magpiebrain

Sam Newman's site, a Consultant at ThoughtWorks

Posts by samnewman

A few product releases & other things of interest:

* “XPlanner (XPlanner homepage)”:http://www.xplanner.org/ is a web-based product management tool for exterme programming. (source: “Javalobby”:http://www.javalobby.org/).
* The “OpenSymphony(OpenSymphony Homepage)”:http://www.opensymphony.com/ group have released “OSWorkflow 2.5.0”:http://www.opensymphony.com/osworkflow/ and “OSCache 2.0 beta 1”:http://www.opensymphony.com/oscache/. OSWorkFlow is an interface-generic workflow engine, whereas OSCache handles the caching of dynamic content for websites. OpenSymphony are also in the process of moving their files over to “Java.net(Java.net – Suns site for opensource Java collaboration)”:http://www.java.net/. (source: “Javalobby”:http://www.javalobby.org/).
* The latest “early access version (Java Generics homepage – login required)”:http://developer.java.sun.com/servlet/SessionServlet?url=/developer/earlyAccess/adding_generics/index.html of the Java Generics is avaiable at “java.sun.com”:http://java.sun.com/ – developer connetion login required. From “The ServerSide”:http://www.theserverside.com:

Sun has released a new version of the Generics EA package. They have dropped variant type parameters, and added support for wildcard and bounded wildcard type
parameters. The varargs syntax has also been made more readable. Also supported are: Enumerations, Autoboxing, enhanced for loops and Static Imports.

July 29, 2003

Well, my yearly upgrade license for Norton Anti-Virus has finally come to an end, so I’m starting the search for a new anti-virus program. I’d like to use “Sophos”:http://www.sophos.com/, as not only is it very good but its a British company, but they are a little pricey. If I don’t find anything better I’ll just renew my Norton subscription or upgrade to “Norton Anti-virus Pro”:http://www.symantec.com/region/reg_eu/product/navpro_index.html.

July 28, 2003

I’ve been planning to write some ‘about’ style pages for a while, and realised the best way to do it is with MovableType. I’ll create each one as an entry and stick their permalinks on the right side-bar, so expect them shortly. I guess if I was doing it properly I’d have them in their own blog. Anyhoo, expect a brief biog and technical about section soonish.

July 28, 2003

There’s a new version of Brad Choate’s MT-Textile plugin. Not too much that id use myself – I don’t tend to do that much formatting, although the footnote support looks handy, and would probably eliminate all those bracketed asides I keep using! I’m still waiting for a way to add a title to the @href@’s generated using the @”Page Name”:http://www.url.com/@ syntax, although I probably should of submitted it as a feature request!

Updated: Seems I missed this in the “documentation(Textile Documentation entry for link generation)”:http://www.textpattern.com/help/?item=link:

Optional: text in (parentheses) following the link text, but before the closing quotation mark, will become a Title attribute for the link, visible as a tool tip when a cursor is above it.

July 28, 2003

quickSub is an opensource Javascript popup, designed to allow people to add the ability to quickly subscribe to a feed. Its a little too in-your-face for my money – the popup triggers when you rollover an icon, and you have to click a link to close it. A better method would be to have the click trigger the popup. That said its designed to be used on the standard feed XML button – still I might look at adding it to this blog as a normal hyperlink.

July 28, 2003

Rather than actually playing “Planetside”:http://www.planetside.com tonight, I have instead satisfied myself by watching the movies created from in-game footage over at “Malvision”:http://www.malvision.com/. Its had the effect of making me want to play right now, however whilst the mind is willing, the flesh is extermely tired…

July 27, 2003

If you haven’t been already, you really should checkout the “CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) Zen Garden”:http://www.csszengarden.com/. The brainchild of “Dave Shea”:http://www.mezzoblue.com/, its a site with a number of high quality CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) designs showing what CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) can achieve in today’s browsers.

July 27, 2003

Before I started working on the aforementioned template for (N)Echo 0.1, I thought I’d better check to see if anyone else has done it. Sure enough I came across a “template”:http://remy.csoft.net/archives/000376.php by “Dan Dickinson”:http://remy.csoft.net/. His template requires the use of a couple of MT(Movable Type) plugins, namely “LastModified”:http://www.staggernation.com/mtplugins/LastModifiedReadMe.html and “MTPerlScript”:http://www.bradchoate.com/past/mtperlscript.php. I’ll install these when I’m feeling less tired – right now I’m knackered from a rather enjoyable weekend in Whitstable. This template is based on Sam Ruby’s “snapshot”:http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1506.html of the current 0.1 specification for (N)Echo.
Update: Feed now implemented – you’ll find it on the startbar.

July 27, 2003