Simon Fell > Its just code

Simon Fell

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

Decafbad: Doc Searls OSCon slides. Decafbad blogs Doc Searls slides from OSCon - some insightful stuff about the clash between technologists and Hollywood.... [www.davidwatson.org]
< 10:20:57 PM  # more elsewhere > Banco de Gaia - Amber (from Last Train to Lhasa Disc 1)



Monday, July 29, 2002

Netscape 4 turned 5. 5 years ago, my best friend wasn't even dating; now he's married and has two kids. Fucking upgrade already. [dive into mark] ROTFL
< 10:12:04 PM  # more elsewhere > Lovers Lane - Island Memories [Original Mix]

Lots of response to Sam’s latest essay : Expect More
< 9:34:22 PM  # more elsewhere > Jo Manji - Beyond the Sunset



Sunday, July 28, 2002

The likeness is uncanny
< 1:30:11 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Last Train To Lhasa - Banco de Gaia

Cool, Tim gets a home page that says more than Tim hasn't written his web page yet... :)
< 1:28:42 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Last Train To Lhasa - Banco de Gaia

DIME w/ doc/lit SOAP interop results posted
< 9:36:24 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] World Clique - Don't Do It



Saturday, July 27, 2002

PocketSOAP 1.3.5 Just released, includes updates to the DIME support to match the June 17 specs, and the HTTP transport upgraded to HTTP 1.1
< 5:37:46 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - Mo Move (from A Hundred Days Off [UK])

Simon Fell > Its just code : Thursday, July 25, 2002: "Just got a wireless network card for my iPaq, works a treat!"  Which did you get?  I picked up the Linksys CompactFlash card and it works very well, although it is a bit slow on making the initial connection.  Drags the extra battery pack down pretty fast though. [snellspace] Yeah, I picked up the Linksys as well, my only complaint so far, is that it sticks out forward over the CF sleeve, so that you have to remove the card from the sleeve before you can take the iPaq out of the sleeve.
< 2:51:10 PM  # more elsewhere > Dastrix - Dude in the Moon [Luna Mix]

PocketFeed. So, here's some information about a new project that I've been working on over the last week: PocketFeed. PocketFeed is an RSS/RDF news aggregator that runs on the Pocket PC 2002 PDA's. Using OPML for it's blogroll, you can now take your news, blog entries, or any other type of syndicated data with you, sync it wirelessly or read it offline. It's not quiet ready yet, but jump over to the PocketFeed page for the full scoop, some screenshots and when it will be available for download. [The Furrygoat Experience] Cool
< 2:14:48 PM  # more elsewhere > Garbage - Paranoid [The Crystal Method Remix]

The Furrygoat on Embedded Visual C++. I hear you brother!, It can be an incredebly frustrating time working with eVC, it certainly drives me insane whenever I have to spend more than 30 consecutive minutes with it. I hope that the Compact Framework improves the situation, but the current beta doesn't fill me with confidence that it's going to.
< 1:43:38 PM  # more elsewhere > Orbital - Funny Break (One Is Enough) [Plump Dj's Mix]



Thursday, July 25, 2002

It was the Leapfrog IPO today. Mike Wood got to ring the bell at the NYSE, I got to fight Code Warrior 8 all day.
< 7:59:08 PM  # more elsewhere > Orbital - Spare Parts Express (Roskilde)

Just got a wireless network card for my iPaq, works a treat!
< 7:54:10 PM  # more elsewhere > Orbital - Way Out (Live in Roskilde '99)



Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Let me play the devil's advocate here and add that SOAP is not that useful anymore if all it is used for is to envelope XML in a 'tidy' message for document exchange. I can do that much easier just over HTTP, and REST my case... [Robert van Engelen] Or as a friend of mine likes to say "SOAP is like Oakland, there's no there, there".
< 8:31:50 PM  # more elsewhere > Cornershop - Brimful of Asha (Norman Cook Extended Remix)

Grrrrhhh, that's twice now Code Warrior has lost a bunch of work on me [for no apparent reason], needless to say, I'm pissed !.
< 2:48:55 PM  # more elsewhere >

Do you really need all this just to programmatically copy a file using Carbon ?, ouch, where the equivilent of Win32's ::CopyFile ??
< 9:06:51 AM  # more elsewhere >



Tuesday, July 23, 2002

DIME/RPC Interop results  
< 9:55:32 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - King Of Snake



Monday, July 22, 2002

Cool, I see the new document style XSpaces service is up and running.
< 9:45:18 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - Born Slippy (NUXX)

Russell's upto no good again, and has an AIM interface to the Amazon SOAP API.
< 7:35:40 PM  # more elsewhere > 12. Get Down Massive



Sunday, July 21, 2002

NetNewsWire Very slick, nice job Brent!.
< 9:22:31 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Star 69 - Fatboy Slim

