Category Archives: Technology

Thursday in Crested Butte

Web Frameworks Jam, continued

The TurboGears team finally is all working with the 0.9 release, and we made a lot of progress today. I was able to get the things working that didn’t work yesterday (i.e., the JSON support), and we moved forward, exploring the TurboTunes tutorial and more of the supporting code.

The TurboTunes tutorial is a lot of Javascript, so not as much in terms of kid and pure TurboGears, but it’s a nice looking demo. Here are some of our notes about that tutorial:

TurboTunes Tutorial Feedback

1.tutorial refers to prod.cfg, which doesn’t exist. Assuming should copy sampleprod.cfg to prod.cfg. No big deal, since we were in development mode anyhow (using dev.cfg)
2.In 0.9.a7, sqlite is assumed in dev.cfg … needs to be commented out. This is kind of annoying.
3.Tutorial uses old start command: python turboTunes-start.py, while new version uses start-turboTunes.py
4.Use tg-admin toolbox to start toolbox to access Catwalk. We were able to leave out all mounting of CatWalk, but still need to import model.

The Google Web Toolkit team seems to be doing well with their exploration, and the Spring team is making progress too. During the hiking breaks (and at dinner), we all discuss what people are doing. Ah, it would have been nice to have had more time, so that each group could have looked at another framework as well. Ah, sigh, but realistically, we likely would have just gone into more depth with what we were doing.

This afternoon, we all took a hike to Copper Creek. It’s up by Gothic, which is an old town now used by biologists. The waterfalls were gorgeous and the hike had more elevation (and length) than the previous days.

In the evening, a few of us went to see “An Inconvenient Truth”, which was (IMO) both fascinating and disturbing. In any case, it was great to see someone handing out flyers about how to convert to using wind power in Colorado after the movie.

Ah, tomorrow is our last day here, and I’m hoping that we can look at some more TurboGears in detail.

Copper Creek Hike

Web Frameworks Jam: Wednesday

Another Day in Crested Butte

First, work stuff:

We continued our TurboGears quest yesterday (Wednesday). The “out of the box” tutorial experience isn’t really there yet, but we’re still hopeful about the package. Mainly, if I had been working on my own, I’m just not sure I would have been this motivated to continue working with the package, after encountering the roadblocks that we’ve hit. None of them have been insurmountable, but “real” work would have probably drawn me away from it when I did get temporarily stuck and I’m not sure I would have gone back.

The idea of using Best of Breed Components to put together a framework is compelling, and I’m enjoying getting my feet wet with a little Python as well. The “gotchas” seem to be package installs, at this point, further complicated by the fact that we don’t have a live internet connection at the conference location (which really just inspires us to visit the coffee shop next door quite frequently).

We’ve been making notes, mainly about the tutorial and this “out of the box” experience that I just mentioned. Bruce is going to post them, and I’ll add a link here when he’s done that.

The Spring/Hibernate team is plugging along (mainly focusing on Spring at this point, I think). The Google Web Toolkit team is making progress as well. One of the guys has extensive knowledge of the toolkit (has been using it for a while) while the other 2 have great interest. I’ve seen notes from them as well (extensive!), and I’m hoping that they post those as well. I’m looking forward to reading them in more detail, and I’ll post a link if they get blogged. Pretty sure they will …

In any case, we’ll be getting back to TurboGears this morning. Barry finally has everything working on Debian and Bruce has upgraded to 0.9 from the default install of 0.8.9. We’ve learned a lot about the package, and I’m looking forward to getting through the tutorial and onto new things now that (hopefully) the wrinkles have been ironed out.

And now, the recreation report:

We went for another hike (Slate River) yesterday afternoon, hiking to a waterfall. An old mine is nearby. It was a very nice hike, more elevation than yesterday.

And we had lunch at a great little outdoor Tibetan restaurant (Mo Mo’s). I had curried beef with lentils and rice and some chai. It was fantastic and the outdoor garden setting is amazing.

