the Design Experience Weblog Archive

Welcome to OpenACS 4

I have managed to convert this site over to OpenACS 4. OpenACS 4 is almost in beta, but I got tired or mantaining the old one. This site now features a site search! It is very powerful. I was planning on making this longer, but I am too tired.

I dumped the bboards because the conversion wasn't worth the data that was in there. I will be touching up any missing links I find over the next few days, but hopefully I will be able to start adding some really useful content.

07:54 PM, 28 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-24 00:00:00-05

Online Books and Lecture Notes in Mathematics

Great! I took the weekend off from the computer and my tendonitis, more specifically bilateral and medial epicondylitis (inflammation of the tendons connected to the elbow, is hardly bothering my at all. I think I will force myself at least one day off a week from now on to protect my valuable tendons. I found a great site with information on lateral and medial epicondylitis, otherwise known as tennis elbow and golfer's elbow. Perhaps I should coin a new phrase, nerd's elbow, which is a combination of both :)

The only thing I had to break my rest for was breaking qmail to accept poorly formatted email. Apparently many emails being sent to my domains were formatted with bare LFs instead of CR/LF as is required in the spec.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-28 00:00:00-05

John Robb says that Mark has him all wrong about Open Source. John said "Open Source. You get what you pay for." Afterwards he tries to say he meant that Open Source didn't live up to the hype, which is certainly true. First he said Open Source was worth nothing. Those are definitely two different statements.

pdlogan responds to John Robb's Top Picks for 2001. I only want to add one thing. If Tivo is a top success, don't forget it uses an Open Source operating system. Open Source is not the reason for the success, but it shows you can be successful using Open Source software. It is probably still almost impossible to make money selling Open Source software, but that is not the point. Open Source software is powerful as part of a solution. It is not an answer all by itself.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-02 00:00:00-05

Rouge Scholars [Living Code]
This group of young and not-so-young Turks committed themselves "to making scholarly research and writing available and understandable to the general public, as well as to those scholars working in non-related fields."
See also: Rouge Scholar Manifesto
Scholarship should be placed where those who may benefit will find it. The production and discovery of knowledge is a service.


I noticed in the logs someone has visited my site from Google looking for some information. Unfortunately google indexes this site every day, and of course, it finds new info on the home page every day, so it links people there when they search. Oops! The problem is when the older weblogs entries scroll off the bottom.

I think I will write a little tool that snags referrals from Google and parses the search string, to offer visitors links to potential content they might be looking for. This will have to wait until I upgrade to OpenACS 4 with the search package.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-03 00:00:00-05

I reinstalled Debian on my desktop machine over the last couple of days. It went very well. I installed Ximian Gnome to try it out. I only have one small problem, Evolution won't install on my system because I upgraded it to Debian unstable and one of the libs has a version conflict with an Evolution dependency. I decided after to try out Icewm. It is a nice window manager. Now I need to get rid of Gnome. I don't use the desktop features. I might try a apt-get remove task-ximian-gnome and see if it works.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-16 00:00:00-05

Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design - an interview with Kent Beck and Alan Cooper. I really like what Alan Cooper says here. I haven't really been able to explore XP in any of the projects I am involved in so I can't really evaluate that part. Alan is talking about changing the organization's understanding of software development. He proposes an Interaction Design team to bridge between the users and developers. First the Interaction Design team works with the users to define what the software needs to do, hopefully refining tasks and processes to take full advantage of the computer. Then they take this to the developers and work with them to meet the goals. I think this can work really well. The only objection Kent Beck has is that the initial evaluation part takes too long. He says the developers need to get started so they know what they are getting themselves into and can evolve to a final product.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-06 00:00:00-05

Fire and Motion - A simple idea. Do something every day, no matter how small. Any progress is better than none. Momentum will come. I feel like this all the time now. I have to get back to work.

I noticed my last post is about Ximian Gnome. Forget about it. Gnome is useless to me. I have tried Icewm and Xfce. Both are fast and light window managers that do just enough and no more. They work great.

