Malcolm Groves: Misc.

My Squeezebox has arrived!

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:30:55 GMT

I've been eyeing off one of these since last year at Borcon in the US when Jason Vokes spoke so glowingly about his. There are other Network Music Players around, but as well as the usual features, this one is just so damn pretty.

Well, finally it arrived yesterday :-)

I'm on holidays from later this week, so am looking forward to getting this set up. Looking forward less to re-ripping all those CD's at higher quality, but it's a small price to pay I guess.

Our Tivo has totally changed how we watch TV, I'm hoping this will have the same effect on how we listen to music. I've got boxes of CD's that I rarely listen to, this will hopefully change that.

And hey, you've got to love a new toy that comes with an SDK :-)

Fairytale of New York

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 04:47:35 GMT

Getting in the mood of the season, so thought I'd post my favourite Christmas song of all time. It was always sure to bring a tear to my eye when played late on a drunken Christmas Eve, probably more so since Kirsty McColl was killed.

Probably one for after the kiddies have gone to bed though

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/thepoguesx12x12x05

IM Poetry

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 04:47:34 GMT

People have been putting short messages, and even images, in their instant messenger display names for awhile now, but the last week or two is the first time I've seen poetry.

One of my Borland colleagues in China is obviously enjoying autumn in Shanghai as he has been waxing poetic via his IM sign-on name. Yesterday's was my favourite:

"leaves are golden, I drive over them carefully. sky is blue, I drive under it happily" - Dali Xue

Nice one Dali, made me smile all morning.

This one's going straight into the pool room

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 03:46:28 GMT

I spoke with Matthew Overington, a journalist in Australia, a little while back about Model Driven Development in general, and ECO in particular. The resulting article showed up on BuilderAU back in August.

I wouldn't normally post links to sites that have linked to an article I'm in, but I'm so tickled by this one, I just had to post. The article has been referenced on the Healthy Hair website, specifically on the Hair Loss blog (Who knew there was a blog about hair loss? Why wasn't I told?).

Now the less kind amongst you who know what I look like, will no doubt be able to construct some terribly amusing reason why I'd be on this site. Oh, how we'd laugh! Sorry to spoil it for you, but you'd be wrong. There were no photos in the article. Ha!

My mum will be so proud. I'm not even upset that they messed up the quote. This one's going straight into the pool room.

Just claiming my blog at Technorati

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:29:30 GMT

Technorati Profile

Talkman for Sony PSP

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 04:39:35 GMT

I wonder if this means I can get work to buy me a PSP?

From Wired:

One of the most interesting pieces of PSP software here isn't even a game. Talkman is a voice-based translation system that uses a small microphone that plugs into the PSP's USB port. To make sure that TGS attendees fully experienced the software, bilingual hostesses demonstrated Talkman in a soundproof booth that blocked out the cacophonous show floor.

Although the interface is cartoony -- all the translation is handled through Max, a rather hideously designed purple bird -- the software underneath is sophisticated. First, you pick out a location or theme to the phrases you want to translate -- anything from "hospital" to "restaurant" to "nightlife." Then, you speak into the microphone.

Max spits out a list of phrases he thinks you might be saying. If what you said appears on the list, select it and Max will speak it back in any one of four languages -- Chinese, Korean, English or Japanese. I tried some English and Japanese phrases, and Max recognized most everything perfectly. I'll definitely be picking this up when Sony releases it in Japan on Nov. 17.

Here's another article with a screenshot. Yes, the UI is ugly, but I still want to try it out.

Stop, you had me at 'Vampires in Red Trench Coats'

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 07:45:33 GMT

I was bummed that I missed last year's Animania in Sydney, but I noticed a poster today advertising this year's event in October.

If you're wondering what the title of this post is about, then you'll just have to check out the site, won't you?

Attack Analysis

Fri, 28 Jan 2005 06:06:37 GMT

I've always found analysis of attempts to hack systems extremely interesting. I'm not sure if this reflects some miscreant leaning on my part, but I've enjoyed these ever since I read Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll years ago.

I've collected up a few links over the years to these types of articles, such as:

Well, I've just found Robert Hensing's blog where he's been regularly detailing new attacks his team uncovers.

Ghost in the Shell 2 : Innocence

Tue, 02 Nov 2004 00:44:58 GMT

I didn't quite make it to the cinema release in the US, but GITS2 has its premiere in Sydney next weekend, and I have tickets!

Madman has the details (half way down the page, right hand side), but Director Mamoru Oshii and Producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa will both be there.

