Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog Zilla : Days of our lives. Honestly.
Updated: 15/09/2002; 10:14:51 PM.

 

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Sunday, 21 July 2002

Some more SVG links

  • SVGGraphics: Another Graphics2D implementation to generate an SVG document. I am a tad confused as to what license this code is under. Looks like they changed their mind afterwards. Looks distinctly Open Source now. (Batik may have forced their hand)
  • <SVG:EMBED> A taglib to embed SVG directly into JSP. Pity it doesn't work on tomcat 3.x. (Requires JSP 1.2)
  • Henderson Petrophysics A cute intro to doing svg from the point of view of a petrophysicist. Has graphs. :)
  • Nokiko A website that personifies SVG, XML, and Bluetooth as anime characters. I found some interesting stuff from here, but all the same. They all have green hair. Hmmm.
  • DigitalCraft.com.au's BarChart A BarChart with an interactive difference.
  • Protocol7's SVG OPML navigator a cute opml viewer
  • SVGFAQ.com's page on embedding SVG in html pages.

Link collectin'
11:58:20 PM    


Cocoon

From databases to SVG. Brett is looking for "java based frameworks for querying databases and transforming the output to svg". I suggest using Cocoon. [Be Blogging]

My only beef with cocoon is that it is a big peice of infrastructure to learn, and then to expect the customer to maintain. Lots of library dependencies. Lots of configurables. Hmmm. Looks better than the last time I read the docs (back in the Cocoon 1.x days).
11:33:40 PM    


ToyPC

MicroPC. I'm sure I have seen this before somewhere (slashdot probably), but it is still HellaCool. So, who is bringing them to australia? :) (And, when are they going to learn, and put two ether drivers in it?)
10:14:45 PM    

Knowledge Sharing in Singapore Prison Service

KM Asia 2002 Report. Maish Nichani from elearningpost writes an excellent report on his views on the recent KM Asia 2002 conference. [Column Two]

Interesting, especially the section about changes in Singapore Prison Service. No real emphasis on technology, more an acknowledgement that to create knowledge transfer, you need to create areas in which open communication can happen. Like, breakfast meetings, coffee lounge corners, and the like. And stepping away from the command-control regime.

Articles like this bring home the truth that software can facilitate change, but it cannot force change. Change is social thing. Hmmm.
4:22:17 PM    


Another book addict

Nerd Book Addict. This is why I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near Dymocks any more. [The Desktop Fishbowl]

This makes me wish I had a photo of my wall of books that I had back when I was living in Leichhardt. It was probably at least twice that size. Its all in boxes now. *sigh*

You know you are amongst nerds, when you start comparing which O'Reilly books you own, and who has all three editions of the Perl Bible. Heh.

[Later...] Charles, is the XUL programming book any good? I am half thinking about the possibility of using XUL as a front end to a java app, in a way akin to radio, but more hosted in my environment of choice - Moz.
4:03:00 PM    


Tripping the Rift re-make

For a bit of Sunday afternoon entertainment I went back and watched the 33mb re-make of the original short of Tripping The Rift, and noticed there were a number of subtle additions to the original. Or maybe, my memory is getting progressivly worse. Anyway, still worth a chuckle or three. Maybe not at work tho. ;)
3:58:24 PM    

Suggestions? Java based preferably

Just wondering if anyone knows of java based frameworks for querying databases and transforming the output to svg and the like? My first thought was Ant, but the SQL tasks in that can only drop the output to stdout, or to a file. James, can Jelly do this sort of thing?

Ok, on first inspection, it looks like it can. Could really do with some examples on the website. Like you say on the TODO, more doco required. :) See if I can't whip up a few examples then...

