In searching for Prototype Windows and related JavaScript libraries to let us create portlets for a portal, we’ve run into a couple of pretty impressive contestants. The most recent is NetVibes, which appears to be both the name of the web site (“Build your own portal!” “Share it with your friends!”) and the underlying libraries and Universal Widget API specification. Very slick web site, very slick GUI libraries!
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CentraLUG notes, 7-April-2008: Coleman Kane and FOSS development for Windows
Eight people attended the April meeting of the Central New Hampshire Linux User Group, held as usual at the New Hampshire Technical Institute Library, Room 146, on the first Monday of the month (see below, we’re evicted until fall).
Coleman Kane was the main presenter, showing us how the MinGW and GNU binutils packages could be used to create a cross-compiling environment to create Windows-compatible binaries on Linux (or actually, starting from BSD in Coleman’s case). He had a great slide deck and example source and was able to push through 55 slides in 75 minutes in a comprehensible fashion. The pace was fast and furious as he covered all of the highlights, took questions from the audience, edited and compiled code, and switched the projector between his BSD box and a Windows machine to show the code running. Whew! Well done and very informative!
CentraLUG’s meetings will be on the road for the summer. The library will be closed for evenings during finals week (!) and the summer hours have the library closing at 6 PM until fall semester begins. “See you in … October!” We’ll be announcing the location for upcoming meetings Real Soon Now. You’ll want to see Ben Scott’s May presentation on “The Linux Server That Could: Setting up a Small Office Server.”
Thanks to Colman for his great presentation, to Bill Sconce for providing the nice projector, to the NHTI for providing the facilities, and to all who attended for their attention and participation.
Listening last week to… April 5, 2008
Backdating this post a bit, as I didn’t get it posted yesterday,…
In Fresh Ubuntu, Harlem and Peter lead off this week with a conversation with Michael Ramm about productivity and GTD in “Michael from Blackbelt Productivity.”
PyCon2007 had a good and a not-so-good set of audio recordings: “Python and wxPython for Experimental Economics” was quite interesting, though there wasn’t as much deep programming insights as an interesting diversion about experimental economics. “Iterators in Action” (slides) was a flop, though. The recording was in the back of an echoing hall, and cut off in a little less that twelve minutes. I’ll ping the organizers to find out if that can be resampled.
Clay Shirky talks to Moira Gunn on Tech Nation “Here Comes Everyone.” Clay did one of my favorite presentations of all times, audio available on IT Conversations and a white paper here. Clay’s got a new book out and he’s marking the rounds of the media. I heard him on “On the Media” last week.
Tim Spaulding talks with Jon Udell about LibraryThing. in Jon’s “Interviews with Innovators” series on IT Conversations. I mention LibraryThing two years ago on this blog, and have been a regular visitor to the site. They continue to come up with intriguing features and make browsing through the stacks a lot of fun.
Larry Wall: “Programming is hard,…”
“… let’s go scripting” is his eleventh “State of the Onion” essay. A bit of history, a few lessons on linguistics, and his ruminations on what his language should and shouldn’t be doing. Larry always provides entertaining reading.
Prototype Windows
On top of the Prototype Javascript library sits Prototype Windows, a slick package that gives you the primitives to create sizable, movable windows in Javascript with skins created with bitmaps and CSS. Check out the demos; they are quite cool.
What I’ve listened to this week, 29-Mar-2008
PUI (Podcasting Under the Influence), Peter Nikolaidis is “drunk with the power” of swapping roles with his co-host Harlem for this week’s podcast of “Fresh Ubuntu,” titled “Peter’s Big Break.” These two guys put on a very good show each week, with high-quality audio, the week’s Linux/Ubuntu news, a “man page minute,” software reviews and more. Worth a listen. (Yes, they read a letter from me in this episode. At least I didn’t write too gushy a fan letter. How embarrassing.)
