program capable of using rules to filter your messages (like MS Outlook), AND you use Yahoo! Mail's Bulk Mail (read "spam") feature, you can set up a rule that handles Yahoo! spam.

When Yahoo! Mail filters messages into your Bulk Mail folder, it adds a header to the message. If you set up a rule that looks for special header text of "X-YahooFilteredBulk" you can route your Yahoo! Bulk Mail to your own local Bulk Mail folder. At least, you know in advance it's probably spam, and it clears out your regular Inbox to some degree.

Open Source Blogging Software

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 18:07:27 GMT

I found this blurb about an open source weblogging software package by linking from connexions. Anyway, it's new to me.

What is Greymatter?

Greymatter is the original opensource weblogging and journal software. With fully-integrated comments, searching, file uploading and image handling, completely customisable output through dozens of templates and variables, multiple author support, and many other features—while having perhaps the simplest installation process and easiest-to-use interface of any program offering this level of functionality—Greymatter permanently raised the bar for weblogging and journaling, and it remains the program of choice for tens of thousands of people around the world.