Mark Oeltjenbruns: Programming

Fri, 14 Mar 2003 13:00:14 GMT

Robert McLaw found an RSS News Aggregator (<a href="javascript:void(window.open('http://www.tatochip.com/Snarf/Default.aspx','_search'));">SNARF!, which stands for Simple News Aggregator for RSS Feeds) that was built with ASP.NET. It's very good -- it'll open up a search bar over on the left if you're using IE on Windows. Not sure if it works on any other browser or OS, but I really don't care, so probably should assume that this is a Windows-centric thing.

Thu, 20 Feb 2003 22:51:45 GMT

RSS Newsfeed Rendering Preview. Here is a taste of the new activeRenderer 1.4 with RSS rendering: I've rendered Dave Winer's, Jon Udell's and my own RSS feeds as a proof of concept. [read more] [s l a m]

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 19:27:39 GMT

OPML Directories. Marc Barrot, reviving outliners again! [Brain Off]

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 19:02:00 GMT

myway

Boy this looks familiar! It looks good. How did they get all the content, set up the personalization, out of no where?

Nice feature on myway :: import your yahoo bookmarks :) Glad I got that y! bookmarks export feature pushed out

And now I understand...
iWon.com picked up all excite's assets for just $10 million (down from 7.8 billion) iWon is myway.

My Excite was the major competitor to My Yahoo, back in the day. It was a personalization arms race. The sunrise/sunset/tides/moonrise modules were my favorite envy. But there are just so many small ui things on myway, borrowed from my yahoo, that we sweated over to create.

Well that's the way it goes. The no-ads idea should go far. I've moved on from Yahoo, so no matter. It's up to Yahoo to start the arms race again with some technical dazzling [Brain Off]

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 12:36:04 GMT

Printing.

There's something I'd like to see more bloggers do: print stylesheets.

Lots of us use CSS to style our output. I also attach a print style-sheet to my blog, so when you print, you only get the appropriate content. Go ahead, take an archive page or the home page and do a print preview. I'll wait for you to come back.

...

Pretty cool, huh? It's pretty simple, actually. I do two major things with my print style-sheet: adjust the colors and backgrounds for best laser printing, and hide things that don't make any sense for printing. Then I attach the stylesheet with the following directive:

What you'll find in that stylesheet is basically a bunch of overrides for my styles. Backgrounds become transparent, text becomes black, and whole parts of the site get marked with "display: none;". It's very handy for printing out web content, and it would be nice if more sites used it. If you're already using CSS to style your site, it's pretty simple to get everything printing like you want without having to have a "printable version" link (which is a holdover from pre-CSS days).

I also uncovered a weird printing bug in Mozilla which makes it only print the first page of the web content. I haven't really figured out what triggers it, and I can't upgrade beyond 1.0.1 because that's our minimum supported browser for our web application.

[The .NET Guy]

Wed, 25 Dec 2002 12:25:44 GMT

New Markup Language Challenges Rich-Media Leaders. A digital artist has created a Web-authoring tool that he thinks may reflect the spirit of artists everywhere. Inventor and Netomat chief scientist Maciej Wisniewski is becoming known as a rebel in the fold that includes HTML, Flash, XML and a host of techno-friendly languages that do not always speak to the artists who use them. [osOpinion]

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 14:11:51 GMT

Perl and CPAN for the Unknowing.

Perl and CPAN for the Unknowing

For those who haven't ever done more than a few lines of Perl (and, amazingly, that's most people seemingly), Perl remains this cryptic, bizarre language that often looks rife with "comic book cursing" --- from all the regular expression syntax. And I'd have to agree with that. Perl is cryptic but it also has one of the single best assets in the history of programming, CPAN. CPAN or Comprehensive Perl Archive Network is a giant distributed source code repository where you can find just about anything. And the only way to illustrate it is to really post my daily CPAN mailing from Pudge. Here's what was new yesterday.