[Later...] Downloaded the src and binary tarballs (zipballs?). Errr. Where to start? I'm lost :P
3:22:52 PM    


Google on the desktop

Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar. Thanks to Joel Spolsky for pointing this out: Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar. [not quite random]

Must have.
1:52:03 PM    


Google Highlighting Abuse

Google Groups Art. Thanks to Karl Ove Hufthammer for pointing us to sun sky land rock brightflowers darkerock lushgrass, the first art piece I know of that takes advantage of Google's query highlighting feature to make colored ASCII art. Of course, if art's not your thing you could always take the hidden message approach... Fun stuff.... [Google Weblog]

Most cute. :)
1:38:35 PM    


Web Graphs

The next time you have the need to produce graphs on a website, do yourself a favour and just use SVG. For a ROI reporting webapp I am doing for Cisco, I tried first off to produce the graphs serverside using Batik. I have found trying to do the production line of JFreeChart rending to Batik's SVG generating Graphic2D implementation, and then handing the thus generated SVG document off to Batik PNG Translator doesn't work.

Instead, I have wound up just generating the SVG, and embeding Adobe's svg plugin to work much better. It will chew a lot less in the way of CPU time on the server to boot.
12:19:52 PM    


Sam's REST + SOAP essay

New essay: REST + SOAP. [Sam Ruby]
Something to think about, fer'sure.
12:09:12 PM    

Java bitching session

Sometimes I really want to smack the people at Sun. Java is full of naming inconsistencies. Sometimes it's jsut like stupid capitilization issues, sometimes they do sometimes they don't, and sometimes it's inconsistencies in method naming. Take this one I just ended up having to write. myCalendar.getTime().getTime() calling getTime() on the calendar object returns a Date object, which if yoiu call getTime() on that it returns a long (which is of course different from a Long). Shouldn't "getTime()" do the same thing in all of the date / time related objects that are included in the Java Developers Kit? It's not like it would be hard to put a database in place to let them look up method names used in other classes and see how they were being used. And, not even that, someone should have noticed this. I so wish they would opensource Java. *sigh* This is yet another reason why software companies need better internal communication. [weblog.masukomi.org]
This is a problem of a committee designed language. Improved communication may, or may not, improve the language. Having a dictator in control of the language, would work. This is the main reason why perl, ruby and python are better designed languages, because in all cases there is a dictator that mandates what can, and what can't, happen in his language. Open sourcing java would not improve the situation, as there is no generally respected central person that is empowered to make these decisions. Tis also the reason why programming java requires an editor that can tell you the types of what you just typed, so that you can figure out which type casts you need.
10:55:53 AM    

Air Supply Maintenance

Watson Developer on Sherlock 3. What is the relationship between Watson and Sherlock 3? Karelia Software writes: “We’ve all but given up on any compensation from Apple, so the purpose of ‘going public’ with this answer is because we want to set the record straight.” [ranchero.com] [Simon Fell]
Obviously, the take home lesson here is - don't get too close to either Apple or Microsoft, as both are equally likely to cut off you air supply.
10:37:09 AM    

Wanted: Embedded Linux box with 2 x Ether

Has anyone seen an embedded linux box with 2 ethernet ports? I still desperatly want such a beast - I really don't trust the various commercial "click and play" firewall kits out there. I have seen a few, butin most cases it seems it would be cheaper to buy a low spec pc instead. Any ideas?
10:33:47 AM    

Content protection is a furphy

EE Times: Content protection debate reaching do or die. Many of the stakeholders in the digital-copyright debate are beginning to wonder how long the discussion will drag on and when the content and technology industries will agree to launch standards that satisfy all of the sides. [Tomalak's Realm]
There is an implicit assumption there - that a compromise can actually be reached. I don't think it can, because what the content industries want, and what the consumers are willing to buy are at loggerheads. The tech industry is merely a middleman, which knows that the whims of their customers spell life and death.
10:22:56 AM    


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blogchalk: Brett/Male/26-30. Lives in Australia/Sydney/Carlingford and speaks English. Spends 60% of daytime online. Uses a Faster (1M+) connection.
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