Simon Fell > Its just code
Simon Fell
USB Chief is a kickin' USB bus sniffer / analyzer, if you're into that sort of thing.
LGPL Java DIME implementation available from Onion Networks
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Real World XML Web Services: For VB and VB .NET Developers Just been reading Yasser's book, one of the better web services books I thought, it also includes some coverage of PocketSOAP (both rpc/encoded and doc/literal), and proxyTrace, cool!
Three Sunday morning options Well, 2 [core rss elements in a namespace] would be my preference, but if that's not really an option, then do 1 [no namespace]. 3 [do either] seems fairly pointless, of course YMMV.
RSS on the up Cool, people are using the RSS tests I did yesterday to improve their aggregators, Mark Pilgram emailed me to tell me his ultra-liberal RSS parser now reads all the tests correctly, and Fredrik Lundh has updated effnews.py as well.
monthly archives whipped up some userTalk to generate the archives list, and switched to month archives.
revised SOAPBuilders round 4 XSD test results posted, a clean sweep for both the WhiteMesa and ASP.NET toolkits.
Saturday, September 28, 2002
SOAPBuilders round 4 XSD test results posted
Ziv Caspi documents the scheme that Aggie currently uses for namespace handling, its simple and I can't think of a situation that would trip it up, all it takes is a namespace aware XML parser. I've seen claims that that's an issue, but seriously folks, what platform doesn't have a namespace aware parser ?, most platforms seem to have a port of expat, which is namespace aware, those platforms that don't ought to be able to have expat ported to them [I've done ports of expat to both WinCE and Mac 9, its trivial], is it really a problem ?
I can't see how RSS 2.0 can be both fully backwardly compatible with RSS 0.9x and introduce namespaces, as we saw earlier, tools written with the assumptions that are valid for RSS 0.9x are just going to break when faced with a RSS 2.0 file that uses modules. As I see it then, there can only be 2 outcomes, either (i) you back away from namespaces altogether and loose the ability to de-centrally extend RSS, or (ii) accept there's going to be some possible breakage, and move forward. This shouldn't be a new issue to people writing RSS tools, RSS 1.0 which is slightly shy of being 2 years old uses namespace qualified elements, current RSS tools should already be doing the right thing with respect to namespaces.
Personally I vote for moving forward, pick a namespace-URI and clearly document the fact that RSS 2.0 elements are part of this namespace. It seems like a test suite with documented outcomes would help the tools guys move forward [perhaps the RSS 1.0 folks have already done this ?]
I just re-tested Aggie with the latest code from CVS, and it now gets it spot on.
got Namespaces ?
Given all the recent fuss about RSS2.0, namespaces, extensibility, etc, I've been testing some popular aggregators (Radio, Aggie, Amphetadesk, NetNewsWire Lite) to see how they handle the extenisbility in RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0, and how well they cope with some common XML Namespace issues. My immediate conclusion "If you're writing RSS aggregator apps that support RSS1.0 or RSS2.0, run, don't walk and go read the XML Namespaces rec" more thoughts on what this means later.
Spring EA 2. Spring—now with Jaguar support. Get it while it’s hot! [inessential.com] Cool, I've been waiting for a Jag version so I could try it out.
Bloggers at the DevCon. Sam Gentile seems to be collecting a list of webloggers who will be attending the WebServices DevCon. I'm psyched! [Sam Ruby] I'm gutted, as I won't be there :(
Friday, September 27, 2002
Well, I have absolutely no interest in being on the RSS battlefield, so I've switched to using Bill Kearney's excellent RSS 1.0 generator tool for Radio, this includes support for a bunch of RSS 1.0 modules as well, the RSS url continues to be exactly the same, thanks Bill !.
So it seems that Radio has silently upgraded my RSS feed to RSS 2.0, this has broken at least one reader, probably more, how do i get back to a 0.9x feed ?
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Listening to the new Underworld CD, it feels much more like Dubnobasswithmyheadman [their first release] than Beaucoup Fish [their previous release], liking it so far.