New CPAN Distributions for October 1, 2002
posted by pudge on Tuesday October 01, @18:30 (modules)
  Link              |
* [0]Apache-ASP-2.41 -- Active Server Pages for Apache with mod_perl
* [1]Apache-iTunes-0.06 -- control iTunes from mod_perl
* [2]Benchmark-Thread-Size-0.03 -- report size of threads for different
    code approaches
* [3]CGI-SpeedyCGI-2.21 -- Speed up perl scripts by running them
    persistently.
* [4]ConfigReader-Simple-1.14 -- Simple configuration file parser
* [5]Decision-Markov-0.02 -- Markov models for decision analysis
* [6]EasyTCP-0.16 -- Easily create secure, bandwidth-friendly TCP/IP
    clients and servers
* [7]Encode-compat-0.03 -- Encode.pm emulation layer
* [8]Graphics-RGBManipulate-0.01 -- HSV adjustment tool for RGB colours
* [9]HTML-TagReader-0.12 -- Perl extension module for reading
    html/sgml/xml files by tags.
* [10]HTTP-Size-0.4 -- Get the byte size of an internet resource
* [11]Log-Agent-0.303 -- logging agent
* [12]Log-Dispatch-Jabber-0.2 -- Log messages via Jabber
* [13]Mac-iTunes-0.7
* [14]Net-DNAT-0.07 -- Psuedo Layer7 Packet Processer
* [15]Netscape-Cache-0.45 -- object class for accessing Netscape cache
    files
* [16]PDF-Report-1.00 -- A wrapper written for PDF::API2
* [17]PersistentPerl-2.21 -- Speed up perl scripts by running them
    persistently.
* [18]Petal-0.74 -- Perl Template Attribute Language
* [19]Scraper-2.26 -- framework for scraping results from search
    engines.
* [20]Set-IntRange-5.1 -- Sets of Integers
* [21]Test-Data-0.6 -- test functions for particular variable types
* [22]Test-Data-0.7 -- test functions for particular variable types
* [23]Test-Manifest-0.8 -- interact with a t/test_manifest file
* [24]Test-Prereq-0.07 -- check if Makefile.PL has the right
    pre-requisites
* [25]Thread-Conveyor-0.13 -- transport of any data-structure between
    threads
* [26]Thread-Conveyor-Monitored-0.09 -- monitor a belt for specific
    content
* [27]Thread-Exit-0.04 -- provide thread-local exit(), BEGIN {} and END
    {}
* [28]Thread-Pool-0.28 -- group of threads for performing similar jobs
* [29]Thread-Pool-Resolve-0.08 -- resolve logs asynchronously
* [30]Thread-Rand-0.04 -- repeatable random sequences between threads
* [31]Thread-Serialize-0.05 -- serialize data-structures between
    threads
* [32]Thread-Signal-1.06 -- deliver a signal to a thread
* [33]Thread-Status-0.03 -- report stack status of all running threads
* [34]Thread-Tie-0.08 -- tie variables into a thread of their own
* [35]Thread-Use-0.03 -- use a module inside a thread only
* [36]Tk-DateEntry-1.34 -- Drop down calendar widget for selecting
    dates.
* [37]dbMan-0.25
* [38]load-0.02 -- control when subroutines will be loaded
* [39]load-0.03 -- control when subroutines will be loaded

That's right -- everything from thread code to PDF creation to database routines to iTunes stuff to an ASP compatible page interpreter written in Perl for Apache so you don't have to run IIS if you don't want to and more. And that's just one day worh of updates. I'm certainly not saying that Perl is perfect by any means or that even CPAN is perfect (it's not) but it is a tremendous resource that many folks just aren't aware of. If you've ever wondered why people are so enthusiastic about Perl, CPAN's a large part of it.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 12:20:43 GMT

ColorMatch 5K. his utility will help you select a matching 6-color palette for your website... [xBlog] [jenett.radio]

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:53:14 GMT

XPath Tutorial. I haven't actually used XPath in a project yet, so I was only somewhat familiar with it. I just saw this great XPath tutorial while checking out the JXPath project on Jakarta. It's very nice - quick and simple. No fluff, just the facts.

The site, W3Schools.com, also has a bunch of other tutorials available for all types of XML and Web technologies.

Good resource. Very nice for a busy developer.