Fire and Motion - A simple idea. Do something every day, no matter how small. Any progress is better than none. Momentum will come. I feel like this all the time now. I have to get back to work.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-11 00:00:00-05

I figured out what has been bugging me about Radio Userland[1] and CityDesk[2]. They are wonderful, nice, easy to use desktop applications for building and managing a web site. Great. You don't have to install anything on the server, it will FTP the files up there. That is what is missing. There's nothing on the server except static html files. Is that all there is? Where's the two way web? How does Radio Userland allow people to interact? It's nice to be able to easily publish to the web using templates so you personal site doesn't look like a badly done personal site. Is that all there is?

I admit my favorite web tool,OpenACS[3], is overkill for any sort of personal site except an extreme nerd like myself. I use it to learn the system, and maybe offer something more. If the database and the application is all on the desktop that is where it stays. The only interaction with the author is email. My goals with OpenACS are to make it easy for one database to host multiple sites. I am looking to offer (not personally, but with the software) a more functional system for the small web site. Content management is only one piece of the puzzle.

Hopefully, Radio Userland or CityDesk could be a great client application to work with OpenACS to offer a nice user interface to content producers. This is the place I want to go. A rich desktop client to interface with the web application. I won't ever run a public web site on my desktop computer, but I do have a web server in the corner of my home office.

Am I wrong? I don't know. I have not installed Radio Userland since version 7 and I have never installed CityDesk. I don't know for sure, but from the impression I get from their web sites, this is not a problem they are trying to solve. [1] Radio Userland
[2] CityDesk
[3]OpenACS

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-13 00:00:00-05

`Google effect' reduces need for many domains - Dan Gillmor

I downloaded RadioUserland 8.0 to check it out. Reportedly it is much better than 7. Even if I like it, I probably won't be able to use it. My main desktop is Linux. It does almost everything I need to do. Since most of my computer time is spent on the web, in email, or hacking web applications, I rarely need to leave Linux. I do need to use Windows for graphics applications. Until I get a Mac, then I will use that for graphics. Maybe then I will only need one operating system. OS X appears to support the stuff OpenACS needs to run.

I bought The Little Schemer last night. It looks like a great book for learning to think recursively. That is something I haven't been able to get my brain around yet. It is the main reason I haven't been able to get going with SICP. I thought it was my lack of advanced math, but now I believe that I need to learn to think more LISP-like to really get something out of it.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-02-03 00:00:00-05

A browser feature I want to save time: when I use search from the location bar, automatically go to the #1 search result. I do alot of "I can't remember the URL, but I know this search will get it" searching. Google makes this very accurate, but I have to click in the search results. I want a "I am always feeling lucky" setting to take me right the to first search result.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-15 00:00:00-05

One-Way Weblogs:
But I wonder if ultimately we aren't going to want to declare on some level that a Weblog without a discussion feature is somewhat less rich than it might otherwise be?
Dan Shafer is thinking like me on this. I have noticed that Radio will work with Manila and apparently any other server software that supports the Blogger XML-RPC API.

Radio Userland and Wine - This is great! I never thought of running any Windows applications under Wine. It looks like I will be testing this out tonight.

Callbacks for Post and Publish - It looks like this allows you to have a script called when you click "Publish" using Radio Userland. I can think of alot of ways to use this. Radio looks like a great tool to use with a server-based interactice system.(i.e. OpenACS)

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-01-28 00:00:00-05

Patrick Logan:
The Intel platform desperately needs a successful Unix-based *desktop* OS. What went wrong with Linux?
What went wrong is simple. There is no money in it. Or not enough anyway. Also the office application as just starting to be competitive. There are projects though. SimplyGNUstep aims to be a user-friendly version of Linux. Its based on GNUstep, a development environment based on the OpenStep spec. Plus of course, Gnome, KDE, and all the others. I personally use Xfree86 4 with the Xfce desktop. Fast, simple, and it works.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-02-04 00:00:00-05

Wininformant takes some number out of context with absolutely no scientific evalution decides Windows is more secure than Linux. The easy answer is simple, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and all the other Linux distributions include thousands of software packages. This is many more than are included with Windows 2000. So the Linux numbers reflect bugs reported in any package included. This is definitely not a direct comparision of the operating system at all.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-02-07 00:00:00-05

Brett Fausett doesn't think Google can replace DNS. He thinks domain names are useful. DNS is outliving its usefulness because the easy to remember catchy names are all taken. New TLDs will just add confusion. People have no problem remembering and writing down a ten digit number to contact you on you phone. So yes, we need unique identifiers for domains. Do they need to be pronoucable english words, no.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2002-02-06 00:00:00-05

I changed the code so that html is stripped out before the RSS feed is generated. This should make it alot cleaner for anyone who reads it.

