www.nickhodge.com

Experimenting with visitmix.com lab’s Gestalt

Nick Hodge — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:46:31 +0000

How this works. The page loads the open source DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) using Silverlight through a web browser plugin. No Silverlight, no fun. The DLR then triggers on the ‘script type’ to the appropriate language. In this instance, it is IronPython: the open source implementation of Python on the DLR (IronRuby is used for Ruby). Using the DOM bridge in Silverlight, the script has access to the HTML page, and attaches an event listener to the button. There is a slight delay whilst the Gestalt code loads the appropriate engine. The DLR, IronPython and the Gestalt handler are Ms-PL.

Update 6th March: Jimmy Schementi at PyCon 2010 detailing how this works, with demos

The best thing: this is view>source. Yes, you can see what is going on within the browser.

From the following example Gestalt:

Saint Shenanigans

Nick Hodge — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:44:25 +0000

I was born a Protestant. I will more than likely die one, too. Intense excavation into family history has shown me that my genes are Protestant for at least 8 generations on both sides. Baptised and confirmed a Lutheran, I was taught a thing or two about the most successful (not the first) split from the Catholic Church by Martin Luther.

During public school mandated “religious education”, I was taught by the local Catholic Priest. He seemed nice enough; kindly taking us through the New Testament book Romans. It took many years for me to realise that this was an attempt at turning me from my heretic ways to the true canon. If I recall, he didn’t even use the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Yes, Peter and Paul: the fathers of the catholic church.

After travelling to Europe in 1997 and 2004, I saw enough Saints’ relics: shrunken heads, fingers, toenails and shrouds to last me a lifetime. Large cathedrals raised in the name of the Virgin or some Saint across the cities of Europe show the folly of man, attempting to reach for terrestrial god status. The veneration of Saints and other popery not only rubs me the wrong way: I am sure my ancestors turn in their collective graves.

So as Mary MacKillop has moved through the man-made process of canonisation within the Catholic Church, my genes quiver.

We hear that the church wants old and young to travel to Rome to witness the canonisation ceremony. That will fill the coffers of the Romans.

I also heard many discussions on the “brand” of Mary MacKillop being valuable. Like a product. Even our ABC both on radio and TV seems to have caught the “Mary MacKillop” fever. So much for editorial independence.

And that is exactly what this canonisation is about. Money. Never get in the way of a large corporation and money.

Luckily the Catholics re-admitted her to the church. Otherwise they would have missed out on their cash.

This tradition and hunger for money is not new. Sainthood and pilgrimages have created many a city in the world as supplicant masses crawl on their knees to assuage their mortal sins. Paying money for Indulgences, as done in the Middle Ages, and more recently with special visits to random virgin sightings.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not anti-personal faith.

But please separate Mammon from Mary. She was, and I highlight was, just a notable Australian woman who did more for the downtrodden than any group of Cardinals, Abbotts or Bishops ever did. And I would argue, ever will.

Speed, Quality, Cheap. Pick any Two.

Nick Hodge — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:15:16 +0000

The Hon. Peter Garrett, member of Midnight Oil and member for Kingsford-Smith is presently under-the-gun over the management of the Energy Efficient Homes Package.

It seems out of the old adage: speed, quality, cheap: pick any two that the department chose just speed.

From ABC1’s Q & A last night, members of both sides of the house marked Peter Garrett as an honourable and a decent man. His experience leading environmental lobby groups, and leading a successful band shows he can manage people. But Management in a Ministerial sense is way more complex.

Evidently, his department commissioned a legal risk assessment of the program in February 2009. This document was not seen by Mr. Garrett until early this year.