I nearly bought it on DVD in Tokyo two weeks back. I was actually lining up at the register with it in my hand, before I realised that version didn't have English subtitles, let alone an English dub. So, glad I waited to see it on the big screen :-)

Ghost in the Shell 2 Trailer

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:58:32 GMT

Oooohhh!!!

Hang on a sec....

GITS 2 opens in US cinemas on...Sept 17th.

Malcolm leaves US after Borcon...Sept 16th :-(

Newsgator Defaults

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 07:15:12 GMT

This post made me smile. Being the first of the month, I guess a lot of ISP's are sending out bandwidth usage emails. I got one this morning telling me I'd exceeded my allowance in May. I guess that's the downside to Anders and Danny linking to you :-)

That said, after Chee Wee's post, I checked my Newsgator install, and noted it was set to check feeds every 60 minutes! Does anyone except Scoble post this frequently, and even if they do, do I care? So, it's now set to 1440 minutes. I only really get a chance to read these once a day at most anyway.

Comments and Trackbacks

Fri, 14 May 2004 05:22:03 GMT

Finally got around to setting up Comments and Trackbacks via Haloscan, and they seem to be working OK.

Now, let's find out if anybody is actually reading this stuff :-)

CeBIT Australia

Tue, 04 May 2004 05:51:05 GMT

I'll be down at CeBIT at Darling Harbour tomorrow afternoon. From 1:30pm till 2:00pm I'll be presenting at the Microsoft booth on Together for Visual Studio 2.0, so if you are in the neighbourhood, come by and say hello.

Page Width Part 2

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 06:55:44 GMT

Amazing what 30 minutes digging around in Dreamweaver will turn up.

Column widths should be more sensible now (no such promises made for the content)

Page Width

Fri, 30 Apr 2004 01:01:14 GMT

I hadn't noticed this (I usually view this page via the Radio UI, not direct in my browser) but for some reason since I've added screenshots into my blog, the page wants to be VERY wide, much wider than the widest screenhot. I'll have to do some digging into the HTML Templates, but in the meantime, apologies to all. I hate reading anything in columns this wide.

US Trip

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 04:09:01 GMT

Sorry I've been so quiet here of late. I'm in the US for planning around future releases, and that has kept me pretty busy. Also, jetlag always hits me badly on US trips. Fortunately this time round I've had food poisoning as well, so at least that's given me something to do from 1am to 7am.

When all else fails, post a photo...

SOA, Canonical Documents, Pat Helland and other stuff

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 02:24:08 GMT

I've been enjoying Pat Helland's blog a lot lately, especially the discussions that are popping up in his comments section. The discussion about SOA reminds me a lot of a few years ago when I spent most of my time doing training and consulting around WebMethods' EAI product.

I didn't always succeed, but what I tried to get across to people in those training courses was that the single most important thing they were designing in their solutions were the documents being passed around. Obviously, the processes were required as well, but the most painful failures I saw in EAI solutions on client sites came back to poor document design, not poor business logic implementation.

This focus on documents is a lot harder for most developers than you would think. You've heard the saying that goes something like "when the only tool you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail"? I think sometimes OO becomes our hammer, I've certainly been guilty of this. I can remember a number of students complaining early in the course that this focus on documents went against everything they knew about OO design, however I can also remember a number of those same students having a lightbulb moment a day or two later. Interestingly, I ran a course for a bunch of non-developers, which I initially dreaded (C'mon, the course was called something like "EAI for Developers"). However, on the whole they seemed much more comfortable giving the documents the highest priority, and that course was one of the most enjoyable in terms of students "getting it"

For mine, this comment from John Cavnar-Johnson is dead on the money:

It's not enough to have orchestrations, messages, contract, schema, and policy. We need to be able to define business documents that exist separately from the services that exchange them (something that is hard to do today with VS.NET and WSDL). These business documents need to have a conceptual identity separate from the schema that services apply (the schema for a purchase order being submitted for fulfillment is different than the schema for that same PO when it reaches billing). We shouldn't be burying our knowledge of the actions that a service performs in the name of a web method call or SOAP header. We need to recognize that the authoritative record of the business data has to be in these documents, not in the relational store. The data type of a business element is a minor facet of its meaning, not the very essence of its existence.

Actually, there was a lot of good stuff in John's comment. Definitely subscribed.

Oh, Pat has also shown up over on Channel 9, with a refreshingly pragmatic discussion about SOA.

