Ruby

So, I've been programming since 1984. I try to keep up with technology - after all, it's what I do. When I landed Programming Languages for my topic, I thought this should be easy, I know it all already.

You sign your place and calling, in full seeming, With meekness and humility; but your heart Is cramm'd with arrogancy, spleen, and pride. Henry VIII 2.4.118-20

So, I'm looking up the top 10 programming languages and not only is there one on there I have never used, there is one I have never even heard of. I won't bore you with details but Ruby is on every top 10 list I could find and this is the first I've ever heard of it. A bit of trivia, it's name is a smirk at Perl.

Also of note, I dusted off my HTML skills to indent the Shakespeare quote. I used the tried and true table method but the indent was not as wide as I had hoped.

All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts

As You Like It Act II, Scene VII

Ah, much better. Blockquote seemed to do the trick. Does anyone not see the second quote indented?

Go to SitePal, right now!

Can you believe it? I think something techy is cool. SitePal has a demo where an icon will say anything you type. Down in the lower right hand corner is a figure with Text To Speech written over it. Turn on your speakers, type something in the box and click . It's creepy and cool at the same time.

Worth a thousand

On the side and in my copious free time, I do some custom database work for small businesses. One such business is Brookline Textiles. They have offices scattered all over the country and needed a way to submit and track orders, check inventory etc. I designed an Access data project front end sitting on an SQL Server backend. Their admin office is particularly tech-shy and when they had errors, it was particularly challenging for them to explain them over the phone to me. I finally hit upon a low-tech solution.

The keyboard combination Ctrl-Shift-PrtScn takes a picture of your current desktop so I had them do that, paste it into an email and send it on. Here is one I got today. I cant tell you how many painful hours on the phone this has saved me.

Google Earth

I was reading Alison's blog entry on Google Earth and it reminded me of MY encounter with Google Earth.

My wife and I moved to a small dead-end dirt road in Richmond, VT about two years ago. I immediately went to Google Earth to look at where we lived but the maps were indistinct and blurry. We could barely make out the road we lived on (compared to looking at the airport five miles away where we could count the planes on the tarmac). When I complained to a friend of mine, he said that Google updates sections of the map faster depending on how many requests for an area it gets. I got a bunch of my friends to sporadically check out our house on Google Maps and, about a month ago, the maps cleared up. You can see our house in the middle of the clearing. Interestingly enough, it doesn't show any of the land we cleared this spring so the images must be at least six months old. I can hardly wait to see our lower field. If any of you want to help out, click on my house link and let Google know that I live in an important place :)

iGoogle

I was originally skeptical about this course. I'm a tech kind of guy, I know tech kinds of things and a course on acronyms was the last thing I thought I needed. What Technical Fluency has done is forced me to try new things. It's not that I am opposed to new things, I'm just a late adopter. I don't like to waste time learning fads.

So, on to the Tech stuff. Today, I tried iGoogle and I can't tell you how cool it is, you just have to go see for yourself. For those of you who have never seen it, it's a customizable portal page. It remembers who you are and whenever you go there, the widgets you have put on the page are right where you left them. On my Marlboro tab, (yes, it's a tabbed interface) I put GMail, GoogleTalk, and GoogleReader (so I can check out all of YOUR Blogs)

What I CAN'T put on there is a link to my Blog's data entry screen and a link to Moodle. I am guessing that neither has an RSS feed and so can't be widgitized. I'll keep you posted.

Verizon cellphones

I learned something about my cell phone today ...

When you buy your cell phone, the vendor programs into it the location of all area cell towers. When out of your normal service area, you may notice a symbol that indicates you are "roaming." That is to say, your service is being carried by a non-Verizon company and you will be billed accordingly.

Typing *228 scans the area for new Verizon cell towers and programs them into your phone. This is great when coming into a new area (it will save you a bundle in roaming charges) but also may improve service in your local area if new towers have been built since you bought your phone.

Other tips, you should turn your phone off now and again. It's kind of like rebooting your computer and can sometimes solve little phone glitches.

GoogleTalk conference calls

You can do a multi-person chat with GoogleTalk. I had read about it but had never seen it before. I just tried it out with two of the guys in our office and it works like a charm. You can't conference chat from the regular desktop googleTalk widget (yet), you have to go to http://www.google.com/talk/. The web version has a group chat feature even though the desktop version doesn't.

