Malcolm Groves' Weblog

My Doppelgänger?

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:57:26 GMT

One of my colleagues sent this through to me, thinking he'd discovered my secret, after-hours identity. I have to admit, the photo on the first page looks scarily familiar, but the others aren't so close.

I mean, c'mon, how different can two chubby, bald, white guys with goatees really look?

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 :-)

ECO III at ADUG Sydney

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 00:48:47 GMT

I'll be showing off some of the new features of ECO III at tonight's ADUG (Australian Delphi User Group) Sydney meeting.

It's essentially a repeat of my Borcon US session. Borland will be providing the pizza and drinks, so come along if you can.

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.

Korean Delphi 2006 launch via 200 inch monitor

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:56:00 GMT

Last week in the middle of all the stuff going on at Borcon in San Francisco, David and I snuck out late one night to a video conference room at Kinko's to present 2 hours of Delphi 2006 to 400 developers in Seoul, Korea.

It was 2 hours of nail-biting suspense, as I was expecting the video or the audio to let us down at some point, but except for a few minutes of noise partway through, it all went very smoothly. We were up on a 200 inch screen, which is kinda scary, as I was feeling quite tired from jet-lag and usual late nights at Borcon, so the bags under my eyes must have been about a foot tall

Not sure why it still surprises me when technology works as it is meant to. Maybe this stuff may yet deliver on its promise of letting me travel less.

ECO is Child's Play

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:39:09 GMT

I saw the rough recordings of this awhile back, but I just watched it again now that it's been posted on BDN.

I thought I was getting reasonably good at explaining this ECO thing, but I bow to the master (mistress?)

http://bdn.borland.com/article/0,1410,33331,00.html

Centillex ECOAccess

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:20:42 GMT

One of the things I've added to my "Things to tinker with when I get time" list is this ECO add-on from Thailand:

Centillex EcoAccess is a free library to enable declarative data access services for Borland ECO. It provides flexibilities to declare methods for querying or accessing ECO objects via OCL expression.

OK, so that meant bugger all to me as well when I read it, but looking at the code in the tutorials on the site, it makes a bit more sense.

Still not sure if I'd use it or not, but their use of attributes has got me curious. Worth a couple of hours playing with it to see, I think.

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.

That's that for another year :-(

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:55:22 GMT

Not so long ago they were at the top of the competition ladder, but yesterday the last remaining wheel fell off the Broncos' season :-(

As bummed as I'm feeling, I know it'll get worse tomorrow, as my Eels supporting colleague will be back in the office. This has been a tough year for me re: football. First Queensland lose the State of Origin, the Wallabies have been in a rut for awhile now, and finally the Broncos drop out of the finals.

sigh....

Real life complexity with ECOII. Part 1

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:35:05 GMT

Hans Karlsen has published the first in a series of articles covering his use of ECO II to deal with more real world complexity. Good stuff, especially if you've been wondering about Nestings.