-Russ

P.S. The site even has a good sense of humor. [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:51:09 GMT

Quickie thoughts and links.. Hi! Welcome to October! Here's some quickie thoughts for the evening. All in one big long post so I don't have to battle with my FTP client for bandwidth.

I wish there was a more condensed version of Redhat. With just the cool stuff and not all the extras. A one CD distrib. I know, I know, everyone has a different idea of what cool is, but 3 CDs is a lot to download. It's going to take me two days to get it all down if I'm lucky! At least Redhat has a clue and the size of the .isos are under 650meg... Mandrake made me go out and find 700+ size CDs to burn their distrib. I'm going to be happy returning to Redhat, actually. I tried out Mandrake and I liked it, but after Scott's vicious attack and some other stuff I've read I think it'll be better to use "the standard". Actually, my first Linux install was my server running Redhat 6.1... It never gave me any trouble and was up for over two years without coming down on it's own (flaky California power is another thing...). There's really no reason to switch and this version of Redhat seems to be getting praise. We'll see...

According to Dave's blog, Roller is on the list of competitors to Skribe, another Java journaling app with an dot-com business model (MiniBlog didn't make the cut it seems...) Sounds fine to me, but don't these guys REALIZE you can't use that quote from Jobs until you actually deliver your product? Sheesh. Amateurs. Dave was thinking their business model might be what I need:

Hey Russell, this might be the ticket! Pull an all-nighter, add premium categories to MiniBlog, and fund your trip to Esther Dyson's big-blowout in Berlin. "Want to know how I feel about lawyers? Just enter your credit card number and hit the submit button."

Nice. It'd be kinda neat if someone wanted to pay me to blog... but I'm not sure I'd like the pressure. I used to be a journalist in a long-past life. deadlines and me never meshed well (as you can tell from my coding deadlines...). It requires a discipline I never had.

Actually, I was just thinking about adding another feature to MiniBlog today: I have this running todo list that I'm always mailing to myself from my email account from work. It'd be nice that after I log into my weblog, my picture would be replaced by a blog-owner-only todo list and calendar. All private, but it'd be a nice organization tool for me. But no new features for MiniBlog until I get off my ass on my other projects. Procrastination has gripped me and isn't letting go, so I've got to be firm.

Hey, Ugo and his wife have lost 3kgs in the past couple weeks on the Atkins! Yeah! And fell less hungry too! Woohoo! Did I tell you or what? It really works.

Did I ever mention Chris Kelly? He's an expat blogger in Sofia, Bulgaria! He sent me kind words about my blog and some advice on Linux stuff... He's been trying to download Mandrake 9.0 without much success due to the rain. Oof. I can't imagine what the telecom infrastructure is like there.

Another expat-blogger, Kief, is no longer an expat blogger!! Kief's working in London now! Woah! What happened? He was in Turkey and then *poof* he's now hanging out in England marveling at all the bandwidth at his new job... Kief is an American with a British wife, so I'm not sure if being the U.K. counts as being "expat" or not. I think you get 1/2 expat points for being in another country that speaks your own language. There are still cultural differences, but it's not like you need to memorize 16 verb tenses to talk to your wife about your day at work. Kief thoughts on being back in London:

...living in London is like going to college, drinking beer is a constant, with frequent nights of getting shitfaced. Brits buy pints of beer in rounds, so if you don't keep up with their pace and aren't careful your pints will queue up. It may take me a while to get back up to speed.

Yep, that reminds me of hanging out with Irish expats back in San Francisco. There'd always be 2 or 3 (literally) full pints in front of me at all times. Man what is it about the people on those islands? I guess if I had to live in that climate I'd be an alcoholic too...

Speaking of bad climates... Madrid had 3 days of good weather, but that's it from now until May. Cold, grey and wet from here on in. I've GOT to find an excuse to live somewhere else. Ana's talking about 3 bedrooms in the North part of Madrid (where we were taking a pleasant walk on Sunday) and that's starting to frighten me.

I wonder what Kief feels like being back in an English speaking country again. It must be so odd. I've been here since April 2000... it's a long time. (For the story about why I'm in Spain, check out my About Me page. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be go back home again and be happy.