Last night, one of the other attendees and I attended a community forum at the local school. Ambassador Ed Peck, former chief mission to Baghdad, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd about unrest in the Middle East. Pretty timely. He’s an amazing speaker and probably makes a great diplomat. He really stressed the importance of listening to what people (in other countries, especially) are saying and thinking. Imagine that. This isn’t a political blog, so I won’t go into more detail, but suffice it to say that I’m really glad that I attended. I wish that I were going to be here next week, when Sandra Day O’Connor will be speaking. Wow!

Crested Butte is simply a wonderful place. Costly, but lovely. It’s definitely a great place to visit. Some local tidbits:

·I talked to a woman at Camp4Coffee yesterday morning who had ridden her bike there with her 6 month old baby. We were talking about bike trailers. She said that she bought that trailer when some visitors came to town for a week, bought a brand new bike trailer, and sold it for $70 when they left. Nice deal!
·I spoke to a man in the hotel lobby this morning who is a rancher from Texas who has been coming to this town every year for 30 years. He’s here with his grandson this week.

Web Frameworks Jam, Day 1

Greetings from Crested Butte!

I’m here, at Bruce Eckel’s Web Framework Jam, and (as expected) learning a lot already. We’ve broken up into 3 groups, each working on a different framework. Initial task is to become familiar with the framework. My group is working on TurboGears (the preview version, 0.9), and we’re not just working through the tutorial but also inspecting a lot of code along the way. A second group is working with Hibernate/Swing, and the third is using the Google Web Toolkit.

Each day, there’s time set aside for recreation (hey, if you’re in a beautiful place like this, you really SHOULD get out and do something!). Yesterday, we went on a nice, flat hike at Lake Irwin (flat is good, since we’re all still acclimating to the altitude, 9300 ft). Later in the week, I’m hoping to do some mountain biking. But … as we saw with the Programming the New Web conference here last March, the “breaks” really serve as a way for the groups to interact about what they’re learning as well. A lot (most) of the conversation centers around what we’re doing, something that most people who hang around with computer geeks probably don’t find surprising.

Wildflowers at Lake Irwin

Web Frameworks Jam

Heading off to Crested Butte

I couldn’t stay away. Bruce Eckel is offering an Open Spaces Web Framework Jam in Crested Butte next week, and I am really looking forward to it. Yes, I was just in Crested Butte in March (for Programming the New Web), but this is a hands-on experience and I think that it’s going to be a great learning experience and incredibly fun too.

In addition to meeting new people, I’m looking forward to hanging out with some familiar faces from the last conference as well (three of us are returning). I hope to post some updates from the web framework jam here.

The “It” Thing …

Some kind of event in Crested Butte, CO, July 18-21

Bruce Eckel was going to do a “Thinking in Java” Open Spaces conference in Crested Butte, CO in July, but interest (or at least enrollment) didn’t seem to be there. After a flurry of email between several of the people that were at his Programming the New Web Open Spaces conference (held in March), he is re-working it as potentially an even cooler event. Check out the link for more details at:

http://mindview.net/Conferences/ThinkingInJava

I really trust Bruce when he says, “We'll find something interesting to do even if we don't know exactly what it is yet. It's in the same vein as an Open Space — where you have a basic topic but you don't know what sessions will appear until people start putting sticky notes in time slots — but taken up a notch. Here, we're not sure what the topic will be, but we assume that something will appear by the time we actually convene.”

I hope that I can be a part of it. My attendance, right now, is only limited by family obligations. If I can work out those details, I will be there. If I can’t make it, I will be really bummed and anxiously awaiting news on how it all turned out.

To be able to go and build something for the fun of it (and for the educational experience)! It would be like summer camp!

BTW, there’s a hostel in Crested Butte. I hear it’s pretty nice and you sure can’t beat the price!

Conference Information
Summary of Potential Topics
Open Spaces
Discussion of Open Spaces Technology
Crested Butte Hostel
Best Value in Crested Butte
Other Lodging/Travel Info
Where to stay and how to get there

Teen mosquito repeller?

Turnabout is fair play

Interesting turn of technology against the adults!

An inventor in the UK developed a device to discourage teens from loitering outside shops by emitting pulses of a sound that teens can hear, but that most adults over the age of 20 cannot. Hmm, but then the teens turned it into a ringtone at a slightly lower frequency that they could hear in classrooms, but that most of the teachers (over the age of 30) cannot, and they’re using it for text messaging indicators in class.

