CODA 2.0 Screencast
The main reason I have had my head down of late is that I have been beavering away at work on the next version of our CODA system. What is CODA? It is a digital signage system from Camvine, where you configure it all through the web and it's ease of use.
We are gearing up to release the new web interface in the new year. This will be v2.0 where we leave behind the remnants of the engineering interface and have a full drag'n'drop experience all with a professional spit and polish. Also we will be rolling out the new client software which will add lots of new functionality.
Now we have released a new screencast of the new website running with the new client software. You can see how to get a system up and running in three minutes, with things like monitor autodiscovery. The soothing tones of Michael Dales provide the voice-over.
The first video on the page shows you the general interface, the second video is the set-up in three minutes.
These are very exciting times at Camvine as this platform is an excellent base to build off as well.
WordPress 2.7 Released
Version 2.7 of WordPress was just released, and being a bit fast on the draw I decided to install it. Using the Instant Upgrade plug-in it upgraded flawlessly as far as I can tell (cue the entire website imploding).
This upgrade breaks quite a few plugins because they are no longer necessary like the one I used to give the admin interface drop down menus.
The new administrative interface is good looking and well thought out. There are also plenty of new features.
So, if you see anything broken - let me know.
Linking, but not to development
Lots of comics/movies/cool stuff links building up.
Dead Snow
Zombie Nazis in the snow! 'Nuff said.
LADRÖNN interview [1] and LADRÖNN interview [2]
One of my favourite artists doing comics right now. He has a European style percolated through Jack Kirby. His full colour art is a joy and the fact he is working on Metabarons can only be seen as a good thing.
Alex Cox Interviews Fred Van Lente
An interview with the creator of Action Philosophers and Comic Book Comics (how has it taken so long for someone to tell the history of comics in comics????)
PAT MILLS THE GENERAL IN CHARLEY'S WAR
He started 2000AD, he writes brilliant comics, I don't normally see many interviews with him though.
Watchmen Collection
Random artwork from and inspired by Watchmen.
The Making Of Dune II
I lost countless hours of my life to this game and I don't feel one ounce of guilt.
Weekend Briefing at MI-6
Some cool pulp-y James Bond artwork and some not so good artwork.
Frighteners
More Oliver Frey artwork - all kids from the 1980s would recognise his old computer game covers.
For Science!
Character designs for the Transformers Animated Series, some classics slightly re-imagined.
Horror Top Trumps
Fu Manchu will totally kick the backside of a Sierra Cosworth in your Boy Racer Top Trumps.
Game Parlor of the Future (1982)
The predictions are sometimes correct...
Python 3.0 – The Fallout
Last week Python 3.0 (nee 3000) was released with a big tidy up of the language. Reading through the new features here you can see plenty of shifting stuff around. It's an interesting endeavor because you rarely get an opportunity to go back and correct the decay that inevitably happens. Since I am a newbie in the grand scheme of things to Python none of it looks particularly difficult to grasp or even change your code to do. I suppose if you have a large and crufty code base doing scary things it might be an issue.
A lot of bytes have been flying around the Internet either in support or more commonly against the Python 3.0 work. So for the prosecution you have posts like this, posts in the middle like this, or the defence like this. You do get tools to help and the start of some docs....
The best thing to come out of the Python 3.0 release discussion is this blog post. I'm sure everyone who has had to work on legacy systems will know the monkeys, the cage, and the firehose. It's always good to test that the firehose is actually on....
A Ride Into The Bizarre
When I was at the University of Essex I won the Bowden Memorial Prize in my first year. Nothing too odd about that, but then in a magazine whilst I was at Uni I read an article that mentioned Dr Keith Bowden of the Computer Science Department dying in mysterious circumstances in 1982. My interest was piqued but details were hard to come by.
Even in the whizzy days of the Internet and more public access to archives I seem to only be able to find one article that mentions him. All other links all lead back to either the article or reproductions thereof.
It all relates to the Strategic Defense Initiative (or Star Wars as it is better known). Apparently the scientists working on it started dying with alarming frequency of dubious circumstances. I don't know if it is any more statistically interesting than any other sampling of people over the same period (so I am not peddling some conspiracy theory).
One of the articles can be found here - Did 22 SDI Researchers really ALL Commit Suicide? From what I can tell noone ever bothered to actually try and research it and everything just reprints the same thing. It is pretty intere4sting though from the point of view Essex University had someone working on the SDI...
Dynamite Links
Black Dynamite
This film looks funk-tastic. Check out the trailer.