FOAF explorer. Morten Frederiksen has taken a first stab at a real-time social network explorer based on FOAF files. It's heavy on tech details, but you can easily see the potential here.[dive into mark]
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.1b1. NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.1b1 has been posted along with documentation on the clipboard formats NetNewsWire exports. Sample code is provided for both Carbon and Cocoa. [ranchero.com] I've been running the 1.0 release on my powerbook, I'm impressed, Brent did a great job, you should check it out if you're running OS X.
Monday, September 23, 2002
Dude, you're getting an extinction level event.. The real reason behind the events in The Forge of God [More Like This WebLog]
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Hmmm, the gig of ram in my new dev box seems to be confusing Radio
Friend of a friend. Mark Pilgrim: What could we build if we all had FOAF files? I don’t know, but I’ll try anything once. I'm in. [Sam Ruby] Here's another one for the collection.
Friday, September 20, 2002
Sam Gentile has a rant about Sun and web services interop, which I have to disagree with, whilst I'll freely admit that I've ragged on Sun in the past about interop, they are now as involved in SOAPBuilders as anyone else. They're hosting the next SOAPBuilders F2F, they produced the fault testing specifications for round 4, they have implementations for almost all the tests (Bob Cunnings with his White Mesa toolkit is possibly the only person to implement more of the tests). In short, I think they've more than stepped upto the plate, and that should be recognized.
Things I Hate About CodeWarrior, Part I. Metrowerks CodeWarrior is a fairly nice compiler suite and IDE for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, it suffers from several severe flaws. Most of these flaws involve CodeWarrior's binary project files. [Random Hacks] I've been very disapointed by CW8.x, VC++ trounces it in every way i can think of, in particular i find the debugging enviorment to be pretty poor.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Platform tonight, over at House of Red, see you there!.
Managed to get my PocketPC dev environment back up and running, and got the HTTP compression and timeout support for PocketPC version of PocketSOAP wrapped up. Another step closer to the 1.4.0 release
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
lots of places are reporting the release of ActiveSync 3.6, but still no mention of it on microsoft.com/mobile yet, strange.
I started in on writing some client tests for the round 4 XSD tests, but ran straight into some outstanding MSXML4.0 SOM bugs. Anyone know when/if we can expect SP2 for MSXML4 ?
I've updated the SOAPBuilders interop registry service with the rest of the Round 4 tests.
Yah!, Tim is trying to save the ATL mailing list, like so many people I cut my COM teeth on the ATL & DCOM mailing lists, it was a fantastic community.
The Everett beta arrived on Monday, probably the first time that Airborne Express has delivered something to me on time. Have to work up the motivation to install it, re-visit my stalled .NET CF projects, figure out what now works and what still doesn't... [Bryce's Dot Net Channel] I Haven't double checked yet, but I heard that the Everett beta contains the same version of the .NET CF as the last .NET CF beta release.
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Its good to see that Peter is back from his hiatus, I look forward to seeing what grungy internals goo he's dug up.
If you're good, don't worry: 12 Reasons
Cool, Joel says I don't have to worry! I particularly liked Look, I'll never be an artist and my artist friends will never develop software. I'm jealous of them; they're jealous of me. But we are who we are. doh! turns out Bill Carlson wrote it not Joel, hey, I'm not the only one who made that mistake.
Kelley pointed out that I'd missed blogging about the Paramount Theatre, a great 1930's art deco theatre over in Oakland, they ran movie classics over the summer, complete with old newsreals, cartoon, the wurlitzer, and dec-o-win. We saw Jaws & Dr Strangelove and had a blast, highly recommended.
RSS 2.0 discussions flare up. [The Furrygoat Experience] The whole thing is just ridiculous, who gives a flying f**k anyway, its not like RSS 2.0 can actually do anything you can't do with RSS 1.0 right now.
Monday, September 16, 2002
You can never have too many web services bloggers, welcome Graham.
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Lance and George
Getting to grips with the new camera, here's Ekimov with about 5 laps to go.
Someone will have to explain the logic behind the fact that Microsoft has software for Mac Office to sync to a palm, but not PocketPC !
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Just came across Larry O'Brien blog, In his comment about SOAP and HTTP, he says "If there were still programming magazines around worth a damn, ...." I have to agree, all the current programming magazines suck, I'm on the verge of letting my MSDN mag subscription slide, which seems to be the best of a bad bunch, at least as far as Windows related mag's go. I read some of the C++ mag's every now and then, they seem to be a bit hit and miss. Anyone got any programming magazine recommendations ?