One of the guys was wondering how many people we could get on googleTalk before it gacks ... kind of like the geek version of fratboys in a telephone booth.


I would also like to amend my posting GoogleTalk not there yet to say that it was a firewall issue here at the office. We had just changed from using a Proxy Server to straight Internet access and not all of the permissions were transferred. That is not to say I didn't read several complaints about similar problems with shared documents on various sites but I formally withdraw MY complaint.

GoogleDocs, Blogs and RSS

The unformatted mess below was "published" to my blog with the click of a button from Google Docs. Fascinating. Notice that the HTML formated part at the bottom came through fine but tabbed indenting was completely ignored. Maybe you DO learn something new every day.

The formatted section on the bottom was cut and pasted directly from another site. I had done it originally just as a reference to myself and forgot about it until I published the document to my Blog. Apologies to the author.

RSS flavors

Rich Site Summary
Really Simple Syndication
RSS 2.0
Based on RSS 0.91
Created by Netscape
Refined by Userland
Frozen specification
RDF Site Summary
RSS 1.0
Contains meta data
RDF Resource Description Framework
Atom http://www.atomenabled.org/
Adopted by IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
Promotes standard formts on the internet
Other formts not a standard
Netscape vs. IE
More complex for publisher
Can carry more complex information
Contains the seed for being used as a CSM


RSS parts
Publisher - feed
XML Format

<item>
<title>David's Blog</title>
<link>http://davidmsm.blogspot.com/2007/09/case-against-blogs.html</link>
<description>Most blogs are a waste of time, including mine</description>
</item>

How to publish
Dynamic content
Web scraping
Third party scraping
Google's Cease and Desist http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3334651

Consumer - reader - agregator
Subcribes to an RSS feed (or scrape)
Translates XML feed to HTML
Displays HTML

Why Publish?
Reach more people
Improves quality of user experience
Higher retention of readers
Copyright debate

Why subscribe to it
Saves time
Customized portals
Personal pages
Enhances other websites
Weather
Stock tickers








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The history of RSS can be traced back to 1997, and the creation of Resource Description Framework. Resource Description Framework is also known as RDF. RDF was created by a man named, Ramanathan V. Guha. RDF is similar to RSS.

The mark up language RDF, was used to store metadata. Metadata is basically information about information, for example if there is an article or a news report, the metadata would be the author, the language, the copyright and all of the information related to the article or news report. In 1999 Netscape created a standard named RSS version 0.90. This was the beginning of RSS as we know it today. Dan Libby, an employee of Netscape improved version 0.90 and released RSS version 0.91. Dave Winer, an employee at Userland also created a new version of RSS. He too named it, RSS version 0.91, creating confusion, because the two versions of RSS were named the same but the specifications were slightly different. Unfortunately this was the beginning of a trend.

Netscape's RSS team abandoned RSS development, because it was dubbed too complicated for what they were trying to accomplish. Meanwhile Rael Dornfest at O'Reily released RSS version 1.0. The new specification by O'Reily was based on the RDF standard rather than the previous versions of RSS. RSS 1.0 was incompatible with previous RSS versions. The specification caused significant marketplace confusion because though RSS 1.0 had the same purpose as the 0.90 series, the specifications were very different. In an attempt to minimize further confusion Userland named their next release RSS version 2.0. RSS 2.0 is very similar to the 0.9 series and is generally considered compatible, while RSS Version 1.0 remains very different.

Harvard Law accepted responsibility for the RSS 2.0 specification because Dave Winer of Userland, found that competitors were leary of using the standard he had a hand in creating. In order for the specification to be endorsed by all it was donated to a non-commercial third party, Harvard Law school. Harvard Law is now responsible for the future development of the RSS 2.0 specification. What is XML? XML or eXtensible Markup Language is a mark up language.