Ok. I have RSS 1.0 generation of the weblog working now. Hopefully this is the last work I do on the old site before migrating to OpenACS 4. Real projects are delaying the conversion, but it will happen.

I am testing the new self-hosted RSS generation here. Test 2 I am testing the new self-hosted RSS generation here.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-11-10 00:00:00-05

Now that the server is functioning again, mostly anyway, I can get back to work. Hopefully I can make some progress on the site-wide-search for the Oracle version of OpenACS 4. The goal is to make it work with the new search package for Postgresql.

Maybe soon I also will be able to convert this site over to OpenACS 4.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-28 00:00:00-04

I got the OpenFTS search package for OpenACS 4 working with the static-pages module today. This is great. It means two things. One: I learned something new today. Two: the #openacs irc channel logs will be searchable very soon now. OpenFTS is an amazing full test search package for PostgreSQL:
OpenFTS (Open Source Full Text Search engine) is an advanced PostgreSQL-based search engine that provides online indexing of data and relevance ranking for database searching. Close integration with database allows use of metadata to restrict search results.


07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-11-13 00:00:00-05

I looked at groove this weekend. Well actually, I tried to look at it. It crashes on startup so I never actually got to use it. So I thought about groove this weekend and this is what I thought:

Groove is a neat idea, but its closed. A better alternative is something like xmlStorageSystem, a server-side storage system with a defined remote access API. Could be SOAP, XML-RPC, WEBDAV, REST (HTTP GET/POST, etc...)or best, all of them and more. That would enable me or you to use whatever client-side implementation I wanted. Groove would take off if the API was accessible and I could implement it in Tcl/Tk to run on my Linux system, or someone else could implement it for OS X, or whatever. You might still prefer the Windows client they distribute, but you need to communicate and collaborate with someone using Linux, a Mac, BSD, whatever. You don't care what OS your partners use, you just want to get work done.

Are there ary collaboration tools that have a centralized storage component with a published API to allow multiple client implementations? Or even a system that allows my client to contact your client directly, bypassing the centralized storage. Run the sever with the client.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-11-20 00:00:00-05

Is Userland Frontier/Manila a shrink-wrapped application, or a development environment or a toolkit? Good questions I think. Here its a shrink-wrapped product. But I don't think that is where the real value is. The real value is when you customize to your unique requirements. Dave Winer says in the interview that Open Source toolkits are different because they requires hiring a consultant. Of course to really customize Manila you need a programmer also, so I don't see a difference there. Also being able to download all the code and read the documentation and customize it yourself is also a very valid option. Being able to customize a toolkit is good. It is not a shortcoming. Any CMS application that was only customizable with diablog boxes would be useless.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-11-21 00:00:00-05

Mozilla, not Microsoft: Jim Roepcke has it right. If I knew what I was doing I would donate time to the Mozilla project. Of course, I really don't have any free time with OpenACS alpha2 coming up with beta and the final release to follow shortly thereafter.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-03 00:00:00-05

Coming soon: Graphic Design for Programmers. A new section of this website that was the original mission of this site. I have been concentrating on coding for the past year or so. After OpenACS 4 is released I hope to be able to get creative visually again. Stay Tuned!

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-11-30 00:00:00-05

U&lc Online - Classic typrography magazine online

Here's a cure for bandwidth blues by Kevin Werbach.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (1)

2001-12-07 00:00:00-05

Things are really getting scary. Here are some links to people taking exception to Ashcroft's comments that people who criticize the US goverment are helping terrorists: rc3.org
I Don't Trust Ashcroft via Scripting News
Bloackholebrain.com

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-09 00:00:00-05

The Ashcroft Smear

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-20 00:00:00-05

blackholebrain on communities in response to CamWorld. He says a good community attracts the type of people who want to be in that community, no policing required.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-01 00:00:00-05

Website Patterns

Information Architecture Books from Elegant Hack.

If I was a James Bond villain, I would be Francisco Scaramanga.

I enjoy good food, monopolising the world's energy supplies, and sex before assassinating people.