You can hear an NPR interview with the inventor of the initial device and his teen daughter (who admits to having used it in class), at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687

The link on the NPR website also has an MP3 of the sound. And of course, curiosity got the best of me, and I had to try to see if I could hear the sound. My well-past 30 year old ears cannot really detect it as a sound, but I felt a weird sensation while it was playing. Not really irritating, just odd. But maybe I’ll keep the file around … never know when it will come in handy.

LaraBars

A quest for good food and even a Python reference.

When I was in Crested Butte for Bruce Eckel’s Programming the New Web conference (and therein lies the only hook that this will have to a technical topic), I picked up some Larabars at the local grocery store, for a quick snack. And since then, I have been on a quest.

Larabars taste great and they meet my “rules”. I’m one of those pretty wacky people who reads food labels before buying anything. And larabars totally meet my criteria … no added sugar (and no CORN SYRUP), no partially hydrogenated oils, no preservatives. So what DO they contain? Fruit and nuts. That’s it. They’re NOT cooked; they’re NOT processed. Naturally occurring Omega 3’s! Omega 6’s! Oleic acid! This is good stuff!

And with decadent names that will make you feel GUILTY! Cherry Pie, Cashew Cookie, Chocolate Coconut! And for the programmers among us, try CherryPy (sic, sneaking in another technical reference!).

Luckily for me, our local grocery store carries them. Otherwise, we would have had to move to Colorado. My favorite larabar flavor that my local store doesn’t sell: Ginger Snap. My husband would go NUTS for Ginger Snap (but I ate the only one I brought home from CO so he’s gonna have to wait to try it).

(My other food hangup: Styrofoam cups. They freak me out. In Crested Butte, Camp4Coffee has paper cups. Ah! Heaven!)

Back to programming … snack time is over.

Larabars website
All the yummy details
Larabars in the news
An article about larabars
Styrofoam cups
Or why I love paper cups

A Plethora of Web Development Tools

TurboGears, Ruby on Rails, Atlas, Google Web Toolkit: Embarking on a journey with Web Application Development Tools

I’ve got to get my mind around all of these tools. What are their strengths and weaknesses? Who competes with whom? Where’s the overlap? What are the differences?

TurboGears and Ruby on Rails seem to meet the needs of the same audience. They both provide the means for Rapid Web Application development. Atlas lets .NET programmers use the language and environment that they are comfortable with to develop web applications, while the Google Web Toolkit enables Java programmers to continue to use Java to develop web applications.

But … the big question is … do we NEED all of these things? Can we do what we need to do with TurboGears and/or Ruby on Rails? It’s fairly well accepted that TurboGears and Ruby offer us productivity advantages, but do Atlas and the GWT offer us something functionally that TurboGears and Ruby do not?

So, I embark on my journey to play with software. I like this part!

Professors Banning Laptops in Classes

Interesting. Students were taking notes with laptops and a professor thought that this was getting in the way of active debate in class, so she banned them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060503/ap_on_hi_te/colleges_no_laptops

I totally agree. When I was at Bruce Eckel’s Open Spaces conference a month or so ago, we all left our laptops in our bags. I think that this was a HUGE factor in our interesting, interactive discussions. Face it. Computer laptop screens provide a barrier between people (we used to just have our sneakers to state at; now we have laptops). And they are INTERESTING barriers too. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi, you can often surf the web under the guise of “taking notes”. But even with that aside, the simple task of notetaking on the computer DOES get in the way, in my opinion. Somehow, paper and pencil doesn’t form that barrier between you and other people in the room, whereas the laptop screen does. Hmm. Interesting.

RFID Chips Record Recycling

Big Brother Knows How Much You Recycle

Just read an interesting article in the Great Lakes IT Report (http://www.wwj.com) detailing an interesting use of RFID chips, for determining how much trash/recycling individual households put at the curb. The full article is available at http://www.cascadeng.com/press/pr/20060405.htm and I won’t repeat it all here, but the basic idea is that a trash company is embedding RFID chips in trash bins and rewarding customers for recycling. Ultimately the “stick” approach may be used to charge people for how much waste they produce. Cool idea.