Are we the last of the geeks?
Obviously it is up to geeks to train the next generation of geeks.
Linux gains FPS
Prey gets a native Linux client. It's actually a fairly recent game in the grand scheme of things. I think also X3 Reunion for Linux is coming out this month.
Big Screen Virus Alert Is Worse Than a Big Screen BSoD
Impressive use of virus checking. At least there is no chance of that in Coda.
Eclipse Plugin For Mercurial - Version 1.2 Released
Decent IDE integration for Mercurial distributed source control.
A new concept of wireless handheld device ‘Mintpad’
A wireless gadgety post-it note. It also plays MP3s....
OpenOffice's UI will be getting a refurb
These types of things promise so much but tend to offer incremental moves forward when they realise the leap is too great.
First look: can Songbird 1.0 replace iTunes, WMP?
The Songbird v1.0 release has been covered everywhere, but is it any good?
Getting OpenID Into the Browser
The social oriented browser Flock has a new extension for managing OpenID from within the browser.
Mobieus - Jodorowsky’s Dune (1)
Jodorowsky is a demented writing genius bringing us The Incal and Metabarons. Moebius is on a similar level for artwork. Shame they never got to make this film although it would probably have scared the general public to death.
Philippe Druillet's and Moebius' Approche Sur Centauri
More stunning Moebius artwork.
Recent Cambridge Talks
I've been a bit lax recently so I thought I'd do a whistlestop tour of the talks I've been to over the past month.
Tim Campbell - Cambridge Business Lectures
Covered a lot of ground up from his start in business, through the Apprentice, up to his current venture. What you can tell from his talk is that he is doing what he wants to do now rather than what is expected of him. His current venture is a registered charity that helps young people start up business mainly if they are from disadvantaged backgrounds. I must admit business oriented talks don't really do it for me and this was no exception because it always ends up being about the bottom line.
When Good Architecture Goes Bad - BCS SPA Cambridge
For the restart of the Cambridge BCS SPA meetings we have Mark Dalgarno's talk. I've attended this one before. The talk is an interactive session where you have to spot architectural decay and how to stem it and possible reverse it. It's a good session for getting to know your fellow attendees as well.
Model Driven Development and Software Product Lines - Software East
There were two talks for the fee here. First up there was Danilo Beuche - Get started with Software Product Lines. This covered the theory behind building up a software product line and also showed some of the tool that is used to manage it through Eclipse. It is much more relevant for companies with many products all containing small variations. The second talk was Steven Kelly - Moving from Coding to Model-Driven Development. This was the stronger of the two talks. The way I read it was that it is a large layer of abstraction to improve productivity and to ower thebarrier for entry for solving problems in the problem domain. The examples mainly involve diagrams (or UML) for it but I think a good DSL would do the trick as well.
Liquavista - CHASE Cambridge
This was a talk about new monitor technology company and how you bring technology to market. It was about using electrowetting to make reflective displays (rather than the current backlit world). If the technology does take off you will get cheaper displays and lower power displays. They are currently pushing out actual product in watches in order to have something on the market rather than simply relying on being a technology and licensing company with no released product.
Upcoming there is Visual Studio Extensibility: Extend Your Development Experience.
What I'm Doing...
- http://j.mp/c5NtYQ 2 weeks ago
- Awesome painted scifi. I'm sure the cover is the same as Psygnosis' Blood Money. http://j.mp/aiT6Ta 2 weeks ago
- @kumbunterland got all three books and they rock. Especially surfing a Dracula robot from the moon. in reply to kumbunterland 2 weeks ago
- Oh, and they sold the Samsung Wave as an Android phone when it blatantly isn't. AAAARGH! 3 weeks ago
- And that was in exchange of the hatefully bad LG Viewty Snap they had convinced her to get last time. 3 weeks ago
- I sent my wife into O2 expecting her to get a Palm Pre and she walks out with a Samsung Wave. They're actively discouraging people from Palm 3 weeks ago
- ProgrammersLog Update: Python is beautifully over-engineered http://blog.programmerslog.com/?p=459 3 weeks ago
- Whoops - I need to get a micro-SD card so I can upgrade my Android tablet to the latests 2.2 firmware. An oversight involving yet more money 3 weeks ago
- New toy - cheap Chinese Android tablet. http://twitpic.com/2e2gwl 3 weeks ago
- In web browser drawing http://bit.ly/b2Wg0m 3 weeks ago
- More updates...
Posting tweet...
Powered by Twitter Tools
Pages
Archives
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- February 2010
- December 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