I am played by Christopher Lee in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Who would you be? James Bond Villain Personality Test

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-12 00:00:00-05

" I would like to see a complete flash driven Web application..." - John Robb with a great idea for marketing a movie, in this case, Lord of the Rings.

This is an incredible idea. A desktop application that collects interesting video clips etc, with links to weblogs, discussion boards etc. I am envisioning a generic system that is smart enough to search the web and figure out what you want to see. This is very similar to the Radio Userland idea where RSS feeds can have attachments. That way media companies could create feeds and fans could also create feeds. You could suscribe to whatever you were interested in. The most important thing would be the desktop app to keep track of all the stuff filling up your hard drive.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-13 00:00:00-05

Back to Basics:This is exactly why I want to learn how programming really works. Even though I plan on implementing all my grand schemes in higher level, even scripting languages, it is important to know whats going on underneath. Thanks to badgertronics.com and David McCusker for the link. One day I hope to actually understand what David McCusker is talking about over there.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-21 00:00:00-05

Some linsk for me, regarding schools, open source, and linux:
opensourceschools.org
k12linux.org
k12ltsp.org

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-19 00:00:00-05

BTW, Welcome to all new visitors from John Robb's and Patrick Logan's weblogs.

Online Community Technologies and Concepts - an overview of what features/technology make a great online community. Not surprisingly, most of it centers around making it work with email. [CamWorld]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-12-29 00:00:00-05

I am testing to see if my weblogs.com ping is getting through. It used to work.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-02 00:00:00-04

Oops. I found another bug in ns_xmlrpc due to the code relying on a bug in ns_xml<1.4. It's fixed now. Download it here.

Hold the Scobelizing -- It's not just me!

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-06 00:00:00-04

The Face of Information Architecture [Webword] An informative interview with Christina Wodtke of Elegant Hack. -- I haven't read the whole thing, but it really explains what Information Architecture is all about. Also Elegant Hack looks like a very interesting weblog.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-08 00:00:00-04

Copy Protection [McCusker] -- Why mandating that software prevent copying is bad. A good explanation on how requiring software authors to build in copy protection restricts rights more than it protects them.

Building a modern Mac clone [Backup Brain] -- Wow this is neat. I really want a Mac to add to my collection so I can fool around with OS X and get rid of Microsoft. I need a Mac because I cannot live without Photoshop, Freehand, and Fireworks just yet. GIMP is a great program, but it doesn't work the way I do and is missing the few feature I really need. (link from Scripting News)

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-09 00:00:00-04

Color Schemer - Pick a color from the web-safe pallete and instantly receive 15 related colors.

Research on Learning and Performance [xBlog] - Interesting weblog about how people learn.

Programming Books for Non-Programmers - I think I will take a look at some of these. I am annoyed at myself that I continue to flail around without actually learning any programming theory. I want to know how and why the programs work, not just be satisfied that they do.

Great CSS links from Anil Dash. Check out css/edge by Eric Meyer , "It's a rejection of what's practical in favor of what's possible.". It includes demos of advanced CSS layout techniques and links to CSS resources.

Engineers make things? [McCusker] -- I think I will just say, "go read McCusker" every day instead of linking to almost everything he writes. This one is short and to the point. I realized that I wanted to have a job where I could make something, instead of just doing something. That's why I built this site. It's why I work on OpenACS. It's why I have plans to someday actually learn to build software correctly.

Some people say that people who build software are not engineers, but that's not the point. We build things. Besides software, I also like to draw, play guitar, and basically learn how just about anything is built or repaired. So my definition of engineer is not the same as the one in the dictionary. I say it's someone who loves to make things, and loves to learn how things work.



07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-07 00:00:00-04

OptiMoz, gestures based interface for Mozilla. Also: Mouse Gestures in Opera (doesn't look like it works for Linux), WayV: gesture recognition for X. This stuff is really exciting, although the keyboard is probably still most comfortable for me.