-Russ

46% down.... [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:49:56 GMT

If you're bloggin' you ain't workin'. And that's me right now... so I'm going to get to it. The in-laws are up in the city for a bit and they just left. The kid's on his new schedule, so he's in the crib (we're listening to him talk to himself as he falls asleep right now on the monitor).

Thoughts:

If you're looking for some icons, there's the "standard" Java icons. and then there's the amazing Gnome ones by Jakub Steiner. Kick-ass.

Please god, someone post to Simpleface.org besides me.

There's a nice Swing tutorial on Sun's site. I wish I could learn better via a web page, but I think it's just practice as always. Eventually I'll learn how to learn online. Until then, I just ordered The Weblogic Server Bible from Amazon.co.uk in preparation for my new job. I saw a decent review of it on Slashdot (without many negative thoughts in the comments) so I decided to get it to help me grok Weblogic.

There are three states of understanding for me: Bewilderment, Familiarity and Groked. The last being total understanding... it's from a book somewhere that I never read, but I like the term.

Man, Raible (who's Matt to no one except his mother it seems) has a nice bandwidth. I only was able to download Redhat 8.0 disc 1 last night. I was thinking MAYBE it'd be done before I went to bed which is why I started it early, but nope. So that's why I'm not starting downloading tonight until just before I go to bed. Disc 2 tonight and Disc 3 on Wednesday evening... I'll be ready to play with Redhat by next weekend. :-) (Maybe Jeremy's mirror will help a bit... )

Is it just me, or is Charles preaching to the choir? I love OrionServer. It kicks ass... but no one I've ever applied with has said to me that it was a good thing I knew about it. Right now JBoss doesn't pay the bills. It'll be a while yet before it does.

Jeff's talking to me, I can tell:

My biggest problem is that it is all talk. No code makes for a very dead open source project. I learned this the hard way with FreeBuilder. All I did on that project flap my trap. If I had instead focused on code, there might have been a much different outcome. Worst case, I would have much better Swing Java skills.

Damn, alright! Alright... I'm getting off my ass RIGHT NOW. Hot code coming your way (which is where the title of this post came from. I'm typing as fast as I possibly can to get back to coding).

Here's a good example of just that. Henri just published his personal code library - very nice. I downloaded another Java blogger's personal library the other day too. Who's was it? Now I can't find it... urgh! It had a Splash-screen I thought was useful...

Is anyone paying attention to O'Reilly's Mac Conference? Seems like lots of good stuff... wish I was 1) There 2) A Mac owner. (Oh, hey... it looks like Jeremy is blogging it. Rock on! Hey, speaking of O'Reilly - the new Safari was launched and it's as good as their email said it was going to be. I'm psyched... going to use it a lot more now.

Greg's wondering why I dislike Canadians. Because they suck? (I'm sure I've ranted before about Canadians and other English speakers on this blog before... you can do a search on it. No reason to rant again until I'm really into it).

Hey! I like Greg's yet-to-arrive new computer... I want one! But how much? I couldn't find any prices on that site...

Kief says he's still an expat. Yeah. Right. Pah! (Oh, and his wife is from Turkey! I was assuming a bit too much from one of his posts... Sorry Kief!)

Jabber's got a new website and logo... hmmm. All these "J" references are going to mess me up. (via Raible).

Niel's got another PersonalBlog user! Yeah! I've been meaning to help Niel out getting his source code onto SoureForge. It's a PITA... you have to get SSH set up with your CVS and on Windows, that can be a challenge. Ugh.

Whew. Done. Like 1/2 hour... could've been worse.

-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:09:36 GMT

Ratings Geeks. I’m a geek—a software developer, a literature geek, a language geek, a history geek. Even a Star Trek geek.

So when I use the word geek in the following I don’t mean it disparagingly.

I’ve identified a sub-species of computer geek that I call the ratings geek.

These are the folks who talk about directed graphs. These are the folks who make feature requests for NetNewsWire that have to do with automatically applying ratings to subscriptions. (Ratings based on things like how often does one follow a site’s links, how often does a site update, etc.)