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Alton Brown Answers, At Last [Slashdot]
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Had a trip out to Amoeba yesterday, Haight was full of people as usual, but unusually I came out of Amoeba empty handed, so I walked back down haight to Spundae, then onto Compound Records, picked up a bunch of good stuff. Seems like vinyl is still alive and well, both Spundae & Compound had larger vinyl selections than CD, and the Virgin megastore downtown now sports a vinyl section in the electronica dept as well.
Clemens Vasters, Ingo Rammer, and Brad Wilson are all debating binary XML. [News from the Forest] I agree with Justin's comment that anything destined to last longer than a transitory message should be in XML 1.0, complete with angle brackets. I've been back and forth as to whether a binary XML format should be tied to a schema, but in the end I don't think it should, however you should be able to take the schema and produce an optimized reader if you want to. You could intern all the strings, and make the end element marker not require the element name to compact down the representation.
If you're interested in reducing HTTP message sizes, and can't wait for some people to ship this, then deflate encoding is the way to go, most HTTP servers have some support for this, and the toolkit folks are starting to take advantage of it, SOAP::Lite has supported this for ages, It'll be in the next release of PocketSOAP, and I saw a patch for Apache SOAP not too long ago.
Apple Explains Interface Differences [Slashdot]
Saturday, September 07, 2002
MSNAmp
another Winamp 3.0 plug-in, this time it updates your MSN Messenger name with the currently playing track, ala Jason Whittington's MSNMangler.
WS-Amp
a SOAP 1.1 server for Winamp3, there's an NSIS based install, and the source is also available.
Friday, September 06, 2002
Aaron is skipping straight onto RSS 3.0 sounds like he's on the right track.
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Testing the RSS 1.0 generator for Radio.
I put up a build of the Wasabi SOAP server (for Winamp3), it currently does play / pause / stop / prev / next / currentTrack. Download a copy here (34k), there's also a WSDL for the service. Once I've got the other features done (playlist management, tie into the winamp config pages), I'll release the source as well. To install it, drop the soapServer.wac file into your winamp[3]\wacs directory and re-start winamp.
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
wOOt!, got the control commands piped up, so now i can script skipping to the next track
set f = CreateObject("PocketSOAP.Factory")
set w = f.CreateProxy("http://localhost:6067", "http://www.pocketsoap.com/winamp3/")
w.next()
Contining to work on the SOAP Wasabi plug-in, I started tinkering with gSOAP, I'm impressed so far, it also includes a standalone HTTP stack, so is an ideal candidate for embeding into applications.
World's first RSS 2 feed. ... Note: despite the unusual rss version number, namespace declaration, and additional element, this feed seems to be happily consumed by Radio Userland's News Aggregator. [Sam Ruby] Reading A-ok in Newz Crawler! [The .NET Guy]
Aggie reads it fine as well.
Some good gigs comming up, at Bimbo's there's Gus Gus, and the Brazilian ninja Amon Tobin, then over at the Warfield there's Underworld. wOOt!
Monday, September 02, 2002
From the "when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail" dept, I wrote a Wasabi component that embeds a HTTP/SOAP server into Winamp3, so I can find out what its playing from Radio!
Sunday, September 01, 2002
question for the HTTP folks, I got this HTTP/1.1 response back from a server, is it valid to skip content-length [or Transfer-Encoding: chunked] when connection: close is used ?
HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Connection: close
<html><head> ....
Dave Seidel has some interesting idea's about a Javascript layer for PocketSOAP that matches the Javascript SOAP API in Mozilla. I'm going to have to look into this, I've already been thinking about having the WSDL tool generate Javascript based proxies [as well as the existing VB based proxies]. Thanks Dave!
Here are the change notes for MacOS X 10.2, a.k.a. Jaguar. (long.) [Jake's Radio 'Blog] BTW, anyone have CW 8.2 running properly on 10.2 ?, I can't get it to build any of our existing CW 8.0 projects.
Last update: 2/9/2003; 5:35:40 PM.