Spoke and Axle: "Matching high-traffic, non-commercial sites with willing and able hosts. Free, for the love of the Web." -- This is a really interesting idea. Too bad I don't have the ability to host one of these great sites. Also I love the design of Spoke and Axle itself. Plenty of whitespace, all the information where you need it. Its almost completely text, but it's still an interesting design.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-13 00:00:00-04

Angry Young Spaceman - I have seen recommendations about this book in several places I have forgotton. Hopefully I will remember to read it.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-15 00:00:00-04

Most Software Stinks! A nice argument for well designed software.[CamWorld]

I am still thinking about how to further my learning in Computer Science and programming. So far all I have done is gain pratical knowledge working on OpenACS. This seems to slow. I want to understand how to design programs and systems that work. To this end I have decided to pursue a course similar to the one mapped out at aduni.org. I have been slowly working on the math part of my education, but progress seems to come reluctantly. My plan after I get back all the math I have forgotton is to enroll at Empire State College and work out a program similar to the one at aduni.org.

Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish my goal? If you have any advice or ideas please email me at dave@thedesignexperience.org.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-22 00:00:00-04

We have an Apple Store at the local mall!

In between the crap, there is an interesting thread at Slashdot about Coder vs. Architect. Basically most of the more well-reasoned replies recommend that you never stray too far from the code.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-10 00:00:00-04

Outlining with Manila under Linux - This is great. I liked the outline editor part of Radio, but the web server part was always getting in the way. He refers to an outline editor called JOE that supports XML-RPC. The same concepts should work for any weblog software that supports XML-RPC.

Metaphors of Terror: The Power of Images by George Lakoff
Country by country, the conditions (both material and political) leading to despair need to be addressed, with a worldwide commitment to ending them. It should be done because it is a necessary part of addressing the causes of terrorism—and because it is right."


Convergence indeed: Picking cotton for Bill "Once Microsoft controls all aspects of digital media from creation to consumption, it’s a short hop for it to actually control content.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-17 00:00:00-04

School's Out - Get ready for the new age of individualized education [Web-Seitz]
Most politicians think the answer to the problems of high schools is to exert more control. But the real answer is less control. In the free agent future, our teens will learn by less schooling and more doing.
Very well written article about the future of learning.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-16 00:00:00-04

Web Design Patterns. Excellent resource.
and
Patterns for User Interface Design.[CamWorld]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-24 00:00:00-04

Wow! Living Without Microsoft is a site dedicated to helping people find alternatives to Microsoft products. It's not Linux-centric or Open Source-centric.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-20 00:00:00-04

from CamWorld
Personal Knowledge Management links:
  • Personal Knowledge Management : Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?
  • Overview of Personal Knowledge Management
  • MindModel: Personal Knowledge Management Software
  • Some research on PKM
    • I haven't had a chance to read these. When I do, I'll add some useful comments.

    I spent most of yesterday hacking the static-pages package for OpenACS 4. BTW and alpha release is available now.

    I left quite a few bugs in there when I thought it was fine. I learned another lesson about testing. I finally fixed everything after battling with PostgreSQL's less than verbose error messages. The worst problem is with nested pl/pgsql functions. Even when it gives a useful error message it does not reveal which function it is in at the time the error occured. This inspires adding quite a few debugging messages so you can see exactly where the error is occuring. I also ran into trouble with Tcl string manipulation. I am not satisfied with the hack that finally worked, but I could not see any other answer. Now that the cleanup is done I will try to get it working with the sitewide search soon.

    Mozilla 0.9.5 is available. Go get it. It is working great for me. 0.9.3 felt sluggish, but I can feel the improvment in 0.9.5. Also, fonts and graphics look great. The rendering engine works very well. CSS and DOM support seem very good. The best new feature is CTRL-T to open a new tabbed browser inside the same window like Opera does. I usually end up with too many windows open and this helps alot.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-25 00:00:00-04

Msn.com is stupid. That is all there is to it. Today they started delivering a message to visitors with non-microsoft browsers that MSN.com can only be viewed with the latest browser from Microsoft. I am very happy about this. Now I am in absolutely no risk of ever obtaining a MS Passport.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-26 00:00:00-04

I think I have figured out the bug in my learning. I don't have enough time. Or rather I don't have enough discretion over how to use my time. I spend 8 hours a day doing something I'd rather not be doing at work. Then I come home and work on OpenACS and other web-related technology. This leaves no time to actually understand the underlying principles of my hacking. I want to learn why something is coded the way it is. Right now I have just enough time to look and someone else's code and copy it. If it works, great! Beyond that I am lost. I want to be able to understand what David McCusker is talking about over here. He says the best way to learn is by doing. That is correct, but it's hard to find the time.