The need for basic Computer Science

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 02:56:32 GMT

I think I've gushed embarrassingly on this blog before about my admiration for Julian Bucknall. One of the things I always enjoyed about his articles in the Delphi Magazine is that he does a very good job of taking you through the workings of an algorithm without it becoming boring.

In his recent post about the need for a better grounding in Computer Science amongst developers, he points out some sites that do this visually, using Java applets (Java Models and Exact String Matching). Very cool. If only I'd had Julian or these sites available when I was doing my CS degree.

Oh, also just noticed that he mentions he's back writing for The Delphi Magazine :-)

Daemon Tools

Wed, 07 Apr 2004 05:27:36 GMT

In a previous post I mentioned that I was using an unsupported tool from Microsoft called the "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for WinXP". Well, I think I've just discovered why it is unsupported. I'm using it to run an install direct from an ISO, and the install is complaining about a missing file. However, if I burn the ISO to CD, the file is there.

Thankfully, someone just pointed me at Daemon Tools, which is also free but works just fine with the ISO that caused the other one to fail.

Channel 9 : Windows is not the most important OS

Wed, 07 Apr 2004 00:14:31 GMT

Bill Hill, the co-inventor of ClearType and the head of the typography team at Microsoft, has a couple of short video interviews up on Channel 9. The one on Windows not being the most important OS made me smile (It might have something to do with the fact that he sounds a bit like my grandmother). Channel 9 so far has been a bit hit and miss, but it's only the first day I think, so too early to unsubscribe from their feed.

Powerblog to Radio Migration Complete

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 06:24:14 GMT

OK, thanks for being patient. All the old blog posts are here now, and the blog is running under Radio. At this stage it pretty much just works like before, but at least now I have the flexibility to add more features (trackbacks, comments, categories, etc)

I had hoped it might be easier than this. Why can't I just point Radio at my old RSS feed and have it suck in all those posts (as posts I mean, not in its aggregator). One of the unfortunate side-effects is that my posts from the last month or so all show up as being posted today (I guess from Radio's point of view, they are).

Anyway, it's done, so let's move on.

Date Weirdness

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 06:21:18 GMT

Yes, I know the dates here have gone screwy. I moved from the beta of Powerblog 2 to the release version this morning, and the rot has set in. It use to deal OK with the fact that I don't do dates in US format, but now it doesn't. The RSS feed seems to be fine, and articles created under the beta also seem OK, but new articles are buggered.

I've been thinking about going to another tool for awhile (Radio maybe), so maybe this and the fact that Danny tells me my RSS won't validate, might push me over. Suggestions anyone? I need a desktop tool, as I need to be able to blog offline. Most solutions I've found seem to be server-based.

Cowboy Bebop

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 06:20:50 GMT

Since FBO have re-sent my DVD's, I've been watching Cowboy Bebop - Session 4. It's going to be a sad day when I reach the end of Session 6. Bebop has been the most enjoyable of all the anime series I've watched.

The other series I've been trying out to replace my Cowboy Bebop addiction haven't really done it for me (Rurouni Kenshin, for example. Samurai X was OK, but the slapstick in Rurouni Kenshin really annoyed me).

Someone suggested I try FLCL, but I want to do a little more research first. My copy of Rurouni Kenshin Vol 1 is destined for eBay, and I'm not in a hurry to order another one on spec.

Any other suggestions?

Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for WinXP

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 06:19:59 GMT

I have a bunch of ISO images of product installs, and it's always a pain in the bum to have to either burn them to CD or extract them using something like WinISO to use them. To make matters worse, I've just downloaded a not quite 3gig DVD ISO file and need to install, and of course, can't find a DVD Burner anywhere.

Luckily, a quick Google turned up this, Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP, an unsupported tool from Microsoft which lets you mount an ISO file as a drive letter. You have to manually install (there is a readme.txt file) but it seems to work well, even with 3gig ISO's.

Kudos to www.fbo.com.au

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 06:19:34 GMT

This probably only of interest to Aussie readers, but anyway...

I've ordered Anime from www.fbo.com.au a couple of times with no problems, but my last order never arrived. Talking to Lexie (spelling?) at FBO, it appears to have been delivered to our building, but where it went after that I don't know.

Strictly speaking, this probably isn't FBO's problem. They could probably have legally said "tough" and I'd have been out of pocket. But, they have ensured that they will be my first stop for buying DVD's in future. They are resending my entire order at no charge!

Problems occur, but a company that thinks like this will always get my recommendation.