Ratings geeks have a better grasp of math than this college-dropout-literature-major does.

The common thread to ratings geeks is that they want the computer to observe their behavior, and sometimes the behavior of other people too, and move things around accordingly.

I’m going to have to learn more about this stuff, clearly—there are lots of ratings geeks out there, and they have some truly excellent ideas.

But there’s one thing I’d like to remind ratings geeks of: most people are not ratings geeks. In fact, most computer geeks are not ratings geeks.

So, what does that mean, in practical terms? Nothing in particular. I’m just saying it.

Just that empathy is the essential quality in a software designer, and remembering that not even all geeks are the same is important. (I’m as guilty as anyone in sometimes forgetting that principle.) [inessential.com]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 14:26:39 GMT

QueryString encryption. Once upon a time in the tech world, obscurity was security – this being most true in the early years of the industry, when there were gaping holes in privacy policies and confidential client information was bandied about from site to site without a care as to who actually could read the information. With the new Cryptography classes in .NET, there’s absolutely no excuse for not hiding even the most innocuous user data.
[Sam Gentile: Sams .NET Stuff]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:35:23 GMT

Amazon RSS - books delivered to your news aggregator!.

Quote: "Another Amazon Web Services experiment. The idea is this: say you're interested in books about weblogs. Wouldn't it be nice to have an RSS feed for all weblog-related books at Amazon, so that when new books became available you'd know about them? Thanks to the magic of web pipelines (Amazon >> XML over HTTP >> XSLT >> ASP >> RSS >> Your News Aggregator), it's become a pretty trivial thing to put together."

Comment: Hmm. Idea percolating... Faculty need to enter their book order information each semester. Form asks for ISBN. Use ISBN to get the rest of the data from Amazon. If we didn't have a bookstore contract, I'd then link to Amazon using a college associate ID. As it is, then keep data in database and notify bookstore of new request (e-mail? web interface?). Bookstore should really have its own online system for this, mind you.

Then marry database to course listing so that courses include book and syllabus info (separate system).

[Serious Instructional Technology]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:31:58 GMT

WinForms over the Web.

WinForms Over the Web. I did a talk at the local Portland Area .NET User's Group [1] on zero-setup deployment of WinForms applications over the web, including versioning, caching, optimization, debugging and security. This talk is also an excerpt from DevelopMentor's Essential WinForms course [2], which I highly recommend (although I'm hardly unbiased : ).

[1] http://www.padnug.org
[2] http://develop.com/dm/course.asp?id=131 [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

This is great stuff Chris, as I was just having a discussion with Paresh Suthar the other day on web based applications and their advantages. Paresh had a concern about the lack of richness in web or IE interfaces compared to WinForms. I see a lot of IT clients though where the zero client install (nothing to install locally, no registry settings( and having one browser interface is much easier for IT staff to deploy and support. The richness of WebForms is quite appealing as well, however not as good as WinForms. This seems like a good combination (WinForms over the Web) to address the issues while still keeping the versioning, fast deployment, etc of the web model ( I think).

[Sam Gentile: Sams .NET Stuff]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:27:56 GMT

Tim Ewald's Spoutlet. My friend, the author of Transactional COM+ and the editor of the XML/Web Services section on MSDN online, has an RSS feed. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] [System.Error.Emit]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:16:21 GMT

RSS for Acquisitions A new and rather interesting .... RSS for Acquisitions A new and rather interesting RSS application is the notification service of Amazon. Using a news aggregator, the link http://www.yaywastaken.com/amazon/amazon-rss.asp?keywords=???? will deliver a list of books. Just replace ???? with the keyword of interest. This could be useful in acquisitions on keeping up on a current topic. For more details see Amazon RSS - books delivered to your news aggregator! A poor title IMHO, it does not deliver books, only information about books.

get_comment_link(79890504) Add a comment [Catalogablog]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:12:53 GMT

'Nother Programming Competition. Looks like Chris isn't the only person holding a programming competition at the end of August: the 5th IFCP Programming Contest runs August 30-September 2. The target OS for this competition is Linux on Intel, I wonder if one could enter both competitions at the same time using C# on Mono? Prizes for the IFCP competition range up to $1000 in hard cash & free ICFP conference passes, plus kudos for the language used. It would be amusing to have C# declared "the programming tool of choice for discriminating hackers", wouldn't it? ;-) [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 05:04:52 GMT

Code some cool .NET app and go see the COOL Mr. Sells.