My dream is to get paid to hack OpenACS and all those other web things so I have free time to actually learn to program. I want to understand the math. I want to understand algorithms and all that. I want to really learn how to build a system from scratch. I feel like I am going about this backwards. Building things first, and trying to understand them later.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-03 00:00:00-04

Too busy with OpenACS and rebuilding the server to post. This server is now 100% Debian. I also upgraded to PostgreSQL 7.1.2.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-11 00:00:00-04

Wes has got it right:
"The Moose is getting some attention for an essay about designers not being needed, but his use of a <font size="1"> tag contradicts his point. " [HTP]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-16 00:00:00-04

Programming in the Ruby language, first in a four part series.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-23 00:00:00-04

ALl the action is over at #openacs. Check out the channel weblog for the good stuff.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-15 00:00:00-04

Post Modern Knowledge Management[JOHO]
Its goal is simpler yet deeper: leveraging people.

 Master of Fine Arts in Software by Richard P. Gabriel is a new way of thinking about advanced software enginnering education. See also Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code for his thoughts on how software development must change to advance.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-15 00:00:00-04

If you have downloaded ns_xmlrpc previously please download the new version. I let out xmlrpc_register_proc in validator.tcl. That is the only change. Ns_xmlrpc.0.1.tar.gz

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-07 00:00:00-04

The #openacs IRC channel blog is now working correctly at www.thedesignexperience.org/openacs/ircblog/. It records URLs that are entered in the channel and allows channel members to comment on them.

Its running the Daily Chump Bot. Very spiffy, written in Python. It generates XML files for each day. I am running XSLT over the XML files using ns_xml to convert them to HTML. I just rememberd I wanted to provide a link to the XML on every page.

I am finally back after crashing the server Sunday night. Here is a really interesting site: www.reciprocality.org which includes an incredible analysis of the way different programmers think: The Programmer's Stone.[badgertronics.com]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-13 00:00:00-04

Man's Best Friend - a great tutorial on customizing the email client mutt. [LinuxWorld]

"Open Clues As you may have noticed, we've open sourced the full text of The Cluetrain Manifesto." [Doc Searls]


07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-08-27 00:00:00-04

I found something to write about. Its short but makes sense. Luke Tymowski on the ongoing conversation running around about women in technology jobs. He says "I don’t believe there is any male conspiracy to keep women out of technical positions" and There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that a woman who wants to build the next Zope or ACS can’t do it". Of course. Check out the credits and ACS source. It's already happened.

Scumware.com -- "The stealing of traffic from independent Web site publishers has become the biggest threat to the survival of the Internet to date." [WebWord]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-05 00:00:00-04

A Tale of Two Classrooms [Scoble] -- An essay on how learning and technology can work together.

In search of technological solutions to netiquette problems - Great ideas for using those extra clock cycles to clean up the net. [HTP]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-06 00:00:00-04

Someone submitted ns_xmlrpc to XMLRPC.com. I tarred up a release of the files. It can be downloaded here: http://www.thedesignexperience.org/ns_xmlrpc.tar.gz

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-11 00:00:00-04

http://208.184.248.94 Helping in New York City after Terrorist Attacks -- This page has information about helping in NYC.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-19 00:00:00-04

MS Patch

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-05 00:00:00-04

Sputnik and New Math [McCusker] -- Wow. Here David McCusker talks about set theory and how it is the basis of "new math." I remember learning this stuff back in school! It was easy for me. Now I don't remember any of it. I can't believe that the stuff I thought was so easy years ago is the basis for the relational model.I am going to have to rethink my math relearning stratgy.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-09-27 00:00:00-04

I'm back.

Am I the only one tired of Scoble and company always working a sales pitch for Userland products into everything they write? Here is a Seybold panel disucssion that Scoble blogged. After it was over he inserted a link to Radio Userland in reference to RSS (check ut 9:53am). What about all the other RSS readers, or a link to a page that explains what RSS is? I understand that the site this is hosted on is owner by Userland. I really think his writing has less power when you have to read through the plugs for Manila and Userland.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-10-04 00:00:00-04

Why do so many geeks juggle? [Webword] -- I entered a small comment over at Webword. I have tried to learn to juggle before with the Klutz guide, but it's all wrong. I finally started to learn when my 3-year-old decided he wanted to juggle. We found a video at the library called Juggletime. It is a wonderful video, fun for young and old. It teaches a technique that is easy for anyone to understand.