RSS History

There are a lot of folk legends about the evolution of RSS. Here's the scoop, the sequence of events in the life of RSS, as told by the designer of most of the formats. scriptingNews format, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/27/97. RSS 0.90, designed by Netscape, for use with my.netscape.com, which also supported scriptingNews format. The only thing about it that was RDF was the header, otherwise it was plain garden-variety XML. 3/15/99. scriptingNews 2.0b1, designed by DW at UserLand, enhanced to include all the features in RSS 0.90. Privately DW urged Netscape to adopt the features in this format that weren't present in RSS 0.90. 6/15/99. RSS 0.91, designed by Netscape, spec written by Dan Libby, includes most features from scriptingNews 2.0b1. "We're trying to move towards a more standard format, and to this end we have included several tags from the popular <scriptingNews> format." The RDF header is gone. 7/10/99. UserLand adopts RSS 0.91, deprecates scriptingNews formats. 7/28/99. The RSS team at Netscape evaporates. UserLand's RSS 0.91 specification. 6/4/00. RSS 1.0 published as a proposal, worked on in private by a group led by Rael Dornfest at O'Reilly. Based on RDF and uses namespaces. Most elements of previous formats moved into modules. Like 0.90 it has an RDF header, but otherwise is a brand-new format, not related to any previous format. 8/14/00. RSS 0.92, which is 0.91 with optional elements, designed by DW at UserLand. 12/25/00. RSS 0.93 discussed but never deployed. 4/20/01. MetaWeblog API merges RSS 0.92 with XML-RPC to provide a powerful blogging API. 3/14/02. RSS 2.0, which is 0.92 with optional elements, designed by DW, after leaving UserLand. MetaWeblog API updated for RSS 2.0. While in development, this format was called 0.94. 9/18/02. RSS 2.0 spec released through Harvard under a Creative Commons license. 7/15/03.

Stupid Outlook tricks

I'm a neurotic organizer, probably comes with the job description. A sloppy programmer is a costly one no matter how talented.

I use Outlook for my mail client at work. We have an Exchange level spam filter which puts the word in the subject line and drops it into a special Spam folder. Sporadically, I go in and delete the spam but then it ends up in my deleted folder which, once a month I have to go fish something out of. So I end up deleting spam twice, once from my spam folder and once from my deleted folder. Today, by accident I was holding the shift key down while I was deleting spam and none of it ended up in my deleted folder. After some experimentation to confirm that it was a consistent behavior I went hunting for other Microsoft key combinations.

Keyboard

F2
Select a file and press F2 to rename the file
F3
In Windows Explorer and on Desktop, pressing F3 brings up the Find dialog box
Alt + Enter
Select a file and press Alt + Enter to bring up its Properties dialog box
Alt + Space bar
Inside a window, press Alt + Spacebar to bring up the system menu of that window
Ctrl + Escape
Brings up the windows start menu
Alt + Tab
Lets you switch between currently running applications
Shift + Delete
Permanently deletes a file without moving it to Recycle Bin
Ctrl + A
Selects all the files in Windows Explorer. Also selects all the text in text boxes
Alt + F4
Closes the current window
Double left click
Double left click on the system icon of a window closes that window
Ctrl + Tab
Changes the tabs in a tabbed dialog box in forward direction. Also switches windows in an MDI form
Ctrl + Shift + Tab
Changes the tabs in a tabbed dialog box in backward direction
Ctrl + F6
Switches between the currently open child windows in an MDI form
Ctrl + Left click
Deselects a specific item from a selected range. Works in Windows explorer
Crtl + Alt + Delete
Brings up task manager in Windows 95/98. Brings up more options in NT/2000
Shift + F10
Brings up the context sensitive pop-up menu
Ctrl + W
Closes the current window
Windows Key + m
Minimizes all windows
Ctrl + (+) key from the right hand side of the keyboard
Rearranges the widths of the list view's columns properly

Internet Explorer

Ctrl + F
Brings up the Find dialog box
F5
Refreshes the page
Ctrl + N
Opens a new browser window
Alt + Home
Takes you to your homepage
Escape
Stops loading the current page
Ctrl + A
Selects the entire page
F11
Toggles between full-screen mode and normal mode
Backspace
Takes you to the previously loded page
Alt + Right arrow
Forwards you by one page in the available page stack
Alt + Left arrow
Takes you to the previous page in the available page stack
Ctrl + Enter
In the address bar, avoid typing http, ://www and .com by just typing the domain name and pressing Ctrl + Enter
Enter
Not sure if the domain name ends with .com or .net? Type the domain name & press enter. IE will search for the domain
F4
In IE 5.0, F4 drops down the address bar combo box
Ctrl + P
Prints the current page
Control + O
Brings up the 'file open' dialog box
Ctrl + H
Brings up the History window
Control + B
Brings up the 'Organize Favorites' dialog box
Ctrl + R
Reloads/refreshes the current page
Shift + Left click
Opens the clicked link in new window