David McCusker I've gotten better at describing the technical failings of computing tools. There's always lots of opportunity for practice, because there's a predominance of crummy tools.
< 2:26:48 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Propellerheads

New essay: REST + SOAP. [Sam Ruby] A must read from Sam on SOAP and REST.
< 11:16:54 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] The Weekend Starts Here - Fatboy Slim



Saturday, July 20, 2002

Commercial Break: Why wait? Use WS-Routing & Reliable Messaging now with .... MSMQ 3.0 ?!? [Clemens Vasters] Cool, I knew that it did SOAP over HTTP, but didn't know it included WS-Routing support. Added to the todo list, so many toys, so little time !
< 11:16:22 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] For What You Dream (Full On Renaissance Mix) - Bedrock

Ubergeek.tv: Switchback. [Hack the Planet] :)
< 8:41:03 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Superstylin' - Groove Armada

Watson Developer on Sherlock 3. What is the relationship between Watson and Sherlock 3? Karelia Software writes: “We’ve all but given up on any compensation from Apple, so the purpose of ‘going public’ with this answer is because we want to set the record straight.” [ranchero.com]
< 8:31:22 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] I Love Baby Cheesy - Banco de Gaia



Friday, July 19, 2002

Got an answer to my Radio/AppleScript question, thanks David!
< 9:34:38 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Lush 3 (Euro Tunnel Disaster '94) / Walk About (John Peel Sessions) - Orbital

Still having problems with the airport connection on the TiBook, everything appears to be ok (i can browse, get mail, netstat looks resonable), but in iTunes [both 2 &3], the CDDB queries always fail when using the airport connection [works fine when wired], just to add to the confusion, its perfectly happy to play mp3 streams over the airport, just not CDDB. The same problem seems to be affecting the Radio to radio.weblogs.com connection as well. Grrrrhhhh :(
< 9:27:59 PM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Impact USA (The Earth Is Burning: Diversion) - Orbital

Big turn out at Platform last night, congrats to the Plado Media folks.
< 8:27:36 PM  # more elsewhere > 08. Phenomenon One

James has a sample WSDL 1.1 for the GET binding for the interop registry, whilst its correct, its not particularly useful. All it says is you get a soap response. There's two things i think need to be added, (i) a detailed indication of the response, perhaps a pointer to a binding/operation (ii) an indication that the xlink:href attributes which are typed as xsd:anyURI return a URI to an instance of a particular WSDL binding. A client tool processing the WSDL could then build an object model that navigates around the resources by returning new proxy objects.
< 6:52:02 PM  # more elsewhere >



Thursday, July 18, 2002

I've been experimenting with a server implementation of the SOAP 1.2 GET HTTP binding for the SOAPBuilders nterop registry. You can see the results at

http://soap.4s4c.com/registration/toolkits/
http://soap.4s4c.com/registration/tests/
http://soap.4s4c.com/registration/rounds/
[If you're an IE user, you might want to use this registry tweak to show application/soap+xml directly]

This has a slightly expanded data model over the current SOAP 1.1 interface, I plan to add a SOAP 1.2 interface to do updates that is based on the new data model in the near future.

Many thanks to Peter Drayton and Sam Ruby for their assistance.


< 8:19:51 PM  # more elsewhere > Binary Finary - Live From Hyperstate'99

Interesting iBlog thread over on HTP.
< 7:14:54 PM  # more elsewhere > Lamb - Gold (Hipoptimist Alchemy Mix)

Got my iTunes web service up and running using Radio on OS X [which can host AppleScript directly!] and tweaked the onPost callback in my Windows Radio to check the iTunes service if Winamp isn't running locally.
< 12:46:25 AM  # more elsewhere > [via iTunes] Purple - Gus Gus



Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Hmmm, only seems to work from IE, other apps such as Radio and iTunes both time out trying to make connections. :(
< 8:36:53 PM  # more elsewhere > Lamb - Gorecki (Global Communication

got the airport card working with the linksys WAP, I can blog from the comfort of the sofa now :)
< 6:29:59 PM  # more elsewhere >



Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Currently having one last read of the SOAP 1.2 specs before the last call deadline.
< 8:25:43 PM  # more elsewhere > 01. Voodoo Child (Poor In NY Mix)



Monday, July 15, 2002

I think Tim liked YATT :)
< 8:29:42 PM  # more elsewhere > 09 - The Masters Series Part Four- Revelation - iio - Rapture (Deep Dish Space Mix)

Cool, you can run AppleScript directly in Radio on the Mac, should make my iTunes web service trivial to write.
< 8:24:48 PM  # more elsewhere > 08 - The Masters Series Part Four- Revelation - Way Out West - Stealth (Quivver Mix)



