What's it all about, Alfie?

The guys working on MacVim have released Snapshot 40 with an impressive list of updates:

• Fix problems with Quickstart "leaking" Vim processes
• 'imdisable' now on by default (i.e. IM is disabled by default)
• Clipboard support in non-GUI mode (Kent Sibilev)
• New document icons, more filetype associations (Nico Weber)
• Add support for 'guitabtooltip' (hint: add the line "set gtl=%t gtt=%F" to your .gvimrc to make tabs display the name of the file and have the tooltip display the full path) (Jonathon Mah)
• Look for toolbar icons in runtime path (plugins such as TVO now display toolbar icons properly)
• Show dialog when clicking to close tab with modified buffers
• Update documentation
• Latest Vim source code and runtime files

Still the best cross-platform editor I've ever used.

This morning I decided to put together a simple little homepage for mao my Fedora 9 laptop in my office. As of the Big Update, I had gotten rid of my old linux laptop, and it'd been a few weeks before I got this guy rebuilt from an old XP laptop. Now that I had a little time off with the Holidays, I decided that it was a good time to throw together a little homepage for this guy.

It's nothing much. In fact, its the same format that I have for all the machines in my office, but it's nice and functional, and a lot better looking than the default Fedora 9 web page.

This morning I saw that ZeusDraw 1.3.2 is out and it's been a long time since 1.3.1 was released. Sure, it was stable, and the updates to 1.3.2 are minor - a few bug fixes and the visual indication of a grouping in effect, but still... most drawing packages are continually evolving and this one hasn't. Not bad, just a little surprising.

On the upside, I do like it, I have done a lot of fun stuff with it for the past several years, and I'm glad to see that the developers are still working on it - if only to fix the bugs. It's a great MacDraw-like app - not pixel-pushing, but object-based, and very nice.

I was thinking about the current state of web development - where it's used well, where it's not, and what people are trying to force it to do, and it lead me to giggle as I realized that George Santayana could as easily have been talking about computer developers:

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I guess the extension is more on point:

Those who don't study what was written are doomed to rewrite it.

The Web 2.0 craze is trying to take a great static-content system and make it interactive. Why? Because the client footprint is so small and you can collect hardware in a central location for easier support and maintenance. Again, we have the re-birth of the mainframe/centralized computer resources. Just now they are called clusters and web server as opposed to AS/400 or IBM mainframes.

It's funny, because each time I think about the goal of the Web 2.0 I come to the same place X11 was over a decade ago - a way to have an interactive experience on the client machine while having the processing done on heavy iron at a remote location. Why not drop Web 2.0 and just do X11 again? I'm convinced that it's because the developers doing this never learned what the old X11 was all about and why it was created.

OK, X11 didn't have a lot of pretty graphics by today's standards, but it was designed to be a remote application delivery platform and optimized for that. Give it better graphics like a decent widget set on all machines and all of a sudden you don't need all the interactivity of the Google Docs - you can run it locally and get just the display in the native widget set.

The other extreme is to take the AJAX and build it up to the point that it also includes a widget set on the client end - much like Firefox, et. al. has done with it's markup. It gives you a complete widget set on the client-side (just like X11) and then a way to communicate with the back-end. I'm amazed at the similarities between these two. But one has 20+ years of development and the other is "cool and new".

Before you spend time to write something that you think is clearly so unique that it's never been done before, stop and think. Ask. I'm willing to bet that a lot of the ideas that are so "new" are really just re-inventions.

Learn from the past.

This morning I took the time to update the web sites on sherman and ghost - my two iMacs in my office at home. Sherman is an Intel iMac, and Ghost is an older G5 iMac that used to be Sherman until it died and I took it to the Apple Store to get it fixed only to find out that the cost of the repair ($900) was almost as much as a new Intel iMac. At the time I needed a machine, and so I got the new one and shelved the old G5.

After about a year, I decided with the office re-make, I needed to fix the G5 for sentimental reasons. This time, the Apple Store fixed it for free! Gotta love that service. I'm sure it had more to do with the fact that I'd dropped several thousand dollars at the Apple Store this year, but hey, free is free!

So I needed to update their web sites with correct pictures, names and details. Not hard, just needed to pay attention to a few details. Got it done and even updated the DNS records at easyDNS for Ghost.

This morning I noticed that MacSpice 2.10.15 is out and the release notes indicate a smattering of bugs fixed.

This is just one of those things that is like a time machine for me - it takes me back to my roots in Electrical Engineering and the hours I'd spend on the design and then verification in SPICE. It's not a tool to help you design something as much as it's there to verify that you've done your job. It's like a compiler - it's a measuring device on the correctness of your work, not an aid to doing it.

Lots of interesting times sitting at the terminals at Purdue getting outputs. It was so very long ago, but at times it seems like yesterday.

I was sitting here after a hard day looking at a few of my systems restart and pick up a bug fix, and thought: Yup, some days are easier than others... Not every day can be a winner. Even when you do good work, and get a lot of stuff done, you can feel run-down and tired, and that just casts a shadow over how you feel. Good day, but with a headache, it feels crummy.

Well... not every day can be sunshine. Today's my day to take a hit for the team. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better. Get started on something new, get a fresh look at things... get rid of this headache.

Here's to tomorrow...

I put a few finishing touches on the multi-scatter graph today. It was pretty much done, but I wanted to give it the ability to read the initial selections for the x-axis column as well as any y-axis columns from the applet PARAM tags. With that, the developers that asked for this can pretty much put together everything they need.

The new applet PARAM tags are pretty simple:

• defaultXAxis - this is the name of the column that is the initial selection for the x-axis.
• defaultYAxis - this is the encoded string of a Vector of Strings that are the column names to be placed on the y-axis initially.

where the encoded string is the output of the call:

  Vector    v = new Vector();
  ...
  String    str = BKTable.generateCodeFromValues(v);

where the Vector v is populated with the names of the columns to place on the graph.

I have to say it looks good and works well. I've handed it off to the developers that want to use it and supplied them with an example HTML file where it's used.

This morning I noticed that the Mozilla Group had released two releases: Firefox 3.0.4 and Camino 1.6.6. The Firefox release was about the typical security and stability fixes, and the Camino was the same. However, I have to say that this release of Camino has markedly better button rendering when going to sites that didn't render buttons nicely in the past. For that, I'm grateful.

So, it's update time for browsers. Not bad.

Today Apple made this announcement - it's going to be the last MacWorld for Apple. It's the last keynote, and it's not even going to be given by Steve. So it appears the days of great product announcements from Apple is over. Now, it'll be trickled out in special media events at Apple's campus, or just on the online store.

While I can understand the realization that the trade show is not the center of attention that it used to be, it's sad to see Apple stop supporting a show specifically created for them to showcase their products. In fairness to Apple, that's the job of the Apple Stores, now.

So it's going to be a different release cycle. Maybe the rumor pages will have increased importance... hard to say. But it is a definite shift.