Over at The Conversations Network, Executive Director, Doug Kaye has a brief posting and audiocast on the new features of The Conversations Network. They are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides tremendously useful audiocasts for any computer professional. I’m a donor (the fact that I’m a “major” donor is an indication of how underfunded they are!) and encourage you to take a listen and contribute if you find it as valuable as I do.
Jon Udell has a regular “Interviews with Innovators” show on IT Conversations. This week, he talks with Ward Cunningham, famed creator (and co-author of the book of the same name) of “The Wiki Way,” about his latest venture and some of things he’s learned along the way.
Cyndi Mitchell had a sponsored keynote at RailsConf 2007 promoting the RubyWorks stack for the enterprise.
“The Essentials of Stackless Python” from PyCon 2007, NOT from the Conversations Network, but direction from python.org
Notes from PySIG, 27-March-2008: urllib2 and PySoy
Seventeen people attended last night’s Python Special Interest Group, one of many active chapters of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group. It was a long meeting, starting at 7 PM with a round of introductions, discussions of gotchas, announcements, problems people are working on (creating a lamda that does ‘Nothing’ — for a certain definition of Nothing!), subclassing Array.Array, learning a few new tricks about SciTE.
Mark had great news on his progress in getting Open Source in the Lawrence Library in Pepperell. The librarians have been very receptive, setting up an area to display information, promoting ongoing meetings, etc. Go, Mark!
Kent put on a very good Kent’s Korner on urllib2, and Arc Riley gave a very interesting presentation on PySoy, a powerful 3D gaming engine driven with Python.
Sean O’Shea provides extensive notes with even more links at his blog — thanks for the great notes!
Thanks to Bill for organizing and announcing, the Amoskeag Business Incubator for providing the great facilities, and to all for attending and participating!
PySIG, 27-March-2008: PySoy and urllib
Organizer Bill Sconce announces the monthly Python Special Interest Group to be held on Thursday, March 27th, at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester, NH. The main presentation will be on PySoy, a 3-D gaming engine. The Kent’s Korner will feature urllib2, a utility module for working with http, ftp and similar protocols, with supports for POSTs and GETs, authorization and so forth.
Tool of the day: lynx
lynx is a browser that renders html files as text, optionally using color and bolding. A client needed a word count of a bunch of html files and after installing lynx I used it in batch mode:
lynx *.html --dump --nolist | wc
The –dump option dumps the returned text rather than present it in an interactive fashion; the –nolist option prevents all of the anchor tags from being listed at the end of each document. The pipe character pipes the result of the function to the wc (word count) function that displays the number of lines, words and total characters of what it was fed. Following the UNIX principle of “small tools, loosely joined” this function could easily be included in a larger one, with perhaps sed or cut to isolate and format just the one number of interest, or the –word option added to the wc command to return only the word count. There are many ways to do it, another very Good Thing.
Koolu’s Kool! Great OOBE
Arrived from Canada in January and I’ve been having fun messing with it. The Koolu computer is a low-power computer based on a Geode 500 MHz CPU, up to 1 Gb RAM, an optional internal HDD, an external 12VDC power supply. It sips around 9 watts. Standard ports are AC’97 compatible sound-in, sound-out, line-out, 4 x USB 2.0, VGA, 10/100 ethernet. At under $300, this can be a handy utility computer to:
- Serve as file and print server for a workgroup
- Act as the front-end to a MythTV DVR
- Provide backend services like NTP, DNS, etc.
- An internal web server, source code control repository for a group of developers
- Kiosk computer (an optional VESA mount will allow it to be mounted to the back of an LCD panel.
And unlike the cheap $299 computers you can buy at big box stores, this one isn’t make of flimsy parts, nor will it make up for its cheap price in electricity payments. (I’m figuring less than $1 USD a month vs. $20 for a 200w big-box.) The base unit (no hdd, $199) is network bootable, the 80 Gb hdd version ($299) comes with Ubuntu preinstalled. Enjoying running it through its paces!
(Unless otherwise noted, all $ prices in CAD)