My speculation is:

Mr. Rudd & Mr. Swan design a large program to inject money into the economy in light of the Global Financial Crisis. Getting this cash into the economy quickly is paramount.
Based on a program created by the previous Government, it was seen as an easy mechanism to gain green credentials and inject fiscal stimulus.
Someone in the Department engages an external party to detail any risks. In large projects, there are always risks. Mitigating risk is a part of sound project management. Not all problems can be solved nor foreseen: but those that are foreseen must be managed.
Remember: timing is everything. Speed, speed, speed. The Department cannot wait months to create a viable infrastructure to manage all the risks, and as political pressure is on to spread the money out: nothing gets in the way of speed.
Conversations between Ministers is all positive and about the velocity of the program;
the Department keeps their risk assessment information to lower levels, in an effort to protect their Minister, the program and potentially their job.
The Minister doesn’t want to hear or see bad news: even worse, pass this up the chain to the notorious micro manager Rudd.

The causes for this breakdown potentially are:

An environment where negatives and risks are seen as bad PR. Bad messaging for the nightly news
An environment where speed is critical. Now, now now rather than considered policy execution
An environment where people fear raising bad news

Just “firing” the Minister is not going to solve the problem. Although Mr Rudd will probably reach a point where he jettisons Mr Garrett. That will be sad.

State of Software Design in NSW HSC

Nick Hodge — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:29:37 +0000

Liam successfully completed his HSC in 2009, with one of his subjects being Software Design

Looking over his results certificate, it seems that 1726 students sat the HSC Exam from 1759 enrolments. In other words, 2.5% of the NSW HSC population took this course.

The curriculum for this subject area is reported to be weak.

Maybe it is time for Higher Education, Industry and the Board of Studies to strengthen the content of this course. For the future of Australia in the digital world.

It is not the Apple Tablet, it is the Store

Nick Hodge — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:06:18 +0000

The recent escalation of rumours surrounding the so-called Apple Tablet / Slate / Big iPhone / xxx (where xxx is a super cool Apple-ish name) seem to focus on the hardware. The gadgetry. The hardware specs.

I am a little over gadgetry. Every week there is a new phone, device or somesuch that junks the old technology. Surely this is neither ethical nor sustainable?

But that is not where the innovation, nor the future lies for Apple. Recent Apple acquisitions, investments and successes leads me to conclude that Apple and Google are about to square off. Not in search. Search is rather boring and a commodity.

In the forthcoming weeks, ignore the hardware. Hardware is dime-a-dozen, and many vendors are going to release slate like gadgetry in a similar form factor. Rather, watch what Apple does with their iTunes / App store. Presently this system provides music, tv, movies and with the advent of the iPhone – Apps.

The next department for the store are newspapers, magazines and books. Either sold as subscription, or with embedded advertising. Just wait.

The revenue model will appeal to the traditional mainstream media — so expect a continuing avalanche of obsequious and self-serving coverage. Not of the store — but rather the hardware. Embedded within these stories will be the expectation of a holy grail. The holy grail of the future of print media, without paper.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Facial Update

Nick Hodge — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:31:06 +0000

It has been a long 3–4 weeks.

From Doctor’s visits and other experts, this is most likely merely a viral infection in the facial nerves. You can only take anti-virals within the first 36–72 hours – a time long, long ago. So its has been “just live with it”. Research has shown me that re-occurance of the opposing side is possible. However, it is quite disconcerting thinking that your face is going to ‘flutter’ or ‘twinge’ with nervous abandon.

Today was a major breakthrough. Presenting Windows 7 and Office 2010 to IT Teachers at Western Sydney TAFE. 3 hours of non-stop talking, and only a couple of facial contortions. As long as I don’t smile, eat or look up — all is well. Things are on the improve.

Totally buggered, however. Stuffed. Whilst I once presented for 8 hours, at least twice, when on a trip to India in 2001 — and been at countless tradeshows of 14+ hours of standing around and spruiking — 3 hours is still a long time to be “on”

So its onwards. Good to have a normal face back.

Why the Quietness?

Nick Hodge — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:05:57 +0000

It is rather strange for me to be quiet. Especially online and on this blog specifically.

Twitter is partly to blame: it is where my creative mind finds an outlet.

Another is a little more sinister. And I use the word sinister also meaning left-hand-side

In April 2007 I talked on my experience of Bell’s Palsy.

Over the last month, the left-hand side of my face didn’t go numb nor fall, but there has been an intense ache.