Sunday, July 14, 2002

Simon Fell: "No doubt the first of many dumb questions about OS X". I don't think it's a dumb question ("how to implement web service in AppleScript") ;). This list of SOAP toolkits says that AppleScript is a 'client only' implementation and I believe that's correct (let me know if you find otherwise). You can use SOAP::Lite (or some other toolkit) to run as a server and developer.apple.com plans to publish Randal Schwartz's article 'Connecting AppleScript and Perl with SOAP' that describes how to do that (sorry, no live link yet). [toolbox] Doh!, thanks Paul, I should of looked there first. As OS X gets Apache httpd out of the box, I'll probably use a toolkit that can plug straight into that, first thoughts are SOAP::Lite or gSOAP. Next step is to work out how to run a chunk of AppleScript from Perl or C++.
< 10:37:26 AM  # more elsewhere >



Saturday, July 13, 2002

No doubt the first of many dumb questions about OS X
< 3:09:35 PM  # more elsewhere >

BlogToaster Updates it now has two additional [related] commands, FIND and CHECK. One of the problems with using BlogToaster, even with the IMPORT command, is getting the correct URL to watch, these two commands hopefully make it easier to find the correct URL to watch. For example do

FIND slashdot
BlogToaster says:
SlashDot.Org : add http://www.slashdot.org/

To find out that you should be watching http://www.slashdot.org/ and not http://slashdot.org/ [which is what the RSS feed says]

The CHECK command will return a list of URLs you are watching that haven't ping weblogs.com recently [currently within the last week, but I plan to extend this once I've captured more data]. In some cases the lack of pings is because you're watching the wrong URL, use the FIND command to get the right URL to watch.

Finally I started a BlogToaster mailing list to discuss features / releases etc.


< 12:02:19 PM  # more elsewhere >

Sam suggested tweaking the MIME database to get IE to display application/soap+xml directly, I put together a reg file with the changes :) Thanks Sam !
< 9:50:56 AM  # more elsewhere >



Friday, July 12, 2002

No now playing indications at the minute, as I'm giving iTunes a try out [I like it so far], hmmm, i wonder if i get a web service up and running on the TiBook to tell me what iTunes is playing, then hook that into Radio on my desktop.
< 7:41:01 PM  # more elsewhere >

SOAP 1.2 changes the content-type from text/xml to application/soap+xml, unfortuantly this doesn't play well with the new GET binding, IE now prompts me to save/open the file, rather than just displaying the XML, this makes testing the GET binding from a browser a pain.
< 7:39:06 PM  # more elsewhere >



Thursday, July 11, 2002

PocketSOAP 1.3.5 beta 1 now available, includes HTTP/1.1 support and the DIME code updated to the latest version of the DIME & WS-Attachments specs.
< 9:15:36 PM  # more elsewhere >



Wednesday, July 10, 2002

One thing I like about the new XML Web Services Developer Center is the fact that most [but not quite all] have decent, bookmarkable URLs, now if they can just break the long running MSDN tradiation of breaking all the links every month, I'll be really happy.
< 10:11:20 PM  # more elsewhere > Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up

Raelity Bites: "Oy! Think Secret predicts Apple will rebrand iTools as .Mac". Hmmm, this must be the rollout of that "Think Different" campaign Apple's been going on about... [Peter Drayton's Radio Weblog] Speaking of Macs, the boss tells me that a TiBook along with a copy of CW8 should be landing on my desk tomorrow :)
< 6:49:21 PM  # more elsewhere > Way Out West - The Gift

Lots of new stuff recently, Don gets a blog and there's a bunch of stuff up in the new XML Web Services Developer Center to check out. Sam has some preliminary SOAP 1.2 interop results, and discussions over the GET binding in SOAP 1.2 continue on SOAPBuilders. I'm not sure i see what the issue with the GET binding is, most of the complaints seem to revolve around the fact there no mapping from SOAP to URL's for the request, but the request isn't SOAP, so there won't be a mapping.
< 6:46:09 PM  # more elsewhere > Way Out West - The Gift



Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, San Francisco, Soma, Simon, Male, 31-35!
< 7:20:03 PM  # more elsewhere > Db + - Dimensional Entity

WSDL12 Press Release The W3C Web Services Activity currently consists of three Royalty-Free Working Groups whose focus is to develop an open, interoperable and extensible model for Web Services...  {emphasis added} [Sam Ruby] This is good news, but I'm having a hard time correlating that statement with the IPR statements for the WSDL working group and the XMLP working group.
< 7:12:42 PM  # more elsewhere > Db + - Spaced Invader (High Contrast Rmx, J Majik Rmx, Optical Rmx)



Monday, July 08, 2002

Cool, Sam is updating the Axis interop tests to use the interop registry.
< 7:21:55 PM  # more elsewhere > 01 - Coldcut - Atomic Moog 2000 (cornelius mix)