Outlook

Alt + S
Sends the current mail
Ctrl + Enter
Sends the current mail
Ctrl + K
Resolves the email addresses from the address book
Alt + K
Resolves the email addresses from the address book
F7
Starts spell check
Ctrl + D
Deletes the current mail
Shift + Delete
Permanently deletes the current mail
Ctrl + Z
Undoes the last change
Ctrl + Y
Redoes the last change
F4
Brings up the Find dialog box
Shift + F4
Finds the next occurence of the search string
Ctrl + R
Brings up the reply window for the current mail
Ctrl + Shift + R
Brings up the 'reply all' window for the current mail
Ctrl + P
Prints the current mail
F5
Sends and receives mail

Ref

Google Docs not there yet

For a collaboration tool, our group decided to give GoogleDocs a try. There were a few glitches at first - the requirement of having a GMail address to log in with - but eventually, we had a document that multiple people could edit. It had some cool features like only allowing one person to edit the document at a time so no-one's changes got over-written and an author/timestamp on changed sections. At first blush, I was pretty happy with it; today, not so much.

All day I have been trying to make changes to a document created by one of my classmates and all day, I've been getting the following error message:

Of course, I have no problem editing/saving the document I created, only saving the shared document (so it's not MY network that's having problems). Not to be so easily stymied, I searched the Google help forum for suggestions. I found a number of posts alluding to this problem - it seems to have plagued GoogleDocs from day one. Sure, I didn't pay anything for it but, it seems, you get what you pay for.

A case against Blogs

Some people are writers; they can think of something interesting and clever to say every day, day after day, week after week. Some of us are Geeks; we think of something interesting and clever to say and say it over and over again to anyone who will listen until people start avoiding us in the halls.

I'm not very excited about having a Blog. I could tell you about my interactions with a Cellphone or Keyboard today - clearly technology - but not very interesting for me to write or you to read. If the purpose of the Blog assignment was to show how easy it is to set up a Blog, I get it already. Day three and I'm a convert. It's a piece of cake. If the purpose of the Blog assignment is to make us think about tech in our lives every day then woo-hoo. I use tech. I use it every day. Can I go home now?

A better idea (in my mind, of course) would be to assign each person to write a substantive, interesting and well thought out post once a week to the Moodle forum. Our classmates are much more likely to read and comment on them there. There would be less "today I used a stop light to avoid hitting an oncoming car" and more "here is this cool thing I learned."

The cool thing I learned today is that you can't just share a Google document with any email address, it has to be a GMail address. If anyone knows differently, I would love to hear how it's done.

Why

So, why Blogger.com? Did I carefully evaluate each available blog for it's strengths and weaknesses? Well, no. Did I survey all of my friends to see which ones they preferred and why? Um, no again. Random choice? Interestingly enough, no again. I chose Blogger.com for the same reason most people choose Microsoft Word as their document editors. I already had a GMail account. I don't need to remember a separate login and password. I am familiar with character of the software. The Blog is well integrated into a technology that I already use.

Is Blogger.com the best bogging platform in the world? I don't know and frankly don't care much. It does the job I want it to, has zero learning curve and I didn't waste any time choosing it.

I already have an idea for tomorrows post ... "In defense of late adoption"
Chow!

The first day of the rest of the semester

Well, I did it; I started a Blog. Signing up was a snap, I probably spent less than a minute start to finish and here I am. I have to say I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't required by Technical Fluency.

Since this is a technology blog ... I met the newest version of Microsoft Office this weekend. I can't say I'm much impressed, it took my longer to find the print button than it did to write the couple paragraph Bio (also for Technical Fluency) I hate fighting with the borders and margins and tabs and general helpfulness of word. Give me TextPad any day.

So, I started my Bio, ran out of time before class and emailed the document to myself to finish at home.

Cool:
the document auto-zipped when I sent it. I didn't realize it happened until I got home so I don't know whether the new Word document format is auto-zipped when stored on the hard-drive or if Gmail somehow did it. Anybody out there using the newest Office care to comment?

Not Cool:
When I went to open it, my copy of Office 2002 couldn't read the new format. Good old Microsoft - when a money making idea hits them, they run with it. "If we made it backwards compatible, nobody would buy our new 'improved' software." Fortunately, a couple minutes of Googling (verb) came up with a Microsoft compatibility pack which I downloaded, installed and voila ... I could read the document I had uploaded.