www.nickhodge.com

Keep­ing secrets is tough. Hear­ing about the Dynamic Lan­guage Runtime (DLR) from John Lam in Feb­ru­ary this year was one of those secrets that kept well.

John Udell inter­viewed John Lam, and has a back­grounder here. Some in the Ruby com­munity didn’t see this com­ing.

Jim Hugunin has a post­ing on the new DLR, open source nature of the DLR on his “Think­ing Dynam­ic­ally” blog.

In addi­tion to the Sil­ver­light release, we’ve also made the full source code for both Iron­Py­thon and all of the new DLR plat­form code avail­able on code­plex under the BSD-style Microsoft Per­missive License. All of that code can be down­loaded today as part of the Iron­Py­thon pro­ject at codeplex.com/ironpython.

The real­ity of being able to debug Ruby in a client-side UI frame­work on Safari on a Mac using Microsoft Sil­ver­light tickles me, and oth­ers, greatly.

Blog from the key­note today, with all the ups-and-downs. Good to see I am not the only one who craves demos and has sub­vers­ive thoughts in the midst of formal sessions.

Ryan Stew­art has com­ments, and fur­ther links. The DLR adds 400K (what the!) to the Sil­ver­light down­load. Wow.

zdnet has a sort of tran­script of the Q&A that occured with Mike Arring­ton, Ray Ozzie and Scottgu.

Does Microsoft get Web 2.0? Yes.

The Second Shift is log­ging off at work, going home, log­ging back in and con­tinu­ing to work.  If you do this, you are put­ting in your Second Shift.

Gorm­less. This adject­ive echoed around my head all week­end. It might have been inspired by a whole host of occur­rences. Care­ful when using it, how­ever. You will get strange looks and poten­tially a black­eye from an Eng­lish student.

My favour­ite Aus­tralian poem, “Said Han­ra­han”, by John O’Brian (aka Patrick Hartigan)

"...We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."

This whole poem seems to epi­tom­ise the cur­rent weather con­di­tions, farm­ers and a fleet­ing glimpse of an old Aus­tralia, slowly disappearing.

Aus­sie, Aus­sie, Aus­sie, Oi, Oi, Oi

Aus­tralian lex­icon can leave you a few roos loose. And it’s been a corker for years — well, at least since cocky was a chick.
Not as dry as a dead dingo’s donger is the book Tobruk, by Australia’s smartest foot­baller Peter Fitz­Si­mons — a dead easy read, even for non-war his­tory lov­ers. Highly recom­men­ded. Whilst I have read a couple of books on Kokoda, it is next on the list.

Um Marx falsch zu zit­ieren, „Fußball… ist das Opium der Arbeiterklasse.“

In 1988 Mitchell Waite sent me a small paper­back to read: Ver­nor Vinge’s True Names. I was a mere, lowly Hyper­talk pro­gram­mer from Adelaide, South Aus­tralia. He was an import­ant person.

This book has stuck in the neur­ons, and now the vir­tual is becom­ing real. It really goes to show how hard sci­ence fic­tion depicts a future that cur­rent liv­ing humans will not see. Based on some work I was doing to Tricks of the Hyper­talk Mas­ters, cre­at­ing what would be now known as a “skin” over Com­puServe; the book was just sci­ence fiction.

True Names pub­lished in 1981, describes a world called “Other Plane” were people inter­act online. The premise of sep­ar­at­ing your online from your phys­ical inden­tity; and the concept of a future Sin­gu­lar­ity per­vade my per­sonal world-view today.

Thanks Mitch.

Now, what does this have to do with today?

Second Life. It’s more than the tech­no­logy; it is also about the plat­forms involved. It is also how it impacts real people: such as Dave Wal­lace. Second Life is what I visu­al­ised as “Other Plane”

Watch the first half of this video: Jim-Cory-SecondLife.wmv, Lang.NET Sym­posium.

The first half of the video is light on tech­no­logy; but heavy on the eco­nom­ics, and wider-world impacts of the vir­tual world. The user cre­ation rate (Write­ness in the Read/Write equa­tion) is over 60%; com­pared to the web which is less than 10%.

A key reason seems to be the eco­nomic value attached to vir­tual objects scrip­ted in Second Life. As items in the Second­Life vir­tual world are intel­lec­tual prop­erty; an item can be cre­ated, sold and purchased.

Ensur­ing that intel­lec­tual prop­erty is val­ued is going to be one of the toughest chal­lenges for upcom­ing generations.

Is the script­ing in Second Life the new HyperCard?

“Only prob­lem — Com­puter says ‘no’”

Ross Coulthart, Great Land Clear­ing Myth, Sunday, Chan­nel 9.

A meme star­ted by the char­ac­terCarol Beer from BBC’s Little Bri­tain.

“We have the meta­bol­ism of hunter-gatherers, and the appet­ites of Medi­aeval Princes.”

Tony Abbott, National Press Club Address, 2^nd August 2006.

Thanks to Stephen Col­bert Wiki­al­ity: the truth accord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia. Think­ing about this, it has an ele­ment of 1984’s Min­istry of Truth about it. Oh get the subtle irony of ref­er­en­cing the Ministy of Truth on Wiki­pe­dia for the truth?