Now the right hand side of my face is showing some weirdness. A nervous twitching when I yawn, eat, talk, look up or smile. This twitching lasts for 1–2 seconds and is noticeable, and changes my speech pattern. It is quite disconcerting giving presentations and having your face go crazy. I am quite self-conscious about the visual effect.

From reports from other Bell’s sufferers, this is a potential issue. Doctors report that this is a function of the muscles and nerves of the face rebalancing the weakness on one side.

So, its working online and from home with a few outward bound events.

And rest.

So, if you don’t see my “in the flesh” or being prolific online. There is my reason.

What does Transparency mean to me?

Nick Hodge — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:43:18 +0000

I mulled long and hard over the content of this post over on techedbackstage.net. A discussion with a few people, and reading to through with Jorke cleared my mind a little.

Should I reveal we had a medium size hiccup in the first day of netbook handout at TechEd? C’mon, corporations don’t make errors. Well, they sorta do — but never admit it. Problems are couched in corporate speak. All is well. Look over here.

My personal concept of transparency and honesty is telling it like it is. Whilst I don’t state the actual number of machines needing re-imaging: we have yet to get more data tomorrow to be more factual: telling the story as it is, warts and all, is critical. It’s closer to home here as I am responsible for the Netbooks. In retrospect, I feel I should have thought of the human factors when in production-line mode. Also, increasing the Q&A rate considering the tightness of the handout: I should have thought of that, too.

I’d like to put a big thanks out to Jorke who implemented techedbackstage.net. We really hope that you guys in IT get something out of this transparency.

Sometimes it’s painful to admit your mistakes and say sorry. Thankfully, I work in an organisation that respects the need for this level of honesty. And a great team of people who are pulling to make it right for customers.

The long search for the perfect WPF Twitter Client. Over.

Nick Hodge — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:45:03 +0000

Twitter; Facebook and friends is the place where I spend most of my day. For work and play.

Separating work and play is difficult in single-column twitter clients. Enter mutliple columns, filtering as base requirements for my perfect twitter client.

Stuck in closed-source TweetDeck; or moving through a myriad of AIR based applications. Subjecting myself to unknown security issues, slow performance – and no ability to contribute – has frustrated me no end.

Then @aeoth create MahTweets. It’s MS-PL. It’s extensible (via MEF). It has IronRuby for scriptable extensibility.

It is awesome.

Use it. Contribute. Let’s make the world’s best WPF Twitter Client.

#auteched week begin

Nick Hodge — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:00:51 +0000

After 6 months of planning, lost sleep, deep thinking — TechEd with the Windows 7 / Netbooks coming to fruitition.

In a week’s time, it will all be over. I really wonder what next weekend will look like.

In the meantime, this is the view from my hotel room:

Twenty Years Ago Today

Nick Hodge — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:07:39 +0000

Twenty years ago today, Avril and I were married. And we still are happily married. BTW: didn’t Avril look totally beautiful here?

Where is Nick?

Nick Hodge — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:24:59 +0000

As TechEd 2009 approaches, you will see me blogging over on TechEd Backstage

Sanity Prevails

Nick Hodge — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:59:01 +0000

The FOSS community has been concerned about the difficulties, pros and cons of including Mono-built applications as a part of standard Linux builds. Both Pro and Con.

Most recently, the Ubuntu Technical Board posted to their Ubuntu Developer Announce mailing list their extermely pragmatic position on Mono applications.

Today Microsoft extended the Community Promise to the two underlying ECMA (and subsequent ISO) standards that cover the CLI and C#. These promises had already covered other EMCA standards such as OpenXML, so it was quite logical that the CLI and C# would follow. Well, in a sane universe anyway.

As the Mono project (and Moonlight) are based on these standards, the Community Promise would logically extend to these environments.

Hopefully now we can all just build cool software, not argue about licenses, patents and other distractions. Now let’s fix Outlook’s HTML rendering!.

(Thanks to John BouAntoun for the original link, Peter Galli for the original blog post, and Microsoft for doing the right thing.)