Sunday, July 07, 2002

Back from the bookshop, picked up a copy of DJ's book Programming Jabber. Only spotted one book on Carbon, and that was mainly focused on UI stuff. Still looking for a good Mac/OS 9/Carbon book. Can't wait til the OS 9 version is out the way, and we can start on the OS X port, which I'm really looking forward to.
< 5:39:39 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - King Of Snake

Been working on more BlogToaster related stuff, I have a basic client for DJ's Jabber based pub/sub service and I've also been tweaking BlogToaster and the underlying weblogs watcher service.
< 1:01:02 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - Born Slippy (NUXX)

There's an updated vesion of TcpTrace now available, that has some GUI improvements / bug fixes.
< 12:59:13 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - King Of Snake



Saturday, July 06, 2002

PocketSOAP roadmap updated.
< 10:35:04 PM  # more elsewhere > Deltron 3030 - Things You Can Do

MSTK 3.0 is released, congrats to Kirill, Mike and the rest of the MSTK team.
< 8:56:54 PM  # more elsewhere > Euphoria - Yahel / Heartache

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth This was a fascinating read, highly recommended.
< 5:24:35 PM  # more elsewhere > Euphoria - John Askew / Vellum



Friday, July 05, 2002

My Linksys WAP turned up today. Already boxed up and ready to be returned, the power connecter doesn't bloody fit :(
< 7:00:39 PM  # more elsewhere >



Thursday, July 04, 2002

Anyone got any good book recomendations for getting upto speed on programming the Mac [particularly OS 9] ?
< 11:26:55 AM  # more elsewhere > Dave Seaman - Slacker - Looky Thing (Club One Mix)

Russell's been busy, there's now an RSS feed (subscribed), Jabber, MSN & AIM versions of BlogAgent, and he has some interesting ideas for connecting people based on the blogs they're watching.
< 10:08:53 AM  # more elsewhere > Dave Seaman - Our House - Soliton Wave (Slow Mix)

Anyone know a fix for this JabberD on Windows problem ?
< 9:21:44 AM  # more elsewhere > Paul Oakenfold - Slinky Wizard Slinky Wizard



Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Dusted off my JabberD setup, and started trying out DJ's pub/sub service. Cool, I can send my Jabber subscription, see the service call the weblogs watcher to register the URL. Then I can push a weblog change out and see the Jabber messages comming back in. Awesome!
< 11:19:32 PM  # more elsewhere > Underworld - Dark Train

I was looking at the threading code in Aggie last night, wondering why it didn't use ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem, as that stage in the process its entirely IO bound, using the threadpool makes a lot of sense. But not so fast, Joe pointed out that he ran into a problem with this, and I dug around and indeed there is :( back to the drawing borard.
< 9:04:59 PM  # more elsewhere > Db + - LTJ Bukem/ Music

Reflecting weblogs.com 'ping's with SOAP, Jabber, and Pubsub.  ....  [DJ's Weblog] Cool, DJ has a Jabber pub/sub layer to go ontop of the weblogs watcher service. The service was designed so that it could scale by doing fanout chaining [as DJ is doing, and as BlogToaster also does] but its still centralized. I'm interested in seeing how a completely decentralized version could be built.
< 7:43:59 PM  # more elsewhere > Db + - Urban Visions/ Pearls



Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Final Web Services DevCon East Speakers. The final line-up of Web Services DevCon East speakers for October 10-11 in Bedford, Mass has been posted. The quality of the talks was so high that we had to forgo one of Don's proposals to get in all the good stuff. If you can only go to one web services conference this year, this is the one that'll pack it in nice and tight! [sellsbrothers.com: Windows Developer News]
< 10:23:23 PM  # more elsewhere > Diesel Boy - Pascal/Movin On

Attachments Interop tests for SOAPBuilders.
< 8:53:37 PM  # more elsewhere >



Monday, July 01, 2002

Microsoft changed the pricing for .NET Alerts. Now you don’t need the initial $15,000 fee, just pay $0.075/user/month. I’d easily pay a dollar a month for such a service. Anyone want my money? [matt.griffith] read the small print, you have to have a Passport license to be able to send .NET Alerts, and thats still $10K/year.
< 10:10:43 PM  # more elsewhere > Diesel Boy - Pascal/Movin On

Not to worry. Russell Beattie has Jabber-based toaster (BlogAgent). [toolbox] This is cool, Russell has a Java/Jabber clone of BlogToaster, and by a strange coincidence both Russell and I worked at [the now closed] StreetFusion.
< 9:11:56 PM  # more elsewhere > Orbital - New Bass Hippo

Paul Kulchenko [of SOAP::Lite fame] has started a blog, and emailed me about a typo in my entry about the revised DIME specs, it was of course a WS-Attachments spec, not a WS-Security spec, doh !. Thanks Paul.
< 9:01:41 PM  # more elsewhere > Orbital - Living In The Past