Win a Free Pass to the Web Services DevCon. Spend a Day With .NET coding something cool, send it to submission@sellsbrothers.com and the winner wins a free pass to the Web Services DevCon! Other prizes include a year subscription to MSDN Universal, a signed box copy of VS.NET and a half-day consulting. Follow the link for details. [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]

Chris did say he wanted me to tell people "he was cool" on the blog (in our email exchange) so I found a way to squeeze it here-))

[Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 04:45:09 GMT

BitWorking: Blogging with .NET [Wrinkled Paper]

Wed, 07 Aug 2002 00:46:39 GMT

The Richness of the Web.

I read a lot of .NET mailing lists, and it seems like a very predominant theme these days is people asking how to make their browser app richer, and act less like a browser app. To these people I want to say:

Learn Windows Forms. Go read things like Chris Sells' description of zero-install deployment of Windows Forms apps over the web. You'll probably be a lot happier when you stop treating the browser like an application development platform. Let's stop deluding ourselves: the web browser is a shitty tool for application development. It's a huge time-sucking pain in the ass that is being bent to do things it was never intended to do. Use the right tools!

Link Discuss

[The .NET Guy]

Sun, 04 Aug 2002 22:51:09 GMT

Sega Dreamcast: Network intrustion tool: "Cyberpunks will be toting cheap game consoles on their utility belts this fall if they follow the lead of a pair of white hat hackers who demonstrated Wednesday how to turn the defunct Sega Dreamcast into a disposable attack box designed to be dropped like a bug on corporate networks during covert black bag jobs. ...

Higbee and Davis perform penetration tests, and developed their game box cum attack tool after finding themselves more than once with physical access to a client's facilities -- posing as an employee in once case, crawling through a drop ceiling in another -- but without a way to leverage that access into remote control of the company's network.

"It's not that hard to get into an organization for one or two minutes," said Higbee.

They chose the Dreamcast for its small size, availability of an Ethernet adapter, and affordability -- the console was discontinued last year, and now sells used for under $100 on eBay. Loaded with custom Linux-based software and covertly plugged into a spare network port under a desk or above a ceiling, the harmless-looking toy becomes the enemy within, probing the company firewall for a way out to Internet.

The box cycles through the ports used for common services like SSH, Web surfing, and e-mail, which tend to be permitted by firewall configurations. Failing that, it tries getting "ping" packets out to the Internet, and finally looks for proxy servers bridging the network to the outside world.

Whatever it finds, it uses to establish a tunnel through the firewall to the intruder's home machine." [The Register]

[GranneWeb]

Thu, 01 Aug 2002 03:01:26 GMT

Mastering Visual Studio .NET Sample Chapters. Mastering Visual Studio .NET sample chapters. "Mastering Visual Studio .NET, by Jon Flanders and Chris Sells

"Most developers can perform the basics inside Visual Studio .NET, like creating a project, typing some code, compiling and debugging. Although Mastering Visual Studio .NET covers these topics, it does so very quickly. This book enables intermediate and advanced programmers the kind of depth that's really needed, such as advanced window functionality, macros, advanced debugging, and add-ins, etc. With this book, developers will learn the VS.NET development environment from top to bottom." [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News] [System.Error.Emit]

Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:41:56 GMT

DataLens. [Pocket PC Thoughts] Written in C# (and the Compact Framework), DataLens is a prototype user interface for calendars using fish-eye distortion to navigate quickly throught a calendar. At first, I thought it was kinda wierd, but after watching the video, it's really pretty cool. Here are the links for DataLens homepage, Screenshots and a Video. [The Furrygoat Experience]

Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:34:05 GMT

Richard Caetano has found a cool XML diff tool and someone (another one?) working on a blogging tool with .NET. [Wrinkled Paper]