28 Weeks. 18 Weeks Down

Nick Hodge — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:07:01 +0000

18 Weeks

18 weeks and 735 emails ago, Gianpaolo green-lighted my involvement on an Andrew Coates flight of fancy: What if we gave every paid delegate of TechEd a Netbook running Windows 7? Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.

By involvement read “Project Management”. And, oh what a wonderful ride it has been.

18 weeks of discussions, negotiations and thought. Wrapping your mind around all the side, non-technical implications has taken the last 18 weeks to contract signature.

People management, Finance policy, legal agreements, terms+conditions, understanding internal policies. The funny thing is that I’ve done all this before during the last 3 years of my Adobe sales management life. The internal Microsoft “stuff” was just my previous Adobe experience, with a different consequence.

Big thanks to Jorke Odolphi for being my sounding board. A calm shoulder to cry on. And thinking of things I didn’t anticipate. Thanks, Jorke!

What is new is the Project Management aspect. Technical Integration is going to be relatively easy: 2000+ high quality Netbooks with Windows 7 is a doddle. Jeff Alexander is taking point on the image build. David Haysom and David Connors are the logistics and install team leads.

Project Management not so much of a doddle. David Haysom will assist here. Right, David?

10 Weeks

The funnest part of this project begins now: one aspect is the logistics of getting 58 palettes of Netbooks loaded for the TechEd delegates.

The other major aspect is what happens with the Netbooks. Here, it’s the Microsoft community aspect: what can we do, as a Microsoft community?

New Windows Home Server

Nick Hodge — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:40:34 +0000

After becoming increasingly frustrated with the Tranquil Home Server, I decided to de-commission it. The drivers required at install time didn’t work, and Tranquil technical support (online and via email) just didn’t work. #epicfail

There is a motherboard configuration called Mini-ITX where the dimensions are 170mm x 170mm. Intel have a great board with 1Gb Ethernet, 4 USB and a PCI connector. Adding memory, a SATA HD and case: and you have an instant Windows Home Server. I used the Windows Home Server media and serial number from the Tranquil.

What I purchased:

Stuff	Price
Aywun A1-8989 Cube Mini-ITX Case with 150W PSU	67.10
Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS, 1TB SATA HD	180.40
Intel D945GCLF2 Motherboard, Integrated Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz	128.30
Kingston 2GB PC2-6400 (800MHz) DDR2 240-pin DIMM	39.99
Total	415.79

The case:

Building the hardware took less than 10 minutes, and the software install time (fresh) was less than an hour, including formatting the drive.

Now installed at home, repopulating the data and getting on with life. I feel way better having built this myself.

Oh, and the kittehs like the box the case arrived in:

Japan Photo

Nick Hodge — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:17:08 +0000

Microsoft and Web 2.0 Stuff

Nick Hodge — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:48:47 +0000

Like Michael Rees, Kathryn Greenhill asked me to list “web 2.0″ things that Microsoft has available to provide some balance to a Murdoch University event.

By web 2.0, Kathryn meant: “To me, Microsoft plays really well in the large corporate ap space and is very good at that … but if I want to show people about the conversation, re-mix, open access, interoperable web, then MS is not the first port of call…”

I can only agree with Kathryn’s statement. Microsoft hides all its cool web 2.0 things under a bushel. In fact, the problem probably is that the coolness are hidden under many bushels, all over its web footprint. But hey, I am not from marketing; I am a mere Professional Geek. That is also why these listed are free. Some are even Free-as-in-Freedom, too.

I think it important that people get to hear, see and try alternatives before defaulting to “the known and safe.” And yes, I realise can work both ways.