So why did I want to learn? I really don't know. All I know is when you are juggling your mind is clear. You are thinking only about the balls or whatever you are juggling. It is also about analyzing patterns and systems. That is, how thinks work and fit together. Nerds and geeks are looking for patterns in everything. A great mind-opening resource to understanding this way of thinking is Reciprocality.

Obviously it is also fun. I imagine it is like everything else I do. Once I try something, I don't quit until I understand it completely. This doesn't mean I devote my entire life to it. I might take break, even a year or more, but I always come back to it. Usually a break is good. When you come back, the experience and knowledge you have gained in between usually leaves your mind open for better understanding.

Juggling is not just for geeks! Try it!
Juggletime Video
Juggling Equipment
Google search for Juggletime video
(note: I haven't shopped from the place in the links. It is just the first that came up in google.)

BTW, not all geeks juggle.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-06-27 00:00:00-04

If you are not using daemontools to control AOLserver/OpenNSD stop what you are doing and convert! It took me about 15 minutes including locating a debian package for it. Also read the AOLserver+daemontools Mini-HOWTO. You also might want to look at supervise-scripts, a set of scripts to help control services with daemontools, and Running AOLServer without inittab.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-06-28 00:00:00-04

Your online software testing and resource center [Joel] -- This looks great, but I haven't really checked it out yet.

I don't know how I missed this:

IBM is finally selling the monstrous, 200 dpi T220 LCD monitor. In case your eyesight isn't that good, they also have the T210, which sports a resolution of "only" 2048x1536.[HTP]

WSJ story about Microsoft leaving Smart Tags out of IE6 for now.

Also Appeals Court Overturns Microsoft Breakup from Dan Gillmor.

Read this article about Amazon's new pricing policy and free shipping offers. Be sure to scroll to the end to learn how to get free shipping.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-01 00:00:00-04

Anyone who downloaded ns_xml-rpc stay tuned. It worked by LUCK. I admit I never tested it very well. I found Several important pieces of code missing from when I converted it from TclDOM to ns_xml. New code is coming after I test it. I apologize for distributing bad code. I hope too many people were not discouraged. Thanks to Jerry Asher for using it and finding the holes.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-02 00:00:00-04

It is fixed. Ns_xml-rpc is working, but you need a patched ad-utilities.tcl.preload if you are using AOLserver 3.x and OpenACS 3.2.x. I will get the patched version of that and distribute it with ns_xml-rpc.Thanks again to Jerry Asher who helped me figure this out.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-03 00:00:00-04

Reach Out and Touch Someone -- Robert X. Cringely sets up a 10km 802.11b link to bring DSL to his bandwidth-challanged location.

One Dead Opossum by Del Miller

A dead opossum in my garden box is one thing and the future of Microsoft is yet another... Wait! No, on second thought, it's the same damned thing[HBWT]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-04 00:00:00-04

Pictures of my new house are here!

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-05 00:00:00-04

Roll Over, Rollovers -- CSS Style - create rollover effects without using any Javascript.

Copyrights and Copywrongs: Why Thomas Jefferson would love Napster on MSNBC. [HTP]

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-06 00:00:00-04

Here it is, the weekly link to A List Apart. This week it is CSS Talking Points: Selling Your Clients on Web Standards. This is very helpful if you are having trouble convincing your clients about web standards.

That reminds me. This place is noone near standards compliant. I have to look into OpenACS 4, but I think with the templating system it is much easier to build a compliant site.

07:54 PM, 21 Feb 2002 by dave bauer Permalink | Comments (0)

2001-07-09 00:00:00-04

Jerry Asher has an XML-RPC site search interface demonstration. He wrote an XML-RPC protocol so sites could offer XML-RPC access to their search index instead of being crawled.

I worked on the new house tonight. I took a few pictures of the yard and nice cloud formations in the sky. I let the kids take a few pictures too. It should be interesting. The best part of the day was just as it was getting dark. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a tiny flash of light. I turned to look and