Another perspective, and my own opinion, is that Microsoft should not seek to do everything on the web. For instance, creating a “Microsoft Twitter Ultimate Edition 2010″ is stupid. Nor should Microsoft seek to purchase every cool company that pops on the web. Again, that is my opinion. And I am the lowest on the low of the totem pole; a.k.a Individual Contributor or Sacrifical Unnamed Ensign (ref: Star Trek)

Here is an edited version of my email response; drafted quickly and by no means exhaustive. If you have other cool examples, just post a comment and I’ll update the list.

http://Office.live.com for online mini-Sharepoint site for team collaboration. Office.live.com is a good place to start where people will use desktop apps for a full experience. Don’t forget other online app tools like EditGrid and Zoho.
Don’t forget bing.com & associated sites (including Photosynth, Virtual Earth) as viable alternatives to google. Librarians use all sources available
www.worldwidetelescope.org
Live Is more than spaces (spaces.live.com) – there are photo storage, file storage (skydrive, as mentioned by Michael Rees in his post), and live.com integration into twitter, facebook and other online social media services.
There is a Creative Commons plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 to permit correct (cc) for remix stuff out of spreadsheets, word etc http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D1DDBDC8-627F-415A-9B0A-97362BC9B480&displaylang=en
Other remix things: apps.live.com is a single source for our desktop apps, including LiveWriter (don’t forget that Live Writer has a whole host of plugins: http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=0&bt=9&pl=8&st=5 ) and video editing stuff, too. There are Wikipedia, FIickr, Twitter and all sorts of plugins. Office 2007 SP2 has both OpenXML and ODF (for OpenOffice) support.
Don’t forget that the most-used online conversation tool in Australia is Live Messenger (MSN) which does video + audio conferencing, too
RSS into outlook… hmm, possible but not something I’d recommend. Too clunky
Don’t forget IE8; with accelerators and webslices http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 these use open formats to work
http://visitmix.com/Lab has some cool tools, including Oomph with is a Microformats toolkit (works in all browsers, uses jQuery) … I use it on my blog. Licensed under MsPL (open source, OSI approved, BSD-like)
Another good, slightly techy tool for Windows users is http://www.microsoft.com/web with the Web Platform installer. Permits installations of PHP, Wordpress etc on your Windows machine without being a rocket scientist

Bing Box on your Website or Blog

Nick Hodge — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:32:16 +0000

This took me a little time to find: How to Add a Bing Box to your Website.

As of writing this, the image is still the old Windows Live logo. Just to be hip, I created a 100x45 version of the bing logo.

New.CloudApp();

Nick Hodge — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:53:37 +0000

Why not try making a new cloud application on Microsoft Azure with PHP. And potentially #win?

More details are on the New.CloudApp() web site.

Fifth Barcamp Sydney, Saturday June 27th

Nick Hodge — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:17:20 +0000

BarCamp Sydney is on again. This is our 5th BarCamp Sydney and as we are in the midst of the GFC and a recession we’ve decided that this BarCamp is the Recession Edition or “the BarCamp we had to have” (to paraphrase Keating from 1990).

In keeping with the Recession theme of BarCamp there are a few changes to this year’s BarCamp. Firstly a new venue, whilst we loved UNSW it was quite expensive. Thankfully the Australian Technology Park (ATP) Innovations Centre is giving us access to the space for free! Yay!

Secondly, we need to spread the load of the cost of running BarCamp across more people so we are asking for individual sponsorship as well as our traditional corporate sponsorship. So what do you get for your individual sponsorship? Nothing really, just the warm fuzzy feeling that you get from helping run this fantastic community event. Hopefully there will still be T-Shirts but that will depend on how much money we raise in sponsorship. However, if you are a corporate and would like to sponsor the event please contact us ASAP.

Finally, we have a new idea for a few of the sessions — the Think Tank room. The Think Tank room is a small room with no projector and no tech — just enough room for a small group of people discussing ideas. And what better ideas to discuss than ideas about the future. As a result of the recent FutureSummit attended by a few of the local twitterati, @liubinskas has suggested we keep the ideas coming with a FutureCamp! There will be a real FutureCamp later in the year but we can start the future discussion right here at BarCamp Sydney.

There will be more details forthcoming about the venue, the logistics and how you can register and sponsor, but for right now please block out Saturday June 27 for BarCamp Sydney and put your thinking hats on to present a ripper of a session.

Keep up to date at the BarCampSydney Blog or this email list.

Thanks to Jodie Miners for driving this Barcamp. Community is fun